Will they deliver the types of results that you’re looking for?  If you’ve been counting your calories for quite some time then there’s no question that you have a good handle on how many you’re consuming currently at the moment, so then you can easily imagine how much you’ll have to cut down to reach the intake recommended by these plans.

Let’s take a look at a few of the factors that you should consider when assessing ultra low calorie diet plans.

The Nutrient Intake Question

First off, the initial thing that you should be asking yourself is will this diet provide enough nutrients to keep you healthy?  It’s going to be vitally important that regardless of what diet program you’re on that you’re taking in sufficient protein on a daily basis, getting a small amount of healthy fats added into the picture, as well as getting in plenty of vitamins and minerals from vegetable and fruit consumption.

If any diet program has you not reaching these goals, you could be setting yourself up for long term health risks by doing it.

Even failing to get in these nutrients for one week’s time could cause some problems so don’t think that just because the diet plan is short term it won’t matter.

If you want to maintain good health while you work towards the goal of fat loss, it will matter and it will make a difference.

The Metabolic Rate Question

Second, the next thing you must consider is the impact on the metabolism that these very low calorie diets have.  If you’re consuming fewer than a thousand calories per day, there is a very, very good chance that your metabolism will begin to decline.

As it does, this then means that you’ll have to consume even fewer calories yet if you hope to see further weight loss moving along.

If you don’t decrease your calorie intake to match this metabolic slow-down, you’re just going to be eating at a maintenance calorie intake and therefore not getting the results that you were hoping for.

If you are going to use a lower calorie approach to your diet, one of the most important things that you must be doing to help offset this is making sure to bring that calorie intake up higher every so often to maximize the metabolic rate again so you can jumpstart it into burning more calories.

The Activity Question

The third thing to think about is the activity question.  Are you someone who is very active on a daily basis? If so, an ultra low calorie diet approach is not going to be a wise move for you.  When you couple together a very low calorie diet with a very high amount of physical activity, very bad things tend to occur.

Not only will your metabolism slow down, but your body will start to hold onto its fat as a fuel source as it perceives difficult times are ahead.

Not to mention you will eventually just burn out entirely and will more than likely end up completely throwing in the towel, stopping your workout sessions, and then going on an all-out food frenzy.

If you plan to be more active on your diet plan, be sure your calorie intake will lend itself to this level of activity.

The Long-Term Success Rate Question

Finally, the last thing to keep in mind is the long-term success rate.  If you’re using an ultra low calorie diet, are you likely to maintain this for the long haul?

At some point or another you will simply be forced to come off, whether due to food cravings, hunger, or some other reason.  When you do, you’re very likely to find all that weight coming rushing back to your body.

Unless you’re just looking for a way to drop five pounds to get ready for a special event or reunion of sorts, you’re better off using a more moderate diet plan that will ensure you can follow it for more than one week’s time.

While it may be tempting to start up on an ultra low calorie diet plan, if you want to see long-term success, you really should think otherwise.  Moderate approaches are not only more enjoyable to use, but they will produce far superior results as well.

Unfortunately most people either aren’t monitoring their calories at all or are monitoring them incorrectly and thus don’t get the results they should be seeing.

But before you dive in and start counting your calories, it’s important to first take a good look at how many you should be consuming on a daily basis to meet your goals.

If you don’t understand how many calories to shoot for, you don’t have that starting point that you need to begin the calorie counting process.

Let’s have a look at what you should do to determine your optimal calorie intake.

Consider Your Basal Metabolic Rate

The very first thing that you should be doing is determining what your basal metabolic rate is.  Your metabolic rate essentially stands for how many calories your body would burn off over the course of the day if you were to lie in bed and do absolutely no activity at all.

Basically, this is how many calories your body consumes to keep your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your brain functioning, and your body digesting your food.  The factors that can affect your basal metabolic rate include your age, your gender, how much lean muscle mass you have, and your overall activity.

Males tend to have higher metabolic rates than females, as do those who have more lean muscle mass.  Likewise, younger individuals also tend to have a slightly higher metabolic rate as do those who are more active on an everyday basis.

While there are plenty of complex formulas you can use out there to approximate your metabolic rate, one very good and quite accurate guideline to use is to take your body weight and multiply by 10 or 11.  Males should use 11 and females should use 10 to account for that gender difference that appears.

This is now your basal metabolic rate per day.

Consider Your Activity Level

Second, once you have your basal metabolic rate, it’s time to account for your activity.  This is the area that tends to vary most among different individuals since different people have different activity levels.

