T Nation

Carb Cycling with 2-A-Days

Supplements and Nutrition
#1

Hey Guys,

I’ve been experiencing a ton of strength gains, but I want to start dropping some fat to get down to a more comfortable weight class for BJJ. Currently I am 5’ 10’’, 210 lbs at about 15% BF. Hypertrophy isn’t a high priority-my goal is to get my weight down while still maintaining strength and conditioning.

I’m currently looking at carb cycling on my “off” days to increase fat loss. Currently I run a 3x (MWF) a week full body split of 5/3/1 in the AM, and then do BJJ at night M-F. Saturday I do a long run for conditioning, and also usually have a cheat meal that night.

My current diet is 3 meals a day of 75 g carbs (oats, brown rice, or sweet potatoes), 50 g protein (eggs, chicken, steak or fish) and then either fruit or veggies to get me to 750 calories. I also have a snack (30 g protein, 50 g carbs) of plain greek yogurt and granola before my BJJ class. After every workout, I drink a protein shake with 25 g protein on my way home. It adds up to roughly 3000 calories a day. Before my AM workout, I eat an apple just to get something in my stomach, and before my first big meal of the day, I take 5g of creatine.

My plan is to drop the carbs out of the big meals so its just protein and fruit/veggies on my days where I don’t lift. I’ll keep the granola in the yogurt since its just prior my BJJ class, which includes a lot of high intensity sparring. This will cut out roughly 1000 calories a day of carbs, and I may include an extra protein shake in the morning to make up for the little bit of protein I lose from not eating the rice and oats.

So my weekly schedule would look like

Monday- AM Lift and PM BJJ- High Carb Day
Tuesday- PM BJJ- Low Carb (100 g carbs)
Wednesday- AM Lift and PM BJJ- High Carb Day
Thursday- PM BJJ- Low Carb (100 g carbs)
Friday- AM Lift and PM BJJ- High Carb Day
Saturday- Long Run-High Carb Day and cheat meal
Sunday-Rest Day- Low Carb Day

TL/DR

  1. Looking to lose fat with 3 days/week lifting, 5 days week BJJ
  2. On days with lifting (2 sessions), 3000 calories and high carb
  3. On days with no lifting, 2000 with 100g carbs
  4. 1 cheat meal a week

Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

#2

Think it looks pretty solid but one question,

You have 3 meals a day of 75 g Carbs & 50 g of protein, which is around 500 kcal (75+50 = 125, 125 x 4 = 500)

Then you consume another 250 in the form of fruit & veg inorder to hit 750 kcals?

If you are precisely calculating and hitting your macro’s, that will be around 60 g of sugar, x3 a day

That might be considered too much fructose by some, i’m sure some one else will chime in as well.

#3

Well actually just realised there should be some sort of fat in those 3 meals, even if you dont add by yourself, brown rice, eggs and the steak should

Interesting, in terms of nutrition, i never had the best results when i was splitting hairs :slight_smile:

#4

[quote]outlaws wrote:
Think it looks pretty solid but one question,

You have 3 meals a day of 75 g Carbs & 50 g of protein, which is around 500 kcal (75+50 = 125, 125 x 4 = 500)

Then you consume another 250 in the form of fruit & veg inorder to hit 750 kcals?

If you are precisely calculating and hitting your macro’s, that will be around 60 g of sugar, x3 a day

That might be considered too much fructose by some, i’m sure some one else will chime in as well.
[/quote]

Some of that is fat too- the extra cals come from avocados at lunch, and fat from whole eggs in the morning for example. But I’ve always done well performance wise with a lot of fruit in my diet. I don’t have a scale so I can’t be super strict for most of my macro’s but I am when I can (measuring rice/oats, for example).

My exact diet, if it helps, is

Breakfast- eggs, oats, an orange.
Lunch- chicken breast, rice, salad with avocado and light dressing
Dinner- steak or tilapia, sweet potatoes, and mixed veggies.

and then the yogurt, granola, apple, and protein shakes around workouts.

EDIT: Whoops didn’t see your second response. Yeah I wasn’t including fat in the meals, and I’m more a fan of clean eating then splitting hairs as well, but I figured including my relative macros would be helpful for the feedback.