Late to the party here, but @freshyfresh gave an outstanding answer already. If you’re carb depleted, and the goal is to reload carbs, weekly reloads can absolutely work, HOWEVER, I found it important to still focus on “clean foods” during this time. Additionally, if I caught myself binging, it means I made a poor food choice. This should be about enjoyment of the meal and the company: not obsessing over the food.
Regarding the hunger issue: what kind of foods do you eat during your HSMs? If you’re including carbs there, I can see an issue. You most likely entered this phase as a “carb adapted” trainee, so that’s your body’s preferred fuel source. If you continue to eat carbs, your body will continue to use them as a fuel source. The issue is: you’re doing a PSMF, so you only eat carbs during your 1 HSM. This means, your body burns through that fuel pretty darn quick, and then keeps sending you signals via blood sugar spikes saying “Hey, feed me feed me”, and it will say that until it gets those carbs during the HSM.
If, however, you limit yourself to fats and proteins, your body eventually becomes “fat adapted”, and will use fat as a preferred fuel source. Well, you are already STORING a good amount of that fuel on your body, so when your body burns through the fuel you ate, it will go for the fat on your body for fuel. The body can only store about 2000 calories worth of carbs for fuel, which is why endurance athletes tend to “bonk” at about the 2 hour mark unless they engage in refeeding: they burn through all the carbs. But the body can stores 10s, if not 100s of thousands of calories of fat on the body. This will mean that, when your body starts using fat as a fuel source, there is significantly less hunger to contend with.
If you are including carbs in your daily HSM, it might be worth cutting them out and just saving them for a weekly refeed.
