Yup, a controlled carb-up every 3 or 4 days - the last meal of the day - should help things. Also, during offseason, it's important to increase your calories and raise your metabolic setpoint, thus allowing you to safely consume significantly more calories. If you have a high setpoint to begin with, you don't need to drop calories to rediculous levels to get cut. That might be your biggest problem.
Many pro bodybuilders ingest 6000-10000 calories a day, thus they have raised their metabolic setpoint, which means they don't need to drop to low calorie levels to drop bodyfat. If you're only eating 2000 calories a day during off season, you don't have a lot of room to drop, thus you're going to sacrifice muscle. Also, "clean" calories are not very dense in calories, so you'll need more of them. More complex carbs would suffice.