Diet Advice - Carb Cycling

Hi all

Looking for some advice, words of wisdom and hopefully some reassurance I am on the right track. 3 months ago after a reasonable time out of the gym and not training (for reasons I wont go into) I decided it was time to get myself back in order. I had put on a fair amount of body fat and due to not training lost lean mass and conditioning. Anyway despite a few other things going on in my life I managed to train pretty hard and diet hard. Keeping to around 2250 cals a day.Eating clean with less than 100g carbs. Pretty much P+F meals 6 times a day. Have found it hard! Focus was on dropping fat and have been pretty sucessful. At 192cm and 31 years old I am down to 97kgs from 108kgs getting reasonably lean only a little more to go to be happy enough with the body fat levels. Focus will then shift to slowly building myself back up, getting stronger and fitter but keeping reasonably lean. I no longer compete in sports and am in no hurry. More focused on keeping healthy and happy with myself.

So my question, over the next few weeks I plan to slowly increase my intake. Up to at least 3500 Cals (potentially higher?). From calculations this level seems to be around maintenance for my height, weight and activity. Train 1-1.5 hours 4-5 times a week. Does this sound about right?
My concearn stems from the fact I have always struggled to control my weight and while I know I have to up the intake to get ahead like all us who have been fat I have a fear of putting that back on - just want to ensure I am on the right level.

At what rate do you think would be best to increase my intake? additional 300-500cal a day for a week continued for 2-4 weeks until I hit the mark?

Further the plan is to cycle my carbs around my training sort of like what was outlined in the carb cycling for idiots article. Low, medium and high days. Question is will this approach elimitate or aleviate sufficiently some of the negative effects I have found with having a mostly very low carb diet? i.e. feeling lethargic, poor concentration, grumpy.

For any help in advance - Thanks

Hey mate,
I’m no expert however I think your planning is quite sound. However, regardless the low carb causing grumpiness and so on - I’d suggest that you either just don’t do well on low carb diets, or you haven’t adapted yet due to sitting around 100g. Feel free to drop it below 30g for a couple of weeks (see Anabolic Diet thread for more info) and re-evaluate.
Good luck with it and keep updating,
Dan