Cyclic Ketogenic Diet

Ketogenic diets are very popular among the vast majority of popular. You may have heard of it by another name though. For example, Atkins diet and the Paleo diet are both ketogenic diets. Ketogenic diets have proven successful ways to lose fat while keeping adequate amount of muscle retention.

The difference between cyclic ketogenic diets and regular ketogenic diets is that cyclic ketogenic diets progresses in stages. The ketogenic diet puts the body into ketosis with a two week low carb period. Then you will start to have two high carb days along with every five low carb days. What this does is kick your body out of ketosis. This will raise your performance in the gym and give you more muscle glycogen to use. Even though this used for weight loss you can also use this diet for weight gain , while gaining as little fat as possible.

For people that are trying to gain weight while on the diet it is impractical for most people to go on a five day off carbs plan combined followed by two days on. The problem with typical ketogenic diets is that they are not suitable for most people to gain a significant amount of muscle on. The fact is that two to three days of the cyclic ketogenic diet is quite catabolic which tends to make building muscle difficult. After the two or three days of catabolic ketosis the dieter is left with two or three days of rapid fat loss. Not very many people can eat the proper amount of carbs during the two day load, without them spilling over into the fat stores.

The best thing to do if you are trying to gain muscle while on a cyclic ketogenic diet is to change the phases to seven to eleven days of extremely limited carbs, and have three solid days of carb loading. This plan requires you to lower your calories when you are doing a carb load day. By following this plan you will be able to gain more muscle with less fat than the tradition cyclic ketogenic model.The ketogenic phase of the diet requires you to eat about seventy to eighty percent of your calories from fat. Eating almost entirely fat and protein will provide your body with an extremely anabolic state to build muscle in. During the carb loading phase you should be consuming 60 to 75% of calories from carbs.
Source:
http://www.musclenet.com/getbulky/Info/WeightLoss/KetogenicDieting.htm , musclenet