Hi there, I have previously completed a 6 month diet based on the BodyOpus plan, which worked great, however found the 2 day carb-up very hard and found myself very tired havving to get up very 2-3 hours to carb-up over night.

I am now going to go back on the diet, however wanted to modify the plan, by having the great workout on Thursday instead of Friday, (ie) carb up over three and a half days (Thursday night, Friday, Sat & Sunday) then go back on the diet Mon – Thursday with Mon – Tue upper, Wed rest, and Thursday full body.

My question is will 4 days be enough for the Ketosis to work??? Any ideas would be great, and also any info/link to diet plans for Bodyopus would be a great help

CU
NRG!

I have done BodyOpus myself, as well as advising/guiding about 20 other athletes.

We have all found the weekly schedule and carb-up every weekend to be a complete pain . The two variations that have been most successful have been: -

(1) Only carb-up every 2nd week. Muscle gains are close to zero, but this is a good strategy for cutting up;
(2) Follow the original diet Dan Duchaine based his BodyOpus on (DiPasquale). This is a 10 day cycle carbing up for 3-4 days. Because the carbing up is for longer than 48 hours, you don't need to get up every two hours.

Hope this helps
Jesper

I strongly recommend that you check out www.theketogenicdiet.com, which is Lyle McDonald's site. He has a lot to say about the matter in his book, which is much more scientific and - albeit less colorful - also less sensational than Dan Duchaine's Body Opus. He goes into great detail about the CKD, and different options and variations. It's kind of like Dr. Atkins meets Dan Duchaine.

I think that 4 days would be far too short to spend in ketosis. I think that you would want to first try one of the variations that Jasper above suggested. You want to spend more - not less - time in ketosis. Plus, after a 3 day carb-up, it's going to take much longer than 2 days to get back into ketosis. The only way that could be accomplished is through a tremendous cardio workout, which is highly catabolic.

I might add that the audience that Duchaine had in mind were those who were using a lot of supplements that one, um, can't get at GNC, and this really did assist in making the 7 day cycle work. I myself have found much more success with a 10 day cycle when training naturally. Duchaine said himself that the average person would do better with a 10 day version, but the public was not comfortable with the idea, since it did not fall into place with the working world's 7 day work week cycle.

I hope that helps.

I'm trying to get into a CKD, as it seems like it would fit me better... are you really supposed to use carbs throughout the night every 2 hours? That seems a little bizarre to me...