Ok I've read all the threads on carb cycling over the last couple of months and decided to give it a try. So I was away in Dominican last week and gained 4-5 lbs and everyone said don't worry it's water weight - well to all of you who responded, you were indeed correct because in three days it was gone and I was back to 143.5. but this is where my body doesn't want to move any further - I've been doing atkins for about 4 years and I've never gotten past 143.5 range. So for the last three days I've upped my carbs with nuts, cheese and strawberries - that sort of thing meaning I'm not in Ketosis but not too bad with the cravings. Got on the scale this am and I'm up to 147 so that's a pretty big gain in three days. Back on induction today to see what happens. How long should I stay on induction to give it a chance to work if it's gonna?

Thanks guys - I was a lot aprehensive to do this but I'll try it for a bit and see what happens. I only want to lose another 10lbs so give me some advise what would you suggest I do?

That's not carb cycling.

Cycling is specifically an element of a Cyclic Ketogenic Diet.
CKD is a specific style of diet where one eats extremely low carb most of the time, and then eats very high carb, very low fat for one single day. The theory is that this replenishes leptin, a hormone needed for fat loss.

They then perform absolutely intense cardio and weight training in an attempt to deplete the new glycogen stores virtually overnight.

To cycle carbs but not perform this intense training will result in what you saw -- quick water weight gain, slow loss back down to baseline, but no further.

The most reliable way to ensure you will lose additional weight would be to eat low carb reliably and up your activity level.

Or I would suggest doing Induction for a week or so and then slowly moving up the carb ladder with OWL. Have you done that before?

From my understanding, the people on this board who carb cycle but don't do CKD actually carb/calorie cycle. For X amount of days they will eat low calorie and low carb and then for X amount of days they will eat higher calories and higher healthy carbs. I've read most (if not all) of the threads on carb cycling and it seems to be normal to gain a few pounds (water weight) during the up periods and then lose them, often with an additional pound during the down periods. Hope that helps!

After I posted this, I read articles on the semi-low carb forum written by Twin Peak. Very interesting and blunt articles on this premise. He very clearly states that it is not a ketogenic diet. The diet is not extremely low carb most of the time but is cyclical, meaning alternate among high carb, low carb and no carb days equally. Say two days about for each. This person actually recommends not to use high cardio training but more weight and resisting type training.

To say up my activity and reduce carbs sounds great but been there and done that for sometimes two months at a time without a slip with nothing below 143lbs. I really think the body is an amazingly adaptable thing and from my experiences over the last four years of following Atkins, I believe my body has adapted to the atkins approach. I guess I think that if I change things up a bit and keep the body guessing it could have positive effects. For the record yesterday I returned to an induction day and this morning back to 143.5 lb. I'm going to try another induction day today and rotate them as I stated above.

Thanks for the comments though, it's great to get differing opinions. I'm pretty patient for the most part but this is long enough I need to try somethingelse.

TWIG

I agree with Hogarth that all things being equal, the only really reliable method to take weight off consistently is low-carb + increased activity level.

However, for some people, a type of cutting phase would work. It's cycling, but not necessarily with carbs. There are many threads which describe the process in great detail, but I'll paraphrase it here for you. The theory is that for 6-12 weeks, you eat a diet of protein, fat, and very low carbs at a calorie level about 10-20% under your RMR + Activity level aggregate. This leads to an aggressive weight loss period. After this phase, you either raise your food intake back to maintenance levels or slightly above to "reset" your metabolism and give your body a break from the process.

Then, just repeat until you've reached your desired weight and muscle mass.

With kindest regards,

Frederick

Ok so I've been testing this theory out on myself for the past few days and interestingly enough, I think there is definitely something to it. Like I said first time I upped the carb put on a few pounds (147.5lbs)which some of you may have thought was reason enough to stop but then I took them all off in one day. Saturday morning I got up after low carb day and I broke through the 143.5 plateau to 142, but Sunday was carb up so I did the carb up and Monday/Tuesday weighed in at 144.5 not so bad with the carb up this time as there was a 3 lb deficit from the first time I upped the carbs. I'm on no carb today but of course it's not actually no carb as I am permitted to have my veggies - I'll see what tomorrow brings on the scale. Funny thing is I feel lighter even though the scale showed 144.5. I have a feelilng that tomorrow will bring better things.

i'm interested to how things are turning out for you.

Well, there are people that practice carb cycling. In fact, I suppose you could say I do as well. I'm doing Lyle McDonalds PSMF diet and it includes a weekly 5 hour refeed. It is however a low calorie, low carb, low fat, high protein diet most of the week. The idea behind the refeed is it gets the body out of starvation mode, gets the thyroid chugging, resets leptin and ghrelin and other hormones.

Other people are having luck by varying their calories and carbs. Others have good luck just increasing their carbs to something under 100g.