The cycle diet : when, why, and how to use refeeds and cheat days to optimize metabolism and stay lean year-round

193 Pages·2015·1.81 MB·English

by  Abel

About the Author
For over 30 years Scott Abel has been using the Cycle Diet with
himself and with clients to stay lean, enjoy their diets, and make
improvements to their physiques and metabolisms.
Scott has been involved in the diet, fitness, and bodybuilding
industries for over four decades. He has written for, or been featured
in magazines like Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Muscle Mag, TNation, and
many more.
His online coaching (visit scottabelfitness.com) specializes in fat
loss, saying lean year round, metabolism, and long term, sustainable
solutions for permanent physique transformation.
Your Free Gift(s)!
Thank you for getting this book. As a free gift, you can download the Abel
Starter Set, including The Mindset of Achievement and Intro to Metabolic
Enhancement Training (MET) (yes, the entire books) completely free.
The Mindset of Achievement is about reaching goals and sustaining them
and building on them. If you’ve ever achieved something (e.g. weight loss) only
to find you couldn’t sustain the success, this book is for you. It has chapters on
habits & routines, motivation, getting out of “ruts,” fear of failure, mastery and
much more. Intro to Metabolic Enhancement Training (MET) explains the
methodology behind this unique metabolic training program, and includes two
full 4-day programs.
Just go to scottabelfitness.com to get your copies.
Table of Contents
Overview of the Cycle Diet
Introduction: 30 Years of the Cycle Diet
My Last Cheat Day
Is the Cycle Diet Right for You?
The Goals of the Cycle Diet
The Cycle Diet in Application
Why the Cycle Diet Works
Lessons from Competitive Eating
NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis)
Other Versions of the Cycle Diet
Biofeedback is Everything
What Workout to Do on the Cycle Diet?
Getting into Supercomp
Supercompensation Mode
Levels of “Supercomp”
Absolute vs. Relative Deficit
Formulas and Calories for Diet Days
“What” Foods to Eat
Biofeedback As You Diet
How to Tell If You’re In Supercompensation Mode
The Overfeed
The Overfeed Day
The Goal of the Energy Spike / Overfeed
How “Much” of a Spike to Have
What Do I Eat During a Overfeed?
What to Expect “After” The Overfeed Day
Non-Regular Energy Spikes
Cycle Diet FAQ
Sample Diet Day Menus
Example 1 - Basic Set Up
Example 2 - Large Male Frame (but lean)
Example 3 - High Fat Cycling
Example 4 - Digestive Issues
Example 5 - Advanced Carb Cycling
Hear From Actual Cycle Dieters!
Andy Sinclair
Lallana Jorgensen
Aaron Jewell
Rocco C
Don Rose
Allen Cress
Aaron Chigol
Tobias P
Shawn G
Amir Siddiqui
Gabriel Craft
Paolo Pincente
Melissa Melnick
Dil
Sample Cheat Days!
Aaron
Ron
Allen
Introduction
30 Years of the Cycle Diet
The Cycle Diet is so named because it is all about “cycling” regular diet days
of a relative caloric deficit (underfeeding) with well-timed calorie spikes of
unlimited calorie intake within a specific time-frame (overfeeding). You cycle
between underfeeding for most of the week, with well-timed, specific periods of
overfeeding. In its most common form, usually this means six days of a relative
caloric deficit “on diet,” then a full, single-day “anything goes” refeed or “cheat
day.”
However, one of the things that makes the Cycle Diet different than other
cheat day diets out there is that before you implement various kinds of spikes,
you have to put your body into “Supercompensation Mode,” so that taking in
huge amounts of calories will serve the body, and not just get stored as fat.
Overall, the Cycle Diet works to control weight, maintain leanness and
optimize metabolism and create metabolic resiliency. It is a lifestyle diet. It is
sustainable, durable, flexible, and adjustable—and it must be all these things in
your own application of it in order for it to be successful for you.
The Cycle Diet is natural for me now and an ingrained part of my lifestyle, so
much so that I often forget that other people don’t know a lot about it or
understand it. In the past few years, there have been a plethora of cheat day type
diets that distort what this kind of dieting is all about, and why and how it works
so darn well.
I’ve been controlling my weight and staying lean with the Cycle Diet since the
early 80s. I did an in-depth presentation on it at the SWIS Symposium back in
2005, and it’s hard to believe that was now more than a decade ago. And
between when I first started doing the Cycle Diet all the way up to that 2005
presentation, and since then, there have been many tweaks to the Cycle Diet’s
applications and strategies. I decided it was time to write a lot of it down, and
provide an in-depth entry point for those who were curious about the diet.
I’m excited to bring it to you. Actually, writing this has got me to recall many
stories and events that shaped the Cycle Diet… and correspondingly shaped my
stories and events that shaped the Cycle Diet… and correspondingly shaped my
career as well. It wasn’t until I started going back over some of these events that
I realized how closely my career and the Cycle Diet were intertwined, because
the Cycle Diet was so closely wrapped up with my physique success, and the
success of my clients.
To this day what I like best about the Cycle Diet is that it was born from real-
world experience first and foremost, and then tweaked over time, based on that
experience. Over the years, research started pouring in to back it up and at least
partly explain why what I was doing worked so well. These days so many diets
come and go which are the opposite—they are born in research of “shoulds” and