If you’re very active you may burn up hundreds of calories more per day while if you’re more sedentary, you’ll only use a few hundred.

The best approach here is to find a database that lists various activities and try and figure out how much time you spend doing each and then add that calorie value to your basal metabolic rate number.

If you want a more simplistic method though, those who are quite sedentary should add 100-200 calories more, those who are exercising 2-3 times a week should add 200-300 calories more, those who are exercising 5-6 times a week should add 400-500 calories more, and those who are always on their feet running around and working out should add 600+ additional calories to their basal metabolic rate.

This now becomes your maintenance calorie rate and what you would have to consume each day to maintain your body weight.

Consider Your Goal

Now it’s time to assess your goals. If you do just want to maintain your body weight, you want to begin your calorie counting and try and take in that number of calories each day.  If you want to lose weight however, then since there are 3500 calories per pound of body fat, you would aim to take in about 250-500 calories fewer than the number you arrived at above.

This will produce a weight loss of about ½ to 1 pound per week.

If you want to gain weight on the other hand and build more lean muscle mass, you would then add 250 to 500 calories more per day to your maintenance calorie intake to provide this extra energy to add that new body tissue.

Note though that more is not better here because if you take in far too many calories then you’ll just start adding more body fat to the muscle you built.  The body can only build so much muscle a day so don’t think the more you eat, the more you build.  That is just a fast way to gain excess body fat.

So there you have everything you need to know to determine how many calories you should eat per day and how to get started with realizing your body weight goals.

Before you take this advice to heart however and go off eating every hour to maximize your metabolism, it’s important to realize that if all the calories are equal at the end of the day, it’s not going to make that big of a difference whether you eat five meals or six meals in terms of the metabolic rate increase provided.

Essentially, each time you eat a meal your metabolism will increase but this increase will be in direct proportion to how many calories you consume.  If you eat a larger meal, you’ll get a larger increase while if you eat a smaller meal, you’ll get a smaller increase.

So if both situations have the same number of calories coming in but just different meal sizes, it won’t impact fat loss at all.

But that said, one important thing that eating more regularly will do is ensure you  maintain more stable blood sugar levels, so for this reason it is definitely a good idea to do.

Apart from that, let’s look at a few other factors that you should consider when dividing up your calories throughout the day.

When Are You Most Active?

The first thing that needs to be assessed is when you are most active throughout the day.  Since when you’re up and moving around you will be burning off more calories and will require more energy for fuel, it’s important to place a larger amount of your calories, especially those coming from complex carbohydrate sources at this time.

If you have a workout in the early afternoon for example, you’ll want to make sure that the meal you eat before the workout as well as the meal you consume right after are higher in total calories than other meals throughout the day.

This will increase the chances that the body uses those calories up for energy and muscular repair purposes rather than converting them to body fat.

When Do You Typically Like To Eat?

Next, you also should consider when you like to eat.  While you can’t starve yourself all day so that you can come home and have a food binge, if you do know that you like to have a late night snack, it would be a wise move to schedule some calories for this time period.

Eating at night will not lead to weight gain as long as you are still able to maintain your target calorie intake, so by placing some calories in this time period, you won’t have to worry.

How Many Calories Are You Eating?

Finally, the last thing that you’ll want to think about is how many calories are you eating in total? If you are on a very low calorie diet because you’re a female who is very sedentary and already only weighs 120 pounds, dividing your target calorie intake of 1200 calories (or whatever it may be) up into six meals may be slightly difficult to do.

200 calories per meal is hardly enough to even justify using a plate and most people will just find they aren’t satisfied on so little food.

When this is the situation, it may be more satisfying to have four meals during the day rather than those six since then you’ll have a much easier time preparing an actual meal that will make it feel like you actually had eaten.

If you can keep these important points in mind as you go about setting up your diet and deciding when you will consume all of your calories throughout the day, you can feel confident that you’re on the road to success.

While it may take some time initially learning the process of calorie counting and getting a feel for how many calories are in all the foods you eat, if you give it a few weeks, you’re going to find that it gets significantly easier and is something that you’re able to do automatically without much thought at all.

For many people it’s just the issue of getting started with their calorie counting that proves to be a bit of a challenge so let’s take a quick look at what you need to know to get on with this.

Find Your Calorie Counting Database

The very first step to take when getting started with calorie counting is to find your calorie counting database.  Having a place to turn to where you can easily type in any food that you might be consuming and instantly get the nutritional information for that food will prove to be incredibly helpful with allowing you to do this quickly and easily.

