The Extreme Cycle is the newest addition to our carb cycling family and is the result of our years of experience helping our peeps successfully transform their lives on Extreme Weight Loss. If you?re already a carb cycler, then a lot about this new cycle will seem familiar. If you’re new to carb cycling, check out the carb cycling basics first, and then get cycling!
Here’s what an Extreme Cycle week looks like:
- Monday: High carb day
- Tuesday: High carb day
- Wednesday: High carb day
- Thursday: High carb day
- Friday: Low carb day
- Saturday: Low carb day
- Sunday: Reset Day (and weigh-in day)
Those four consecutive high carb days will give your body a sense of normalcy and let you get into a routine with meal planning. Switching to two low carb days flips your weight loss into turbo mode, allowing you to burn the maximum fat, which is what we want, right?! And your weekly Reset Day (known as your Reward Day in other cycles), lets you eat all those foods you crave, boosts your metabolic rate, and actually helps you lose weight!
Just like with the other cycles, you’ll eat breakfast within 30 minutes of waking and every 3 hours thereafter for a total of 5 meals a day. When it comes to putting your meals together, this is what you’ll do:
- Every breakfast—on both low and high carb days—contains a protein, a carb, and a fat.
- On high carb days, for meals 2, 3, and 4, you’ll be eating a protein, a carb, and veggies. For meal 5, you’ll be eating a protein, a fat, and veggies.
- On low carb days, all 4 meals after breakfast will contain a protein, a fat, and veggies.
- And veggies—the non-root/non-starchy type—are totally “free” in the Extreme Cycle! You can enjoy them in limitless portions, and they are a huge key to helping you feel full throughout your day.
If you’re using our book, Extreme Transformation, where we talk about the Extreme Cycle and a lot of other amazing transformation-related things, all your meals are planned out for you for all 21 days of the cycle! We’ve created 21 days? worth of amazing meals for you, including Cheat Meals for your Reset Days. We’ve also included other options to make meal planning as simple and flexible as possible. And you can repeat the Extreme Cycle as many times as you want, or you can change to the Turbo Cycle if you need to shake things up a bit. And for all you macro counters (*hand raised*), calories and macros are figured out and listed for you with every single recipe. 🙂 If you’d like to put your own meals together, or are out and about and can’t meal prep ahead of time, follow this handy portion size guide:
- Proteins: Palm-size portion
- Carbs (grainy, starchy, and fruit): 1 clenched fist
- Veggies: 2 clenched fists
- Fats: 1 thumb
- Sauces: 1 thumb
Are you ready to take your transformation to the extreme and lose those extra pounds in the fastest and safest way possible? Then grab a copy of Extreme Transformation, and let’s go!
661 Responses
Are you able to comment as to whether the Extreme Cycle is appropriate for someone who works out hard in the gym with resistance training and cardio 5-6 days/week? Do you lose any benefits to your workouts by working out on a “low carb” day where there is a lack of carbs to support your workouts?
Hi Richard: The Extreme Cycle incorporates 6 days of cardio per week, as well as strength training, so you should be good to go!
Hi, a few questions since I’ve been doing the extreme cycle for a few motnhs now but I’m still not seeing any kind of result (quite used to not seeing results in the past years but really hoped this would work! so want to get it totally right!).
1. reset day: are you supposed to eat 1000kcals more for a physical reason or you CAN eat more thank usual, but if you don’t it’s better?
2. If you don’t reach 1500kcals a day, could this be counterproductive or is it ok to eat 1300 somedays in the extreme cycle?
3. i was thinking on going back to the turbo to take advantage of the shock your body with different amounts of kcals strategy, but I follow quite intense workouts and don’t think I would have the energy for them. Even though, if turbo might be better on your advice since I’m totally not reacting to the extreme cycle I might give it a try. Or the classic? What do you recommend?
Thanks a lot!!!
Hi Elisa: Let’s get you some answers to your questions! 1. You want to eat the extra 1000 cals on Reset Days to pull your body out of it’s HC/LC day routine. Our bodies love to get stuck in routines! And the Reset Day also helps you to be able to eat those favorite foods that don’t fit into the HC/LC day recommendations. If we deprive ourselves of foods we love for too long, we’re more apt to binge and over do it. 2. You’ll want to do your best to reach 1500 cals every day. If our bodies get too many or too few calories, it can be counterproductive to weight loss. 3. If you have an intense workout schedule, you might want to try the Fit Cycle. Hope that helps!
WILL DO! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!
If I’m putting together my own meals, how much fat, in calories or grams, should I be eating for my 5th meal on a high carb day? Is it still thumb sized or 150 calories worth like at breakfast?
