Omelet wrote:
Doug Freyburger wrote:

Cycling comes out of the boby building realm I think.

Yes. Weight gains during bulking phases for muscle growth with later
pre-contest rapid loss using carb depletion, then carb loading right
before a competition at a set rate to increase muscle hardness from
abnormally increased glycogen levels is a standard pre-competition
strategy.

There's also the fat lost aspect. Doing the system described by Atkins
with natural portion control from lack of cravings (does not work for
everyone, does work for far more people than believe it will work for
them) leads to loss dropping to near zero as we near own real ideal
weight. Our own real ideal wegith is very frequently above our chosen
goal, too.

But cycling does something different. Dropping into ketosis causes fat
loss. Popping out of ketosis with a day or two of low fat high carb
turns off/low the fat loss. The trick is this cycle does not stop when
we hit or ideal weight. It can be used to go below body fat percentages
normally listed as below ideal. Boby builders target extremely low body
fat percentages so they use a method that works to do that.

Not that this makes cycling a bad thing. Just that it attacks the issue
differently.