Most of us know that you have to burn more calories than you consume if you want to shed pounds. However, when you get close to your target weight, a calorie cycling diet plan can be beneficial. In fact, I’d say a calorie shifting diet or carb cycling diet plan are some of the most effective ways to trick your body so that you can lose body fat, gain muscle, and get a really lean, defined body.

Consuming fewer calories on certain days then consuming more calories on other days is the theory on which a calorie shifting diet is based. You can accomplish this in a lot of different ways. For example, you can consume 500 additional calories for two to three days during week one and then eat 500 fewer calories for two to three days during the second week. In a way, this puts your body in muscle building mode the first week and fat burning mode the second week.

I take calorie shifting one step further by timing meals around workouts. When glycogen levels are exhausted, fat burns more efficiently; therefore I do my workouts in a fasted state. About an hour after I get done exercising, I eat the biggest meal of the day, so that those nutrients can be converted to muscle. What’s with the hour wait? The reason is that it enables me to get the most effective us of human growth hormone or HGH which enables my body to burn fat without losing any muscle mass.

As you can see, there are a multitude of ways to incorporate a calorie shifting diet plan. It can be as simple as having months/weeks of high calorie eating followed by months/weeks of low calorie eating or as detailed as timing high calorie meals around workouts.

Even though you can absolutely get calorie intake adjustments to work with you, you can customize all of these fitness tips further by utilizing a carb cycling diet to its fullest potential, as you can even include nutrients into your fat burning regimen, gaining greater efficiency.

What explains carb cycling’s ability to encourage the loss of fat? Before your body can burn fat, it has to get rid of its stores of carbohydrates or glycogens. You body gets a jump start on burning fat when you exercise in a fasted state. The challenge with going low carb all the time is that your body can go into ketosis which can ultimately lead to muscle loss. With carb cycling diet plans, you will be able to eat carbs at some points and bring your glycogen levels up to snuff, but not lose out on the muscle building and fat loss. I can’t think of anyone who wants to eliminate carbs from their diet altogether, can you?

All you have to do is cut down on your calories and ramp up the workout if you are fat. If you’ve gotten the full benefits of those methods and are still looking to trim some fat, why not try the above mentioned calorie cycling plans? You’ll easily lose body fat and put on muscle mass with a calorie shifting diet program that lets you vary the amount of calories you consume on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Your fat-burning workouts will be a lot more effective, and you’ll be able to lower your glycogen levels when you go on a carb cycling program by itself or combine it with calorie shifting. It is my estimation that you will love these approaches at any step of the process.