Ideally you should also look for a calorie counting database that allows you to easily alter the serving sizes and then gives you the proper calorie reading for that serving size as this will save you a lot of time in the long run since you won’t have to figure this out by hand.

Adapting the calorie count for the specific serving size you’re eating will be a must so make sure you don’t overlook this.

Get A Calorie Counting Log

Second, the next step with the calorie counting process is to get yourself a calorie counting log book.  This should be a place where you can write down how many calories you’re consuming throughout the day so that you can keep a good tally of what’s going on.

This will then help you assess how many calories you have left to consume over the remaining meals so you can make some appropriate food choices.

If you like, try and find this log online or using some type of application. Many people find this to be a lot easier than having to write everything down by hand.

But, if you prefer a hand-held log, that’s perfectly alright as well.  Do whatever is most comfortable for you.

Assess Your Calorie Intake Daily And Weekly

Moving on, now that you have the tools necessary to get started with your calorie counting, the next step is monitoring that calorie intake both daily and weekly.  It’s important that you do look at the daily calorie intake since this will give you a good indication of how your food choices add up over the day and allow you to see any fluctuations day to day based around your activity levels, but more importantly, you’ll also want to assess your calories over the course of the week.

Since weight loss is more of a week to week thing, by making sure that you’re hitting the necessary calorie deficit over the course of the week you can ensure your success.

If you happen to have one day where you eat far too many calories, don’t stress, just reduce the calorie intake the next day to accommodate for it.

As long as you’ve eaten the target number of calories for the total week and produced a calorie deficit of between 2000-3500 calories, you’ll be right on track to losing half to one pound of body fat per week.

So there you have everything you must know to get started.   Don’t forget to make adjustments to your calorie intake as you move along and figure out what type of calorie intake is leading to what kind of results.

If you aren’t getting the results you’d like after two weeks time, reduce your weekly calorie deficit by about 1000-2000 calories and that will speed things right along.

Many people may believe that counting calories is a tedious job and not worth the effort, but if you do it accurately, you will be amazed at what a difference it will make with your end results.

Sadly though, there are some key mistakes that many people make as they go about their calorie counting process so by gaining an understanding of what these mistakes are yourself, you can then be sure that you don’t let yourself do them.

Let’s get you acquainted with the top things you must not do as you begin calorie counting.

Neglect Portion Size

The very first big mistake that’s often made is completely neglecting the portion size. If you’re calorie counting something that you’ve taken out of a box or package, don’t just look at the label to see how many calories are in it and assume that’s the number you should be using.

The fact of the matter is that very often the serving size listed on a package is a far cry from what some people think is a typical serving size so when they dish the food up onto their plate, they’re actually eating two to three times the amount of calories they think they are.

If you make this grave mistake, it could completely wipe out your calorie deficit for the day and cause a stop to any fat loss progress.

Forget To Include Additives

Second, another thing that often gets overlooked is the calories that you add to your main meal.  For instance, you may count out the calories in your chicken breast and sweet potato, but then forgot to also add the calories in the low-fat source cream that was added or the barbeque sauce that was brushed onto that chicken when it was on the grill.

While these may only add up to 15-20 calories for the small amount you use, if you add this up over the course of the day, it can really make a difference.

Overlook Nibbling

Third, make sure you also take into account all those little bites here and there that you take in throughout the day.

This is a very common issue for dieters.  If they’re craving a food, they’ll eat just a tiny amount to get the taste for the food and think it doesn’t really matter since the serving was so incredibly small.

It matters.  If you want to see top notch fat loss success, everything must get counted.  With many foods, just a small serving can really add up so, if you overlook this, you’re going to struggle to hit the right daily calorie total.

For instance, in the average piece of gourmet cheesecake you may find a total of 600-800 calories, so one bite could actually leave you with a good 75-100 calories total.  Not quite what you expected, is it?

Add it up – it will make a difference.

Not Writing Your Count Down

Finally, the last mistake that you must make sure you’re not making is failing to write your calories down.  As you go throughout the day if you’re just keeping a mental tab of what you’ve consumed, there’s going to be a high margin of error.

There are so many different tracking programs available today both online and through phone applications that you really have no excuse not to be writing it down so it’s easy to refer to.

This will enable you to quickly see your calorie total for the day and figure out just how many you have left to eat to reach your daily calorie intake goal.

