If you’re looking to get on a muscle mass building program while minimizing any fat gains that come along with it, calorie cycling is a very good idea. The concept behind calorie cycling is that rather than eating the same very high calorie intake on all days as you go about your mass building diet plan, you will alternate between higher calorie days and lower calorie days.

In doing so, you’ll help avoid any fat spillover that may occur with a more traditional mass building diet plan, thus increasing your overall level of results.

Let’s take a quick look at the main steps that you need to know in order to ensure that you perform calorie cycling correctly.

Set Your Weekly Calorie Target

The very first step to implement calorie cycling into your mass building diet plan is to set your target calorie intake for the week. Since you will have those low calorie days in there, you must make sure that on a weekly basis, you’re still going to be in a calorie surplus as this is what will support mass building.

If you aren’t, then you’re just going to stay the same size or may even begin to lose body weight.

So determine how many calories over maintenance you want to be (usually 2000-3500 is a good range) and then multiply your maintenance calorie intake by seven and add that number to it. This is your weekly calorie target.

Determine High And Low Calorie Levels

The next step for setting up calorie cycling in your diet is to set up those low and high calorie days. You should be placing the high calorie days on the days that you are doing your weight lifting workouts since this is when you will be in prime mass building.

Divide up the calories however you see fit, making sure to bring those workout days much higher while the off days are much lower.

Don’t go too dramatic here however as you don’t want to wind up absolutely starved on the low calorie days and then cheat and ruin the set-up. When focusing on mass building, you should keep the low calorie days right around maintenance level or slightly lower in your calorie cycling diet plan.

Focus Carbs Around The Workout

Next, when structuring the high calorie days, you should also make sure that you’re placing a large portion of the carbs you consume that day right around the workout period.

This is the time when the body is most likely to utilize them for lean muscle mass building, so when you want to be making the most of them.

You don’t have to put all the carbs at this time, but the vast majority of them should come within two to three hours after finishing that workout for best results.

Keep Low Days Higher In Fat

Finally, the last point to keep in mind when setting up your calorie cycling mass building diet plan is to keep the lower days slightly higher in fat content.

Since you will be placing more carbs on the high calorie days, it’s fine for these to come down in dietary fat so you can maximize that carbohydrate intake (protein will stay constant across both days), but then on the lower calorie days, bringing up the fat slightly will go a long way towards preventing hunger development.

Plus, it will ensure that you get all the healthy nutrients that you need into your body to support mass building and overall wellness.

So make sure you keep these points in mind as you go about designing a calorie cycling diet. If you do, then you should have no problem seeing the great benefits that this type of diet has to offer.

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