The Carb Cycling Experiment: High Carb Training Days, Low Carb Rest Days for 4 Weeks – My Body Recomposition

Losing fat while building muscle is the holy grail of fitness. Properly known as body recomposition, some people believe it’s impossible to gain muscle while losing fat, but studies suggest it can be done (1).

However, it’s not always easy.

As a veteran personal trainer, I’ve been helping people get in shape for more than 30 years, and that often means body recomposition. After all, many of us want to be lean AND muscular.

Gaining muscle is relatively straightforward—lift heavy and eat big. Want to lose fat? Do your cardio and eat less. But, achieving both simultaneously? That requires a more nuanced approach to training and nutrition.

One of the most powerful body recomposition tools in my nutrition toolbox is carbohydrate cycling.

While I’ve had a lot of success helping my clients with body recomposition, it’s been a while since I’ve done it myself. So, with summer right around the corner, I decided it was time to put my methods to the test.

In this article, I share my recent experience with carb cycling on body recomposition.

What is Carb Cycling, Anyway?

It’s generally accepted that low-carb diets are effective for fat-burning and weight loss (2). Limiting or even eliminating carbs from your diet can reduce your energy intake and force your body to use more stored body fat for fuel.

In addition, consuming fewer carbs helps lower your blood glucose while limiting insulin production. This can help prevent fat storage while minimizing the mechanisms that can impede fat burning.

However, there is a downside to low-carb diets—they can reduce your energy for training and make it harder to recover from your workouts (3).

With carb cycling, you adjust your carb intake to reflect your training schedule. You eat plenty of carbohydrates on the days you work out, so you have all the energy you need to train. However, on rest and cardio days, you limit your carb intake to optimize fat metabolism.

This juggling act makes it easier to flip the switch between muscle growth and fat burning.

Carb cycling has helped many of my clients reach their body recomposition goals. While this approach does require some organization and discipline, it can also be very rewarding.

But what happened when the teacher became the student and tried carb cycling for themself? Keep reading and find out!

Related: Rich Gaspari Says Carb Cycling is the ‘Most Effective’ Fat-Burning Method for Weight Loss

My Four-Week Carb Cycling Plan

The first thing to recognize when creating a carb-cycling plan is that you must adjust your carb intake according to your workout schedule.

It would be a mistake to consume a lot of carbs on rest days or when you do fat-burning cardio workouts. Likewise, not eating enough carbs on strength-training days could undermine your performance and muscle-building results.

So, with that in mind, this was my training and carb cycling schedule for my four-week body recomposition experiment:

	Training	Diet
Monday	Lower Body Strength	High Carb
Tuesday	Upper Body Strength	High Carb
Wednesday	Cardio	Low Carb
Thursday	Lower Body Strength	High Carb
Friday	Upper Body Strength	High Carb
Saturday	Cardio	Low Carb
Sunday	Rest	Low Carb

Next, you need to determine how much carbohydrate you’re going to consume per day. You must also make sure you’re consuming sufficient protein and that your kilocalorie intake is right for your weight and goal. I’ve found that eating less on rest and cardio days and more on strength-training days makes carb cycling even more effective.

Use our carb cycling calculator or the following guidelines to determine your ideal kilocalorie and nutrient intake:

High Carb Days

• Kilocalories: Maintenance + 300 to 500
• Carbohydrates: 4–6 g per kg (1.8–2.7 g per lb) of body weight
• Protein:c6–2.2 g per kg (0.7–1.0 g per lb) of body weight
• Fat:c8–1.0 g per kg (0.35–0.45 g per lb) of body weight

 Low Carb Days

• Kilocalories: Maintenance
• Carbohydrates: 1–2 g per kg (0.45–0.9 g per lb) of body weight
• Protein: 0–2.5 g per kg (0.9–1.1 g per lb) of body weight
• Fat: 0.5–1.2 g per kg (0.2–0.55 g per lb) of body weight

Finally, armed with these figures, you should then plan your menu. I suggest using a food tracking app like MyFitnessPal for this as it will make the entire process much easier and more accurate.

Need some inspiration? Check out this 7-Day Carb Cycling Meal Plan, remembering to adjust the nutrient values according to your needs.

My High-Carb—Low-Carb Schedule  

I followed these steps myself and came up with a sustainable diet that provided me with the nutrients and energy I needed to burn fat and gain muscle:

Day Type	Kilocalories	Carbohydrates	Protein	Fat
High Carb Days	3,200 kcal	400 g (4.9 g per kg / 2.2 g per lb)	160 g (2.0 g per kg / 0.9 g per lb)	75 g (0.9 g per kg / 0.4 g per lb)
Low Carb Days	2,700 kcal	120 g (1.5 g per kg / 0.7 g per lb)	180 g (2.2 g per kg / 1.0 g per lb)	90 g (1.1 g per kg / 0.5 g per lb)

Understanding the theory is one thing, but how does it play out in practice? To put carb cycling to the test, I followed this exact plan for four weeks.

How It Went: My Four Weeks of Carb Cycling

So, how did my four-week carb cycling experiment go? Here’s a week-by-week breakdown!

Week 1 – I hate Math!

I never really enjoyed math as a kid, so all the number crunching needed for this diet was somewhat daunting. Thankfully, I could use a calculator and didn’t need to show my workings to my teacher, so the math was manageable.