So there you have the main mistakes that many people make as they go about counting their calories.  Are you currently struggling with any one of these?

Usually this occurs more often when you’re eating out since many restaurants won’t report how many calories are in the dishes they offer but in some cases, it can also occur when purchasing a food or dish that just doesn’t have a nutritional label on it.

What do you do then? How can you ensure that eating this food doesn’t ruin your total daily calorie intake?

Let’s take a quick look at a few things that you might consider.

Assess The Make-Up Of The Food

The very first thing that you can do when you come across this situation is to assess the make-up of the food in question. If it’s a mixed dish such as lasagne or a stir-fry, have a look at all the ingredients that are going into make up that meal and try and estimate how many calories would be in each one.

Doing this for mixed dishes can be a little tricky but if you’ve been calorie counting for a while now you should have a fairly good idea of about how many calories are in a certain food that you’re looking at.

Add these calories up for the various foods and that will provide you with a very rough approximation of about how many calories you might be looking at.

Ask For It To Be Prepared A Certain Way

Second, the next option you can do if you’re dining out and are worried about how many calories are in the food in question is to ask for it to be prepared in a certain way.  Often the biggest reason people misjudge calorie counts in restaurants is not because they don’t know the calories of the specific food they order but rather they don’t know how much butter, oil, or sugar is being added by the chef in the back.

If you can request that the food is prepared using the lowest calorie methods (grilled, steamed, or poached), then you should be able to better assess how many calories might be in it.

Consider Choosing Something Else

If you’re really strict with your diet and are very concerned about this possibly throwing you off, then the next best thing to do will be to just order something else.

Rather than ordering the chicken-shrimp scampi, go with a grilled chicken breast and a baked potato with salsa for instance.  This will be a much easier dish to estimate the calorie intake of and you can be sure that you’re staying on track for your daily totals.

Build Leeway With Other Meals

Finally, the last thing that you should do to prevent weight gain if you are going to eat a food where you don’t know how many calories it contains is to build yourself some leeway with the other meals you’re eating.

If you can cut back by only 100 calories in two or three of the other meals of the day, then this gives you 200-300 calories that that food could be above what you think without causing weight gain.

Building in this margin of error will really ensure that you don’t gain weight from eating that food and if anything, you may even lose a little more weight in the process.

So there you have the steps you should take if you come across a food where you don’t know its calorie intake.  Don’t stress yourself out over this – simply do your best to estimate it and make any changes possible to ensure it fits with your meal plan.

It really only takes an extra five to ten minutes out of your day to do this but when you do, the results will be well worth it.

Let’s take a quick look right now at all the information that you should ideally be including in your calorie tracking journal.

What You Ate

The very first thing that should be listed is the foods that you consumed in the snack or meal.  While it is the total calorie intake that you’re looking for here, if you track down what you were eating when you reached that calorie intake you will better be able to asses the impact that various foods have on your body.

If you do this properly then you can look back over your tracking journal and figure out which foods are best for calming your hunger and which you find produce the greatest weight of weight loss.

Since some people do find they have certain food insensitivities or do deal with other issues related to a particular food, this can be helpful information to know as you constantly adjust your diet for optimal results.

How You Felt When You Ate

Second, another key thing that you should try and include and one that so many people miss out on is how you felt when you ate the food in question.

You should not only list how hungry you were on a scale of one to ten so you can look back and see if you’re often letting yourself get too hungry between meals or if you’re eating at times when you aren’t hungry, but you should also list any emotions that were present as well.

If you were happy, sad, depressed, or anxious, be sure to write that down.  This will be key information that can clue you in to some serious emotional eating issues that may need to be dealt with if you’re going to succeed on your weight loss diet plan.

The Macronutrient Make-Up Of What You Ate

Third, you should also aim to write down what the macronutrient make-up of that meal was.  While getting that calorie total is the most vital thing that you should know, it’s also very helpful to know how many grams of proteins, carbs, and fats you’re taking in as well.

Since each of these nutrients will act differently in the body, by making sure that you’re eating the right amount of each, you can ensure that you maintain your lean muscle mass and have a steady rate of energy throughout the day.

When You Ate

Finally, the last thing to jot down in your food tracking journal when counting calories is when you ate.  This can also be helpful to spot patterns of when you tend to get hungry throughout the day and can also allow you to see connections based on your activity level and any conditioning that is going on based around traditional meal times.

By looking at when you ate over time you can also see if you’re spreading your meals out properly over the course of the day rather than either loading them all into the first half of the day or more commonly, consuming most of them later on in the evening hours when you’re at home looking for some entertainment.