“coulds” based on a few studies, taken out of context, but their real-world
applicability leaves… well, a lot to be desired.
Any diet-undertaking must meet two essential criteria:
1) The diet must serve the body.
2) The diet must be sustainable.
The Cycle Diet meets both these criteria better than any other diet I’ve
studied, and I’ve studied them all. Part of this is because the diet is flexible and
adaptable: cheat meals and cheat days can be adjusted if there is some real-life
event happening. How and when you include spikes can be tweaked as well.
You can make the deficit on the diet days greater or lesser, depending on your
goals and your own metabolism and where you’re at right now, and where you
want to be.
The title of this book uses the word “cheat day” because that’s what people
tend to understand. I much prefer the terms calorie spike, refeed, or overfeed. I
prefer “overfeed” best, but I use all three throughout this book interchangeably.
These terms all refer to one single meal, or a whole day, or even a whole week
or two completely off diet where anything goes.
With clients I rarely use the word “cheat” nowadays because there are so
many emotional negative connotations surrounding the word, and I don’t want
people to think of it as breaking the rules of the diet. It’s not breaking the rules
when the overfeeding is part of the greater overall diet strategy.
In fact, that’s an important part of the mindset going in: one of the reasons the
“Cheat Day” is so enjoyable is because you are serving your body, and loading
yourself up for the week to come.
There was a time when the only application of the Cycle Diet was a full refeed
day or “cheat day” once per week, with a possible mid-week half-day spike as
well. That’s a bit one-dimensional, though it might be useful to think of that as
the “original” version, or the baseline from which you tweak and adjust it to
your needs. I’ve used other approaches where there is just one overfeed meal per
week, or one per every 10 days. You might have 12-hour overfeeds, whole day
overfeeds, weekend overfeeds or anything in between. I’ve played with the size
of the refeed window and the regularity of the window, and I still do.
I’ve also learned, more and more, that there are so many other things that can
affect metabolism outside of diet application. Things I never considered before
can positively or negatively contribute to the viability and sustainability the
Cycle Diet, and whether it’s a good fit for you.
Something as simple as age can be a big factor. In the prime of my career I
needed a whole day and a half of overfeeding to stoke and optimize my
metabolism. That meant a full cheat day and a mid-week spike each and every
week, all while staying sub 10% body fat. But now, at age 54 at the time of
writing this, I only need one refeed day per week, no more. For me to eat off-diet
outside of that once per week structure would just be for pure indulgence than it
would be for any physiological need to spike metabolism.
The one reality of metabolism that hasn’t changed much in terms of applying
the Cycle Diet is this: the leaner someone is staying because of calorie control
or restriction, the more overfeeds and calorie spikes that person should get
in order to keep their metabolism optimized and robust. Otherwise,
metabolic down-regulation and damage are a risk. When that happens, hormones
get out of balance, and the whole physiological system gets thrown out of
whack.
Other factors, like unpredictable, unstructured days with lots of travel can
impact anyone trying to stay on a diet. Lack of sleep can impact leptin
sensitivity, hunger, appetite, and even the willpower needed to stick to the diet
on your diet days. These are variables that can affect someone being consistent
on any diet. Lifestyle has a huge influence on whether any diet will be
successful. People need to stop reading only about the ins and outs of a diet, and
start considering whether they have the essential lifestyle in place to make a diet
work, and to allow a diet to work for them.
Finally the overview of the Cycle Diet comes with a bit of warning.
People hear about the Cycle Diet with its meals and days of free eating and
they focus on that and only that. That’s understandable: knowing you can eat a
dozen donuts for breakfast and have it be a positive thing for metabolism sounds
dozen donuts for breakfast and have it be a positive thing for metabolism sounds
a little too good to be true.
Practicing what I preach this year in Aruba!
But the flip side of the fun overfeeding and calorie spikes is that the Cycle
Diet is still a diet.
It requires strict adherence to the diet days in order for the overfeed “free
eating” days to work as designed.
You also need to put your body into “Supercompensation Mode” first. You
don’t necessarily add in a cheat day your first week on the diet; you do it when
your body and your metabolism are ready. How long this takes can be different
for everyone. But when it is ready… well, it’s a fun ride.
A whole section of this project will include people and clients of mine who
have followed the Cycle Diet for a long time with great success. You will hear
from them in their own words their experiences with the Cycle Diet, and how
they’ve made it their own.
The Origins and Birth of the Cycle Diet
I’m not going to go on and on about the science behind the diet. I’ll mention
the science here and there. There’s still plenty of research that hasn’t been done
yet that I’d still like to see. There has been a lot of promising new research on
leptin and overfeeding since I started doing this, but even with that the ins and