However, there is no escaping that carb cycling, and any other variable-nutrient diet require a lot of weighing and measuring. This was time-consuming and took quite a bit of planning and organization.

That said, as the week progressed, each high and low-carb meal was easier to prepare because I already had a good idea of how much I was supposed to eat. Meal prepping—putting meals together in advance—also made things even easier.

Hunger and performance-wise, I’m happy to report that I experienced no negative side effects during this first week, although I didn’t notice any significant changes in body weight, leanness, or muscle size, either.

Week 2 – Change Your Workouts? Remember to Change your Diet, Too!

Carb-cycling and training go hand in hand—they’re opposite sides of the same coin. So, if you alter your workouts, you may also need to change your diet. For example, I had to swap a strength workout with a cardio workout this week. Consequently, I also had to switch my high and low-carb diet days.

My workout routine is usually pretty flexible and can change at a moment’s notice, depending on my work schedule. However, that flexibility was harder to accommodate with carb cycling. That’s something to consider before trying carb cycling for yourself.

Progress-wise, my weight was down about a pound, but my workout performance was slightly up, suggesting that I was losing fat while maintaining or even gaining a little muscle.

Week 3 – Starting to Feel It: Visible Changes and Adjustments

While my scale weight hasn’t changed much, I can definitely see the outline of my muscles more clearly. Yep, my abs look sharper and there is more separation in my quads and pecs. While I haven’t taken a measurement, it’s clear that my body fat percentage is starting to decrease, proving that carb cycling is an effective fat-loss strategy.

My strength training weights have not increased much, but they’re holding steady, indicating that I’m at least maintaining muscle mass.

However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing—my energy levels fluctuated a bit, especially as I adjusted to the rhythm of high and low-carb days. With that in mind, I made a small change to my training day meals, adding a snack containing an additional 300 kilocalories. I hoped the extra calories and carbs would restore my diminishing energy.

Week Four – The End Is in Sight!

Although carb cycling is not the worst diet I’ve ever done, it was still restrictive and inconvenient enough that I would be glad when it was finished. Week four saw another decrease in body weight, and my muscle definition continued to improve.

Unexpectedly, I experienced a strength increase in the gym and was able to raise my weights on all of the key compound lifts. This was very gratifying and suggested that I was indeed building muscle as I lost fat.

On the downside, I was starting to get frustrated with having to follow such strict nutrition guidelines. I missed being able to just grab a snack or have a second serving without worrying about macros and kilocalories. I even had to turn down a slice of birthday cake because it was a low-carb day!

The Results from Four Weeks of Carb Cycling

While I looked leaner and felt stronger, I wanted to prove that I really had lost fat and gained muscle during my four-week carb cycling experiment. I tracked my weight and used skinfold calipers to determine my before and after body fat percentage.

These are my results:

Before Carb Cycling:

• Body weight: 184 pounds
• Body fat percentage: 14%
• Lean mass: 158 pounds

After Carb Cycling:

• Body weight: 181 pounds
• Body fat percentage: 11%
• Lean mass: 161 pounds

This meant that after four weeks of carb cycling, I lost six pounds of fat while gaining three pounds of muscle. Pretty solid progress considering that losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time are often said to be impossible!

That said, achieving these results was quite a chore and required a lot of attention to macros and kilocalories. I had to plan every meal and snack in advance and couldn’t eat anything spur-of-the-moment. Even changing workouts around was difficult, as it meant altering my diet to accommodate my training.

There is no denying that, for me at least, carb cycling works. However, a more conventional bulking/cutting approach is undeniably easier as both diet and exercise programs can be more flexible.

Finally, it’s worth reiterating that carb cycling works best when you combine it with a suitable training program. Strength training is compulsory as part of body recomposition is building muscle. I don’t think carb cycling with cardio or an inactive lifestyle would be anywhere near as effective.

Closing Thoughts

While you don’t have to do carb cycling for body recomposition, in my experience, it can be helpful. Lowering your carb intake on non-training days means your body is more likely to burn fat for fuel. In contrast, eating carbs on strength-training days means you’ll have more energy for building muscle.

That said, it may not be necessary to control your carb intake so precisely. Simply eating more bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, cereal, etc., on training days and very little carbs on non-training days could be all you need to lose fat and build muscle.

Sometimes, the easiest approach is the best.

Have you tried carb cycling? How did you get on? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below—I’d love to hear from you!

References:

1. McMaster University. (2016, January 27). Losing fat while gaining muscle: Scientists close in on ‘holy grail’ of diet and exercise. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 1, 2025, from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160127132741.htm
2. Sun S, Kong Z, Shi Q, Zhang H, Lei OK, Nie J. Carbohydrate Restriction with or without Exercise Training Improves Blood Pressure and Insulin Sensitivity in Overweight Women. Healthcare (Basel). 2021 May 27;9(6):637. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9060637. PMID: 34072093; PMCID: PMC8229341.
3. Clauss M, Skattebo Ø, Rasen Dæhli M, Ditta Valsdottir T, Ezzatkhah Bastani N, Ivar Johansen E, Jensen Kolnes K, Skålhegg BS, Jensen J. Carbohydrate Ingestion during Prolonged Cycling Improves Next-Day Time Trial Performance and Alters Amino Acid Concentrations. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2023 Dec 1;55(12):2228-2240. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000003264. Epub 2023 Aug 2. PMID: 37535337.

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