Metabolic Confusion

If you’ve ever felt like your metabolism just gives up on you mid-diet, you’re not alone. The idea behind metabolic confusion is simple: shake things up to keep your metabolism guessing. By alternating your calorie intake – a technique known as calorie cycling – you could sidestep the dreaded plateau and make sticking to a diet feel a little less restrictive.

Think of it like this: some days, you tighten the reins with a lower calorie target, and other days, you loosen up and enjoy a bit more freedom. The best part? It’s flexible enough to fit around your lifestyle, whether that means fueling up for a tough workout or indulging a little on the weekend.

Curious if this approach could work for you? Let’s break down the concept of metabolic confusion, how calorie cycling works, and what you need to know before giving it a try.

Metabolic Confusion

What Is Metabolic Confusion

Metabolic confusion generally refers to the concept of tricking one’s metabolism through some sort of dietary manipulation. This assumes that your metabolism gets used to a certain set of calories and/or macros, and thus becomes resistant to fat loss. To mix things up, proponents of a metabolic confusion diet incorporate something known as calorie cycling.

Calorie Cycling

Calorie cycling is simple on paper. It’s the act of having different calorie targets on different days with some days aiming for a higher target, others for a lower one. The actual calorie targets can vary significantly based on your comfort levels, and desired calorie deficit. One hypothetical setup is provided below (Table 1).

As you can see, the two approaches even out to similar energy deficits by the end of the week. The straight deficit created a weekly calorie deficit of 2800 calories, while the cycling approach brought in a total deficit of 2700 calories. Again, these numbers are all hypothetical, and highly contingent on the daily and weekly calorie targets.

Now, let’s talk about why you might want to do this in the first place.

Benefits

Before I get into the practical benefits of calorie cycling, I want to address the notion that mixing up one’s targets prevents the body from getting used to a calorie deficit, and thus provides some sort of metabolic advantage for fat loss. This concept is also called “metabolic confusion.” There is surprisingly little literature comparing calorie cycling with traditional calorie deficits. At least one paper indicates a benefit from calorie cycling, while another found much less, if any, advantage. I will point out here that for both studies, the benefits largely seem to stem from increased dietary adherence, rather than any sort of metabolic trickery.

That said, one of the most obvious benefits to calorie cycling is the ability to eat more on certain days. I think most folks like to get away with eating as much as they can, and even a few hundred extra calories on a given day makes a huge difference.  This can also go a long way toward promoting dietary adherence, and incentive to stick with a plan. After all, the less you feel like you’re actually dieting, the likelier it is that you’ll continue with it.

Building off of that, there are certain times where having those increased calories can really come in handy. The first one would be the weekends. Since most social occasions tend to occur on weekends, having more caloric wiggle room can make it easier to stay within your goals while still allowing some extra fun. Things like eating out, festivities, etc. all tend to make dieting significantly more difficult, and the additional dietary wiggle room can make planning things out much less complicated.

The other main circumstance that benefits from higher calorie days is training.  The ability to eat more around workouts can better fuel your efforts, and promote more productive training sessions. Most folks can factor for 2-4 higher calorie days, which aligns well with many training schedules.  This obviously doesn’t quite apply the same if you work out daily, but even then, you can still save the higher calorie days for your most grueling workouts. Conversely, you can save the lower calorie days for rest days, where you know you won’t be as active.

Drawbacks

There is no one perfect dietary approach, and that certainly holds true with calorie cycling. While adding in higher calorie days can help some folks with adherence, it can also be a detriment to others.

One of the pillars of any successful dietary approach is consistency. For some people, setting different targets on different days adds a layer of complexity to their diet that makes it harder to follow. In a similar vein, there is a lot to learn with the basics of dieting as is – learning what meals work best, their number, their pattern throughout the day, how best to hit a specific calorie target, etc. If you throw different daily targets into the mix, it’s one more thing to learn on top of so much else, and can potentially be overwhelming. Essentially, it may be a better idea to learn how to walk before running.

It’s also worth noting that driving calories up on certain days can cause a bit of a snowball effect, where the increased intake leads to far more over indulging than a straight deficit normally would. For some people, opening up those floodgates leads to going off the rails. If you know you’re prone to going all in when given the opportunity, calorie cycling may not be in your best interest.

Conclusion

Calorie cycling is a potentially viable method for setting up a diet, and making things easier to adhere to a calorie deficit. That being said, it is a fundamentally more complex approach than a straight deficit, both in terms of calculations and planning. For most folks, I recommend starting with a simple dietary approach first to get your bearings, and a feel for what habits work best for you. Once you feel comfortable with the basics, by all means experiment, and see if something like calorie cycling fits your life better.

Additionally, having a coach can take a lot of the numerical guesswork out of the equation, and even help set up a training plan. This can assist you in getting the best results out of a calorie cycling approach, and save yourself a bit of headache. Not to mention it’s completely free to try out.

Best of luck in your dietary endeavors, and as always, feel free to reach out to us for help!