Re-posted from https://naddeo.org/2019/12/my-strange-cyclic-fat-loss-diet.html

As an amateur bodybuilder, I’m often asked by friends, family, and coworkers (other Software Development Engineers) what I do for dieting. I’m writing this so that I can refer people to it in the future since the process is a little hard to explain in detail on the spot. Also, I don’t think there are many (if any) that diet like I do and I’d like to share it. I think the diet can be used by anyone with weight goals and its different enough that it might just be what someone needed after trying other methods without success.

For reference, below is a before/after of the diet for my last bodybuilding show in 2016, as well as a full album to the show to establish creds.

Terms

Here is some jargon that people use in the diet/bodybuilding space for reference.

Macros — Macronutrient values. These are protein, carbs, and fat.

Maintenance — Refers to the amount of calories you need to maintain your body weight.

HIIT Cardio — High Intensity Interval Training. In this context, cardio that you divide up into fast/slow sections. I usually use an elliptical cardio machine and alternative between 30 seconds of all out speed and 60 seconds of moderate jogging.

Refeed Day — A day dedicated to higher carbohydrates during a diet. The idea with these is to give yourself energy to workout. I don’t do these.

Bulking/cutting — A period of time dedicated to gaining/losing weight.

How it works

The diet is based around a three week cycle. The first week is high carb, low fat. The second week is low carb, high fat. The third week is no carb, no fat. Protein is constant the entire time aside from the last day or two of the third week which is dedicated to fasting. I usually end the third week on a 1–2 day fast as well for longevity reasons. It may not be required but I haven’t tested much omitting it.

The goal for most people should be to lose about a pound per week on average. Most of the actual weight loss is happening during the final week. In practice, it turns into comparing your week three lows each cycle to make sure they’re about 3lbs-6lbs lower than the previous. The idea here are as follows.

Week one gives you energy to workout

Week two drains your carbohydrate stores in preparation for week three

Week three burns fat

You will see that the biggest weight drop comes in the third week as well. My first week weight is always much higher than the end of my third week weight as well (4–8lbs). This cycle repeats indefinitely. I diet like this year round because it’s really convenient for me, but that’s personal preference. I just increase/decrease the macros and calories depending on my goals.

Cardio is sparse. The first week has no cardio at all. The second week I usually do 10 minutes of incline walking after each workout, which is usually three or four days a week. The last week sees the most cardio with 10 minutes of HIIT cardio. Mentally, I’m milking this low week for all the fat loss I can get.

Customizing the diet

With the structure in place, the next step is figuring out what to eat. This should be based on a few personalized criteria.

What you enjoy eating

What you find convenient

What you find sustainable

There are also a few key points to keep in mind when you’re planning.

The absolute numbers aren’t as important as the way you change them over time.

Consistency is the most important thing.

You don’t want to go as fast as possible.

Cardio isn’t the main driver of fat loss, diet is.

If you don’t know what your maintenance is then pick (your body weight * 12) as an arbitrary starting point and iterate each week based on how your body weight responds. If you gain weight then you’re probably too high. If you lose weight then you’re probably too low. As with many things, consistency is very important. If you pick foods that you won’t eat then you won’t be consistent and you won’t get results. I do recommend eating the same thing each day for each of the weeks, at least until you get predictable results from cycle to cycle.

I tend not to track vegetables too much either. After doing diets where I track them and ones where I don’t I didn’t notice any significant difference — even when I was having absolutely massive 3lbs salads with romaine, kale, beets, and tomatoes daily.

Once you have the foods picked out you just follow the plan. You take your weight at the end of each repeating three week cycle. You raise or lower your calories if you’re going too slow or fast at the start of the next cycle. You can play with the macro nutrients for a week or the boundaries of the week. Sometimes I extended my high carb week by a few days because I thought I needed more energy or because it was convenient for a holiday or upcoming event.

What I do

Here is an example of my most recent high carb week. I was sitting around 180g of protein, 250g of carbs, and 80g of fat, which was around 2400 calories. That’s a little but above my maintenance calories at the time based on my previous diets, which is the goal for the first week.