Ninja Nutrition Tactic #8 – Macronutrient and Carb Cycling

The below is an excerpt from my brand new info-packed ebook, Ninja Nutrition Tactics.

Macronutrient and Carbohydrate Cycling

There are like a bajillion ways to do this, and I’ll give quite a few examples, but here’s a little background on why it works:

Remember leptin?  Yeah, the dictator hormone that controls everything—even Fidel Castro.

Respect.

Wellllll…just so happens that leptin has yet another thing that controls IT (he’s not really as powerful as he thinks, when you’re a ninja, that is).

We already know that leptin levels are dictated by two things:  body fat levels and calorie intake.  A third thing that has been shown to have a significant effect on leptin levels is carbohydrate intake (even independent of calorie intake), or more specifically, the insulin response resulting from said carbohydrate intake.

For instance, check out this study:

Boden G et al.  J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1996 Sep;81(9):3419-23.

Effect of fasting on serum leptin in normal human subjects.

In this study, researchers at the Temple University School of Medicine monitored leptin levels while a group of participants fasted.

The result, leptin levels droped off to their nadir after about 36 hours as expected.

But then they did something very interesting:  they intravenously maintained insulin levels in these individuals, in the face of fasting, just to see what would happen.  And the results were pretty crazy.

Despite the fact that these people were STILL fasting, leptin levels shot right back up to baseline (as well as other important metabolism related hormones) just because of the normal presence of insulin.

This was a HUGE discovery.  Yes, leptin does control appetite to a large degree and leptin is heavily involved in that feedback circle, but there seems to be one thing that trumps everything else when it comes to leptin regulation:  insulin.

So how do we capitalize on this information?

Using what we’ve learned from this study, we can begin to implement carbohydrate cycling strategies—even within our reduced calorie diets—to keep leptin happy, bust through plateaus, and fat loss a’comin.

Another tool in the toolbox (and after reading this manual, you’re going to have a heck of a lot of tools).

Here are two of my favorite carbohydrate cycling strategies:

Method #1: The Reverse Taper

With this approach, you gradually increase carbohydrate content AND type throughout the week:

Day 1: Low carb
Day 2: Same as day 1
Day 3: More carbs, but Low GI
Day 4: Same as day 3
Day 5: Even more carbs, but mostly High GI
Day 6: Same as day 5
Day 7: Cheat Day

We already know that leptin tends to fall off gradually over the course of a week of dieting—this single approach combats that in 3 ways.

1.  The weekly leptin-boosting cheat day
2.  More carbs are progressively added throughout the week when leptin when normally be dropping off
3.  Higher GI carbs are added (to produce more insulin) deeper into the week

And all this is done while still remaining in a caloric deficit and being a fat burning machine.  This is the main approach that we use in the Cheat Your Way Thin program.

==> You DO own Cheat Your Way Thin, right? :)

Method #2 – For the Lower-carb Dieter

I would not use this method during a low-carb prime (to reset leptin/insulin sensitivity), but for those who do well and enjoy the low carb approach, and choose to transition into that type of approach for the “main” diet, here’s an awesome way to set it up.

Day 1: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 2: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 3: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 4: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 5: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 6: Higher carb with carbs at 50% of daily cals (maintenance level cals)
Day 7: Higher carb with carbs at 50% of daily cals (maintenance level cals)

OR

Day 1: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 2: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 3: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 4: Higher carb with carbs at 50% of daily cals (maintenance level cals)
Day 5: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 6: Low carb (diet level cals)
Day 7: Higher carb with carbs at 50% of daily cals (maintenance level cals)

With this approach, I’d include a full blown Cheat Day once every 2 weeks in place of one of the higher carb days.

NINJA HINT:  As your shogun, I’d recommend the second approach.  But, some people prefer to have back to back high carb days, which is cool, but slightly less stealth (read: effective).

Again, there are so many different ways to cycle carbs and macronutrients as a whole.  The above just happen to be two (well, actually 3) of my most favorite options.  And just so you know, they’re my favorites because they work the best. :)

And this is just one of ELEVEN ninja plateau-busting strategies that I share in the Ninja Nutrition Tactics manual.  And then there’s a whole other chapter with even more killer strategies that I don’t even count as part of the 11.

To date, I’ve never made Ninja Nutrition Tactics available for direct purchase…ever.  It is without a doubt the best ebook I’ve ever written.  I don’t say that to hype it up; I say that because it’s that good.  That said, in the next few weeks I’ll be launching Ninja Nutrition Tactics with a full promotional website, but if you want to grab your copy early, I’ll give it to you today for 1/2 price:

==> Ninja Nutrition Tactics early bird price

I’ll keep the above link active for a day or two.  You’ll get immediate access to the full ebook today (no waiting) just for taking action.

==> Ninja Nutrition Tactics early bird price

Keep rockin’,

Joel