12-Week Carb Cycling Meal Plan For Beginners

Welcome to the world of carb cycling, where your meals become a rollercoaster ride of deliciousness and results! Also, some days might be extremely boring and filled with spinach and sugar-free Jell-O. (It’s part of the process.)

While carb cycling might not make you lose weight faster, it could make the process a lot easier.

But for beginners, this process might seem complicated and complex. So, let’s break it down into simple terms for you to understand.

Understanding Carb Cycling

Carb cycling has become quite the buzz among fitness enthusiasts and athletes. It’s a nifty nutrition trick that involves playing with your carb intake, switching between high-carb and low-carb days or weeks.

This simple strategy can help you shed fat, build muscles, and boost your athletic prowess — apparently.

Here’s the scoop:

On low-carb days, you cut back on carbs, nudging your body to burn stored fat for fuel. Then, on high-carb days, you amp up the carb intake to recharge your energy and crush those intense workouts like a champ.

Carb cycling fans swear by its perks. It helps your metabolism stay high, improves how your body handles carbs, and makes sure those nutrients get put to good use.

Plus, it’s super flexible, which means you can change it as you go, and the limitations are far less than regular dieting.

But remember, everyone is unique. So your carb-cycling adventure needs to be tailored to fit your needs.

How Does Carb Cycling Affect the Body?

There are plenty of ideas and theories as to how a carb-cycling meal plan will affect the human body. Many of these were simply created to try and sell an idea or a product.

We’ll cover a few of them. However, not all are entirely proven:

Fat Loss

This is the main purpose of carb cycling. The idea of altering your calories on specific days will allow for a general calorie deficit, which is the only way to lose weight.

Muscle Gain

While it’ll be incredibly hard to gain muscle while in a calorie deficit if you train hard enough and follow the correct carb-cycling meal plan, you might be able to do it.

Better Insulin Management

When your blood glucose levels are too high all the time, you’ll have a harder time losing weight, and keeping your levels this high has also been linked with cardiovascular disease. The best way to manage this is to eat fewer carbs.

Other

Some people have claimed that carb cycling has other benefits, like skin health and metabolic improvement. However, there’s little evidence for this.

Different Approaches to Carb Cycling

There are two main approaches to a carb-cycling meal plan: Daily or weekly. The former is far more popular than the latter, and to be honest, you rarely come across someone doing the latter.

The daily plan involves simply eating fewer calories (through fewer carbs) and then eating more on other days. Thus, by having enough lower days per week, you’ll eventually have a calorie intake that allows for weight loss.

The weekly plan is much similar, but you’ll simply do this on a weekly basis. Eat less on some weeks and more on other weeks. This is usually far less effective than the daily one but is more often used by physique athletes or those who rely on athletic performance.

12-Week Carb Cycling Meal Plan for Beginners

Here’s what you need to know about building your own 12-week carb cycling meal plan:

General Outline

As mentioned, you’ll be using low, medium, and high-carb days. Depending on your own body weight and goals, your overall calorie intake and carb intake will be different.

But first, a few general rules:

• Your calorie intake (maintenance) should be calculated using this calculator. Be sure to use the advanced one that takes into account how often you train.
• Your protein intake should be set at 1 gram per pound of body weight on all days — each and every day.
• Your fat intake should be set between 0.3 – 0.5 grams per pound of body weight — each and every day.
• Ensure you have plenty of veggies and fiber in your diet. Aim for at least 30 grams of fiber each and every day. Fiber helps a ton with health and fat loss.

Food Options

You’re certainly not limited to these foods, but these are some great options to look at:

Protein

For protein options, we typically go for lower-fat options as this allows us to eat more carbs. Here are a few options:

• Chicken breast (skinless)
• Turkey breast (skinless)
• Fish (such as cod, haddock, or tilapia)
• Egg whites
• Greek yogurt (low-fat or fat-free)
• Cottage cheese (low-fat or fat-free)
• Tofu
• Beans

Fats

Opting for healthy fats that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids is key to having a low-carb diet to stay healthy. These are the top “fats” to eat:

• Avocado
• Olive oil
• Nuts (such as almonds, walnuts, and cashews)
• Chia seeds
• Flaxseeds
• Coconut oil
• Fatty fish (like salmon and sardines)
• Nut butter (such as almond butter or peanut butter)
• Dark chocolate (with a high cocoa content)
• Full-fat yogurt or cheese

Carbs

We want a healthy combination of complex carbs with carbs that are digested easily. Try to work these foods into your diet:

• Whole grains (such as brown rice and oats)
• Sweet potatoes
• Fruits (like berries, apples, and oranges)
• Legumes (such as lentils and chickpeas)
• Whole grain bread and pasta
• Quinoa
• Barley
• Wild rice
• Corn
• Pumpkin

Weekly Split

Now, I dislike giving someone set days to follow, like “Monday, eat this,” etc. What I prefer doing is allowing them to choose which days they want to use for each calorie intake day.