If you can start making a note of all of these factors in your food journal as you go about your diet plan, then you will definitely get the most out of your calorie counting efforts.

Are there any other factors that come into play that makes for the case where a calorie is not just a calorie?

By learning some of the key points of how the body reacts to different calories that you’re eating you can get a better grasp over how your weight loss will progress along and more importantly, whether this weight loss will be fat mass or lean muscle mass.

Since you must be aiming to lose fat not muscle, this will be important.

Let’s get you the information you need to know.

Calorie Type And Metabolic Rate

The very first thing that you must note is that not all calories will digest the same way in the body once consumed.  If you eat a 100 calories worth of a protein rich food – a chicken breast for example, the body will react differently than if you were to eat those same 100 calories worth of a carbohydrate rich food like pasta.

Protein rich foods are going to take a lot of energy in the body to actually break down and digest, thus you’ll actually burn off more calories in the process of doing so.

So when you eat those 100 calories of protein from your food intake, you may actually only ‘net’ about 75 or so of those calories total.  This means that you just saw a metabolic rate spike of about 25%.

If you were to eat those 100 calories of carbs though, you may only require about 4-6 of those calories to digest and break them down, so you can see the big difference between the two macronutrients here.

Fat, the third macronutrient, has an even lower calorie burn rate from consumption where you’ll only burn off a measly 2 calories or so digesting and breaking it down.  Fat will be transferred to body fat stores in the situation of a calorie surplus quite readily so it’s one nutrient you definitely do not want to overeat in.

If you want to see an instantly greater weight loss success rate though, eating more protein in your diet is one way to do this.

Calorie Type And Muscle Maintenance

Second, the next thing that you should know about the various calories that you’re going to consume is that each calorie has a different role in the body.

Proteins are primarily for providing the raw building blocks to the tissues as well as for helping to generate all the hormones and neurotransmitters that are necessary for life.

Carbohydrates and fats (to a lesser extent) on the other hand are the energy nutrients and will be utilized as a short term and long term fuel source.

Since one of the primary goals on your fat loss diet is ensuring that you don’t begin to lose lean muscle mass, this means taking in enough protein calories will be absolutely essential.

For this reason, it’s not going to be just about getting the right amount of calories in your day to guarantee fat loss.  Rather, it’ll be about getting the right amount of calories and getting the right amount of protein.  If you do this, then fat loss will result.

Calorie Type And Hunger Level

Finally, the last thing to note is the impact of the various calories on hunger level.  While protein and fat calories tend to suppress the appetite and make you feel satisfied after a meal, carbohydrates on the other hand tend to make you feel hungrier.

Now, the type of carbohydrate you choose to eat (simple versus complex) will also make a difference on this with complex carbs producing a higher appetite suppression effect than simple carbohydrates, but the fact of the matter still remains that carbohydrates will increase hunger more than the other two nutrients.

So as you go about your fat loss diet, be sure that you’re keeping these points in mind. It’s vital to learn the different types of calories that you take in through the foods you eat so you can create the best diet to get optimal results.

Some people will start up on a diet plan that doesn’t have them counting calories and instead they just go by what they think they should be eating.  Sadly though, these types of diets just do not deliver the accuracy that other diets where calorie count is monitored so if you’re serious about getting results, you cannot do away with this.

Let’s take a quick look at why calorie counting is so important on your fat loss diet so you can see for yourself why it’s going to be a must.

Allows You To Regulate Weight Loss

The very first reason why calorie counting will be a must is because it’s going to be the single most important thing for regulating weight loss.  You see, weight loss is very much a mathematical formula that when you get right, you will see results.

Your body burns off so many calories each day and likewise, you consume a certain number of calories each day as well.  If you can get yourself burning off more calories than you consume through understanding what your body is burning and then counting how many calories you’re eating, you will be guaranteed to see weight loss.

If you don’t consume fewer calories from your food intake than what you burn off over the course of the day, weight loss will not happen.

So by tracking your calorie intake, you know precisely what’s going on and know what kind of weight loss to expect.  If you don’t see the weight loss take place, then you simply know you must reduce your calorie intake from your diet a little lower and then that should get you right back on track once again.

Reduces The Risk You Experience Metabolic Decline

Second, another very good benefit that counting calories will provide is the ability to prevent a metabolic decline.

After being on a reduced calorie diet for so long, the body is naturally going to start to slow down it’s metabolic rate and as it does so, fat loss is going to become harder and harder.