Hi Richard: There’s a chart in this post (“Create Your Own Meals”) that shows you the breakdown for calories for each macro for each meal: https://heidipowell.net/10617. So for the 5th meal on HC day, which is a LC meal, you’d aim for 150 calories of fat. Hope that helps!
Thank you very much. That makes it clear for me now. Thanks for the quick reply.
Hi Heidi! I just started the extreme cycle yesterday! I work long evenings sometimes till 11 and still get up early with my kid! On day shifts or days off I go to bed earlier soooo could I do say 3 high carb days then one low and then a high again so I can do high carb days on longer days or is it more effective to do the two low days together?
Thanks
Hi Rachel: It’s best to follow the weekly schedule as it’s outlined, however, you can shift it one way or the other as long as you keep the days (LC & HC) in the same order as outlined. You can do this!
I can’t seem to hit 1500 calories on my low carb days. Is it ok if it’s still closer to 1200 on LC days and 1500 on HC days?
Hi Lana: If you’re following either the recipes in the book or the outlines in this post (https://heidipowell.net/10617), you should be able to hit 1500 calories a day, which is what’s recommended. Just do your best! 🙂
Could you clarify for HC days on protein bars. If your familiar with Combat protein bars (which are yum) they list sugar alcohol on their label and a lot of places deduct fiber & sugar alcohol to get Net Carbs. Do we/can we deduct those for our final net carb count?
Thanks a bunch!
Hi Robin: We go more by total carb counts, and these bars would be an okay protein + carb part of a HC meal. The fat is a little bit high, but not too bad. Enjoy!
Hi!
I just bought the extreme weight loss book and I am excited to start carb cycling! However, I was looking at the rexioes and there tends to be a lot of dairy which I dont eat. Are there any recommended substitutes for it? Thanks!
Hi Kaela: Here’s a post that offers several meal planning tips on the Extreme Cycle: https://heidipowell.net/10617. It can help you figure out how to put your meals together in a way that will work best for you!
Heidi,
My wife and I are 6 weeks in and loving the structure of having this program to follow. The food is so good too. I love the breakfast, especially!
Yesterday was our second low carb day. Like Chris says in the book, we look forward to Saturday morning because that is when “we get to pull back the tarp and see a little progress on the scale”. However, we are both up from our last week; AND in the 6 weeks we have been doing this, we have felt better, but have not seen any progress on the scale. We are both relatively thin people already, but we are trying to get lower body fat. I am 16.5% BF working towards 9% BF.
We do the Metabolic Missions and Accelerators every day. I add in 30 minutes of weight lifting. We do NOT cheat!!! I have heard that maybe we are just BOTH gaining muscle at the pace we are losing fat, but its really hard to feel that way as we watch family and friends on similar programs down 10 lbs on the same scale…. Is this normal? Should we have blood work done to see if something is wrong? Thanks for the help and direction.
PHIL: 5’8″ 154 lbs 16.5% BF (bod pod) —> GOAL 9% BF
TARA: 5’5″ 112 lbs 24.8% BF (bod pod) —> GOAL 18% BF
Hi Philip: With your current stats, you might need to change how you’re doing things so you can gain muscle, and remember, it’s not all about that number on the scale, especially when your main goal is to build muscle. Here’s a post that can give you some tips on how to tweak carb cycling to help you both reach your goals: https://heidipowell.net/10540/ask-the-powells-gaining-healthy-weight/. Hope this helps!
Hi! So i found about carb cycling on youtube and the girl said it was a 3 day process that you keep doing over and over again. She basically said that the 1st day is no starchy carbs after 6 pm, 2nd day no starchy carbs after noon and 3rd day no starchy carbs at all. And you repeat this 3 day process for however long you like. Although after reading this article i am a little confused. On this article it advices me to eat more carbs although the girl said basically to lessen carbs. Which strategy can help me lose weight faster and more effective?
Hi Pauline: This YouTube video doesn’t follow any of Chris and Heidi’s carb cycling plans. You can read about their 5 cycles in this post: https://heidipowell.net/2713, and their program has been proven to help people achieve their weight loss goals. Hope that helps!
I lost five pounds after two weeks of carb cycling (turbo), then two weeks of plateau. I took this last week off just to give my body a break. Would you recommend a go back into turbo next week or extreme?
Hi Valerie: It’s best to stick to a cycle for more than a month if at all possible. It can take our bodies a bit of time to adjust to a new way of doing things, and since weight naturally fluctuates, trying to keep things constant can be very helpful. Hang in there – you can do this!