DAY 7, Over 40 and Ripped!….

The Atkins Diet WORKS…When Carbs are CYCLED!

The Atkins Plan was and continues to be a major breakthrough in the area of dieting.  Fact is, it produces results for a large percentage of people.  I remember when I was going to the gym back in the early 2000‘s or so, not being nearly as cut as I am now, and noticing one of the regulars there who always had a great muscular build, was bringing more and more definition to his body despite having looked the same for a number of years previous.

He was what most would describe as a mesomorph, with a strong musculature body-wide but without any striations to his musculature.  Just somewhat round, big muscles.

After a short time, his “roundness” became much more “ripped,” as his veins began to show much more predominantly and the separations in his abdominal wall became very clear.

He explained, “I stopped the dang pasta.  I used to eat a bowl of pasta almost every day as my workout fuel source, and now I don’t eat it at all, and have dropped other carbs as well.”

The results were very impressive.

The problem has always been the fact that for the most part, most people simply can’t maintain a low carb diet for the long haul.  We get miserable without dietary sugars in the forms of fruits, vegetables and starches, perhaps lack energy, strength and focus, as our brains and muscles depend on adequate supplies of sugars in order to function optimally.

So eventually people would “cheat” on the diet, and often times to the point where all of their achievements would be flushed down the drain.

For a long time, it was simply assumed that a low carb diet simply doesn’t work, only because eating that way can’t be maintained by just about anyone (nor in my opinion should it be, more later).

So in came “Carb Cycling.”

No need to flush our results.  Instead of going off the overall diet, we allow ourselves some cheating to get the carbs in, while not only NOT sacrificing our results, but even ADDING to the results as our body makes use of the needed carbs for energy and function.

This concept is not new to the bodybuilding world.  And it was discovered that it had equal application for the lay person, many people using this style of diet as their virtual sole way of eating.

It consists of adherence to the Atkins high protein, high fat diet, with one or two cheat days each week in which to take in carbs in almost any form one chooses, my choices being healthy simple sugars and starches, with occasional treats thrown in like frozen yogurt or ice cream for example.

I am often asked about counting the carbs we see on our food labels.  Remember that for the most part, we are hoping to ween ourselves off of the largest amount of processed/packaged foods as possible.  But in the interim, we can count if we must.  I am against this approach, greatly preferring we listen to our bodies instead and help ourselves become our own authority in this regard.  Keep in mind that everyone’s body is different.  The amount of fats you are taking in for example, is different from your neighbor.  You will therefore likely metabolize carbs in a different way than your neighbor will, and of course your activity level will factor hugely into this as well.  The exercise techniques I teach enable your muscular development to almost literally eat the fat off your body 24/7.

But for now, the very general rule that would be offered by a personal trainer would be to take your ideal weight and subtract 60 from that ideal weight, to give you the amount of carbs in grams you would be eating per day as part of the lower-end amount of carbs.

I would prefer you self-guided yourself based on how you feel and the results you’re obtaining that you can see in the mirror (remember, NOT the scale…stay off it, just use the mirror instead, preferably not one of those carnival fun-house mirrors….;p)

My actual food choices continue to change over time.  But for a long time I would adhere to an Atkins style approach and then eat thin crust vegetarian pizza on the weekend (pizza meats are usually garbage) and then indulge in a minimal-ingredient ice cream on both nights, perhaps with a gluten-free brownie, since the gluten-free treats are becoming much more available than they used to be (that is not to say they are all healthy; more on that later).

As another example of mid-week very light cheating, sometimes during mid-week I would be in a restaurant situation, and would choose an egg salad wrap, the wrap being a wheat-based tomato wrap as further exposure to a carb source and a wheat source, the latter of which I do go lengths to restrict in my diet.  I am not affected a great deal by wheat, but just enough so that using it during maintenance phase on occasion (since it’s in SO darn many foods) is tolerable as long as it’s kept to a bare minimum.  As of this writing, I had a wheat-based spaghetti pasta dish as a Saturday cheat-meal choice, and the following Sunday had a home-made thin crust vege pizza with a whole container of fat-free frozen yogurt (more on fats later).

Once in Maintenance phase, many people also find that these cheat days actually cause their bodyfat levels to *decrease* on the following day.  The science behind this neat benefit is that the body is not holding onto fat reserves as a possible fuel source, ala “starvation mode.”  People may be on a strict low-carb diet and find their trouble spots gaining a slight bit of fat…only to go on a brief higher carb day, and the extra fat minimizes again nicely.  I’ve experienced this numerous times.  I gave the body the fuel source it wants, so it does not have to hold on to the body fat, which it is designed to do in the event of an emergency (lack of food).

This carb-cycling technique works like a charm.  Coming up I will cover how I also “diet cycle,” another unique part of my program that I have not seen elsewhere, that presents yet another radical twist in what I do and will explain why I believe it works so well.

Love, Happiness, Health and Peace……………..Tim

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