By tracking your calories however, you can monitor how long you’ve been on that low calorie diet for and every so often, bring those calories back up to a higher range.

In doing this, you’ll trick your body into thinking that it’s no longer dieting so it’ll speed up its metabolic rate again and bring you further weight loss progress.

This is a very sneaky method to use to ensure that you don’t hit a weight loss plateau but it’s only going to work if you are counting your calories.

Helps You Keep Your Energy Levels Up

Another big reason why counting calories on a diet plan is important is because it’s going to help you keep your energy levels up.  Some people just find that they don’t get hungry throughout the day and very often aren’t eating enough calories to support their activity.

While you do want a reduced calorie intake to lose weight, if you aren’t consuming enough, high levels of fatigue will set in.

By counting your calories you can be confident that you are taking enough therefore will not have to worry about feeling this way as you go about your daily activities.

Makes You More Consciously Aware

Finally, the last reason why counting calories is a wise decision on any weight loss diet plan is because it’s going to make you more consciously aware.  When you have to track each and every thing that you consume, you’re going to think twice about going in for that double chocolate chip cookie that you’re craving.

You’ll have to check out how many calories it contains and upon seeing the extremely large number, may in fact decide that it just isn’t worth it.  If this happens even twice per week because you’re counting your calories, it can significantly boost your overall weight loss success rate.

So there you have all the reasons why you must be counting your calories.  As you can clearly see, anyone who wants to see great fat loss progress would be well advised to spend some time doing this.

Many people completely overlook the process of calorie cycling and instead just maintain a steady calorie intake over the course of the week while they are on that diet plan.

The big problem with this however is that as time goes on and you’re consuming that low calorie intake, the body will eventually adapt to that lowered calorie consumption and slow down how many calories it burns off each and every day.

As a result, you fail to see further fat loss.  By calorie cycling however, the body can never adapt to your calorie intake because it’s always left guessing as to what comes next.  The end result is that you not only see better fat loss, but you also feel a lot better while following your diet plan as well.

Let’s take a quick look at what you should know about calorie cycling for success.

Determine Your Weekly Calorie Intake

The very first step to take when it comes to implementing a calorie cycling approach is to set your weekly calorie intake.  In doing this you want to figure out what your maintenance calorie intake will be and then subtract however many calories you want from that to produce the rate of weight loss that’s desired.

Keep in mind here that it does take 3500 calories to lose one pound of body fat, so whether you want to lose half a pound a week or two pounds a week, you would adjust this accordingly.

Place High Calorie Days On Weight Lifting Days

Once you have that calorie intake set for the week, then comes the fun part of dividing these calories up over the various days of the week.  Since your goal here is to maintain an overall calorie deficit, you’re going to find that your lower calorie diet days are much lower than they may have been in the past and this is to account for the higher calorie days that you’ll have throughout the week.

Ideally you should be putting your higher calorie intake days on the days that you lift weights because these are the days when the excess calories are more likely to be needed for fuel purposes as well as when they will help to go straight to the muscle tissues rather than into body fat stores.

So make non-workout day’s low calorie days and then workout day’s high calorie days.

Depending on your specific program set-up, this means you’ll have 3-4 high calorie days and 3-4 low calorie days.

Be Sure To Adjust Carbohydrate Intake

With those high and low calorie days, you also want to make sure to alter your carbohydrate intake.  Amongst all the days in the week your protein intake should remain constant as you cannot consume less protein than you require otherwise muscle mass loss may take place.

This means that the calories that you will be increasing or decreasing depending on the day will be fat or carb calories, with carbohydrates playing the biggest role.

Since carbohydrates are the ones most closely tied in with the metabolic rate and will be the ones to fuel those muscles during your weight lifting workout, you really want to bring them up higher on the high calorie days and then knock them back lower on the low calorie days.

If you do this, you won’t experience as much hunger on the lower calorie days and you will see better overall results from your workout session on the higher calorie days.

Stay Consistent

Finally, the last thing is to stay consistent. Once you’ve set your calorie intake for both the high and low days, be sure that you do eat that right amount.  If you continually mess up your low calorie days and take in more calories than you should, then you may just find that you start gaining body weight back since now you have those higher calorie days in there.

Anyone following this plan must be certain to be counting their calories as this is what will produce optimal results.

So there you have everything to know about calorie cycling.  When applied correctly, this can be an incredibly helpful tool for maximum fat loss success.