Try this: ask a group of athletes if they can perform at their best while their bodies are being starved of carbohydrates. If they manage to overcome the shock of this insane question, they’ll probably start laughing. Like a car running on low-octane fuel, the body cannot run at its best while lacking carbohydrates. That is why athletes never use a low carb diet for long, but rather use a carb cycling approach.
 
Carbohydrates = E N E R G Y
 
When someone loses weight on a carb-calorie-restrained diet, his/her metabolic processes slow down. The body doesn’t know that you’re on some fancy diet. It just knows that it’s being denied food, day by day. So, naturally – and one might say brilliantly – it does what it needs to do to survive. It slows down. It may help to live longer, but does not help to look and feel younger.
 

Without adequate calories/protein/carbs and proper physical activity, the body produces fewer anabolic hormones — testosterone and Human Growth Hormone — which it needs to sustain youth, energy, sex drive, efficient cell renewal and repair.
 
Here are just a few of the negative physiological consequences that result from diets.
 
• Slow metabolism — the opposite of the desired goal!
• Lack of libido — fewer of anabolic hormones are produced
• Depression (low testosterone)
• Wrinkles — connective tissue proteins have broken down. Slow collagen and elastin turnover due to а low level of anabolic hormones.
• Joint pain — the breakdown of a cartilage due to microtraumas and slow repair
• Muscle loss
• Accelerated osteoporosis
 
N o n e of it occur among the Cycling Diet users!

А good example comes from research published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism . For the study, researchers compared the effectiveness of two exercise and diet programs. Subjects taking part in the study were assigned to one of two groups.

• Group one followed a diet based on the traditional food guide pyramid (50-55% carbohydrate; 15-20% protein; less than 30% fat). They also did cardiovascular exercise 4-6 days per week at 50-75% of their maximal heart rate. Each workout lasted 30-60 minutes.
• Group two followed a diet that was higher in protein and lower in carbohydrate and fat. Their exercise program consisted of alternating days of resistance and cardiovascular interval training six days per week (one of the cycling diet regimens- Dr. Malkov).

Body composition was assessed by dual x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) before and after the 12-week training program. DEXA is an extremely accurate way to measure changes in body fat. It’s far more reliable than the skin fold calipers or body fat scales often used in health clubs.
And the result?
Subjects in group two (remember, these were the people who lifted weights, did more intense cardio, and ate more protein) lost more fat overall (-20.6%) than the normal group (-10.1%). They also gained 2 pounds of muscle (0.9 kilograms) while the cardio-only group, not surprisingly, lost muscle.
More interesting still, abdominal fat dropped by 26% in group two, but by just 13.5% in group one. In other words, subjects in group two lost almost twice as much belly fat as those in group one.

Now, I should point out that this wasn't the perfect study. For one, although thesubjects were told to record what they ate, there's no way of knowing how accurate these records were. In other words, this was not a study where the diet was tightly controlled by the researchers.
Unfortunately, self-reported food intake is a notoriously inaccurate way to measure calorie intake. Some studies show that people underestimate their calorie intake by up to 50% . Which means that someone who says they are eating 1000 calories per day may really be eating 2000 calories.
It's also worth nothing that subjects taking part in this study exercised for up to six days per week. Don't worry if you don't have time for all this exercise. With the right program, four days a week is plenty.