Can cycles be used for augmenting specific goals? Apparently so. The cycling of nutrients in different schemes can be benefical to promote fat loss and gains in lean body mass. The premise is that by cycling different nutrients, the anabolic hormones, the cellular nutrient stores and the enzymatic processes are primed to create an optimal anabolic environment when the time comes (e.g., nutrients are cycled in or out of the diet).
There are different approaches to nutrient cycling: The shortest cycle is promoted by the Intermittant Fasting (IF) gurus Martin Berkhan and Ori Hofmekler, respectively. The IF concept is based on 16-20 hours of fasting, followed by 4-8 hours of feeding. An IF cycle is 24 hours in length. In Lyle McDonald's Ultimate Diet 2.0 (UD2.0), a cycle is one week in length. UD2.0 is a cyclical ketogenic diet, where carbohydrates are avoided during the first part of the week, and then overfed during the latter part.Torbjörn Åkerfeldt's Anabolic Burst Cycling of Diet and Exercise (ABCDE) uses a 4 week cycle. The first two weeks consists of massive overfeeding, followed by two weeks of dieting.
Are these diets promoting optimum health? The goal for each of these diets is to achieve caloric balance over time, but the health benefits/negatives are so far unknown. Are these diets promoting optimum results in body recomposition? Surely, they have potential.
