  Throughout an activity cycle, magnetic structures rise to the stellar
surface, evolve and decay. Tracing their evolution on a stellar corona allows
us to characterize the X-ray cycles. However, directly mapping magnetic
structures is feasible only for the Sun, while such structures are spatially
unresolved with present-day X-ray instruments on stellar coronae. We present
here a new method, implemented by us, that indirectly reproduces the stellar
X-ray spectrum and its variability with solar magnetic structures. The
technique converts solar corona observations into a format identical to that of
stellar X-ray observations and, specifically, XMM-Newton spectra. From matching
these synthetic spectra with those observed for a star of interest, a
fractional surface coverage with solar magnetic structures can be associated to
each X-ray observation. We apply this method to two young solar-like stars:
$\epsilon$ Eri ($\sim 400$ Myr), the youngest star to display a coronal cycle
($\sim 3$ yr), and Kepler 63 ($\sim 200$ Myr), for which the X-ray monitoring
did not reveal a cyclic variability. We found that even during the cycle
minimum a large portion of $\epsilon$ Eri's corona is covered with active
structures. Therefore, there is little space for additional magnetic regions
during the maximum, explaining the small observed cycle amplitude ($\Delta f
\sim 0.12$) in terms of the X-ray luminosity.
  Kepler 63 displays an even higher coverage with magnetic structure than the
corona of $\epsilon$ Eri. This supports the hypothesis that for stars younger
than $<400$ Myr the X-ray cycles are inhibited by a massive presence of coronal
regions.
