I believe I heard this mentioned. once, a 5 day bulking, and 2 day cutting, can anyone give me links to more information on this or own experiences. thanks in advance
I have found that calorie cycling, mostly by carb manipulation is an excellent way to put on LBM while staying lean. Not necessarily a 5/2 cycle, but not a constant calorie intake. Tampa-Terry has posted a thread on this, do a search on carb-cycling in the forum. Also, CT has some cool dietary plans in his Transformation of the Beast articles. Good luck.
Hi there. I have had pretty good results with calorie cycling as well. I go lower calories on my ‘off’ days and moderate calories on my training days. About once every 4-5 days I have a high calorie day where I load up on LOTS of healthy food or have a whole grain pancake feed:). I usually try to make it fall on a big lifting day (back or legs).
I do something different. I’m not saying its better, but it seems like it works for me. I do low carbs during Monday-Friday. I don’t know if I would even call it low carbs since I get in almost 300 carbs a day. Then on the weekend, I’ll load up on breads/spaghetti/etc. and get in almost 500-600 carbs a day. I’m not that big of a guy or have a fast metabolism. I’m 5’9 and 195 pounds. I’m not fat, but not ripped.
Also, this might be all in my head, but after I have McDonalds (only once a week or every other week), if I wait 24 hours and no sooner to workout, I actually have a really good workout. If I workout within 12 hours of having McDonalds, I seem short of air and I sweat more then usual.
The weird things our bodies do 
I like to do it like this personally. I believe it’s the most effective way to gain muscle and stay lean.
Here are a few reasons why I prefer the 5 days bulk followed by 2 days of cut:
- if you cycle more than that, it is probably not optimal for muscle growth because you spend too much time recovering your glycogen, and when you do that, you can’t really build muscle.
- if you cut 2 days, you can begin to be significantly carb-depleted if you do a no carb, which helps to burn fat. Also, you spend less time depleting the glycogen. Think about it… if you do just 1 day, you have a lot of glycogen, so you’re gonna burn a lot of glycogen, which is not really what you want.
- the hypertrophy response happens within about 36h after a workout - according to Bryan Haycock-, so you want to bulk the day following your workout, and NOT just recover your glycogen.
- leptin stays high for 2 days without problem.
- you don’t stay depleted for long, and usually you can regain your volume in one evening of high carbs.
So what I do personaly is to cut fast for 1.5 days, then train in the evening and begin my bulk after. I try to cut about 0.75lb.
You can check for more info on carb cycling techniques. Lyle has a version of his UD2 for bulking also.