Low-carb diets have been hugely popular over the years, with the likes of The Atkins Diet and The Dukan Diet seeing millions going low carb in the early 2000s. However, aside from the health implications posed by such diets, sustainability has been a central problem, with dieters falling off the wagon and delving into the bread bin at the weekend. Practicality has proved problematic too, with dieters feeling too fatigued to exercise or even get through the working day. But what if there were a way to regularly switch up your carbohydrate intake, so that you could still lose weight, without feeling sluggish, and even indulge in garlic bread guilt free?
This phenomenon is known as carb cycling – a method of dieting that involves the strategic increase and decrease of carbohydrates to manipulate body composition. Recently, we’ve seen such diets gaining immensely popularity – namely Joe Wicks’ ‘Shift, Shape and Sustain’ plan, which has seen thousands transforming their bodies in just 90 days, and the Instagram star developing a lucrative fan-base in the process. In his plan (specifically phase one and three), carbs are cycled between workout and rest days, with high-carb meals enjoyed after exercise, consisting of HIIT and weight training, and low-carb meals eaten on rest days. The aim is to strip fat and build lean muscle; carbohydrates are eaten after exercise to top up blood glucose levels, prompting an insulin response to transport nutrients to muscles for growth, repair and recovery and, on rest days, carbohydrates are restricted to utilise fat as a fuel source.
While a recent fad, such diets as a means of manipulating body composition are by no means new. “Carb cycling has been around in the world of bodybuilding for many years and it’s really developed as a way of manipulating your carbohydrate intake in order to achieve a very low bodyfat level,” explains Anita Bean, former British bodybuilding champion, nutritionist and best-selling author of The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition. “There wasn’t a huge amount of science behind it, other than it seemed to work,” she says. “The original idea behind it is actually incorrect. They say that having high-carbohydrate days speeds up the body’s metabolic rate, then when you go to low-carbohydrate days your body is still revved up to burn fat.”