So, for a beginner, weeks 1 – 4:

• Three high days per week; use these on days that require more energy, like leg or back days
• Three medium days per week; use these on days that don’t require as much energy
• One low day per week; use these on days that require little energy, like rest or arm days

Weeks 5 – 9:

• Two high days per week
• Three medium days per week
• Two low days per week

Weeks 10 – 12:

• One high day per week
• Two medium days per week
• Three low days per week

Low Carb Days

1. Calculate your maintenance calories.
2. Calculate your low day intake (Maintenance calories – 500 calories).
3. Subtract the protein calories from your total available calories.
4. Subtract the fat calories from your total available calories.
5. Convert the remaining calories into grams of carbs by dividing the calories left by four.
6. Now you have your protein, fats, and carbs for the day.

Medium Carb Days

1. Calculate your maintenance calories.
2. Calculate your low day intake (Maintenance calories – 300 calories).
3. Subtract the protein calories from your total available calories.
4. Subtract the fat calories from your total available calories.
5. Convert the remaining calories into grams of carbs by dividing the calories left by four.
6. Now you have your protein, fats, and carbs for the day.

High Carb Days

1. Calculate your maintenance calories.
2. Calculate your low day intake (Maintenance calories – 100 calories).
3. Subtract the protein calories from your total available calories.
4. Subtract the fat calories from your total available calories.
5. Convert the remaining calories into grams of carbs by dividing the calories left by four.
6. Now you have your protein, fats, and carbs for the day.

Carb Cycling Example

Let’s take a look at myself. I weigh 275 pounds. I’m 6’4”, and 28 years old, I train six days a week, and I’m not very active the rest of the day.

Low Carb Days

1. Calculate your maintenance calories (4,428 calories).
2. Calculate your low day intake (Maintenance calories – 500 calories) (4,428 calories – 500 = 3,928).
3. Subtract the protein calories from your total available calories (3,928 – (275 x 4) = 2,828).
4. Subtract the fat calories from your total available calories (2,828 – (82.5 x 9) = 2,085).
5. Convert the remaining calories into grams of carbs by dividing the calories left by four (2,085/4 = 521 grams of carbs).
6. Now you have your protein, fats, and carbs for the day (275, 82.5, 521).

Medium Carb Days

1. Calculate your maintenance calories (4,428 calories).
2. Calculate your low day intake (Maintenance calories – 300 calories) (4,428 calories – 300 = 4,128).
3. Subtract the protein calories from your total available calories (4,128 – (275 x 4) = 3,028).
4. Subtract the fat calories from your total available calories (3,028 – (82.5 x 9) = 2,285).
5. Convert the remaining calories into grams of carbs by dividing the calories left by four (2,285/4 = 571 grams of carbs).
6. Now you have your protein, fats, and carbs for the day (275, 82.5, 571).

High Carb Days

1. Calculate your maintenance calories (4,428 calories).
2. Calculate your low day intake (Maintenance calories – 100 calories) (4,428 calories – 100 = 4,328).
3. Subtract the protein calories from your total available calories (4,328 – (275 x 4) = 3,228).
4. Subtract the fat calories from your total available calories (3,228 – (82.5 x 9) = 2,485).
5. Convert the remaining calories into grams of carbs by dividing the calories left by four (2,485/4 = 621 grams of carbs).
6. Now you have your protein, fats, and carbs for the day (275, 82.5, 621).

Important: Your Caloric Intake Might Change!

As you progress through this process, you’ll notice — at some point — your fat loss stalls. At this point, you’ve hit a plateau, and the body will require an even larger push for you to lose weight.

So you simply reduce the calories you start with (step 1) by 150 – 250 calories.

The body will resist change at some point; it’s human nature. If it didn’t, you’d continue losing weight until you withered away. So, pushing the body more and more will become necessary.

If your progress stalls completely again before next week’s carb-cycling meal phase, then do this step once again.

Training on a Carb Cycling Diet

Training isn’t any different than on a regular diet. Your training should still focus on the basic principles that’ll allow for the most amount of muscle growth and fat loss, such as:

• Focus on progressive overload, adding a small amount of weight to the bar as the weeks go by to allow for muscular adaptation.
• Your resistance training should push you to within two to three reps shy of failure.
• You can introduce cardio to increase your calorie restriction or deficit. By doing so, you could be eating slightly more food.
• Opting for low-intensity cardio could allow you to have more intense resistance training workouts.
• You’ll have to do your heavier days on the days when you have more food, seeing as these workouts will require more energy.
• If at any point you start losing strength, you need to pull back on the amount of volume you’re doing.

Conclusion

Carb cycling is an effective tool we can use to make the process easier. It doesn’t make fat loss better or make the process a breeze, however. It’s not a magic bullet and never will be. It simply allows you to have your cake and eat it too — on certain days.

Eating ‘up and down’ will eventually create a calorie deficit, which is the overall goal of fat loss. However, on the up days, you’ll have more carbs and energy, which makes the whole process a lot easier. It also allows you more freedom and wiggle room with your diet.

It’ll probably work. It almost always does. I’ve done it a million times, and I can assure you it works if you apply yourself.