Is it fair to say that if you remain in a calorific deficit for a sustained period, your metabolism will kind of adapt to working at that lower intake? So when cutting, especially if progress is stalling and energy levels are low, it might be worth taking a week or so of an elevated calorific intake to ‘reset’ your metabolism, so that when you get back to normal the next week the weight-cutting should continue?
If so, how much of an increase would you recommend making, and how long for (i.e. a week?). At the moment I’m cutting with around 2300-2400 calories a day doing a 3 day weights split and 3 days of HIIT cardio, but my weight loss seems to have stalled.
I can’t think that this can be because I’ve reached maintenance calories, as it’s not exactly a huge amount of calories to be taking in and it’s said that the average sedantary man needs 2500 calories a day just to maintain weight, ignoring exercise.
It is better to cycle your cal intake during the week… keep your body guessing… an occasional refeed in the weekends can help too…
say 2000, 2200, 2400, 2200, 2000, 2300, 3000 thats for a week…
[quote]protein-pro wrote:
It is better to cycle your cal intake during the week… keep your body guessing… an occasional refeed in the weekends can help too…
say 2000, 2200, 2400, 2200, 2000, 2300, 3000 thats for a week…[/quote]
Not really…it’s the overall calorie deficit that matters. I’ll agree it’s important to fuel the body with more cals on more energy demanding days (legs for example). Try cutting back calories on your off or cardio days first. You should progressively dial back the calories the further into a cut you get. Your BMR will decrease as your weight decreases. Before you jump into the “refeed” mindset, try making small changes for a week and see what the scale reads. Refeeds have their benefits as far as leptin upregulation and muscle sparing, but I have found are only necessary once someone gets to a low level of BF (<10%). However, if you’re on a CKD, a weekly or bi-weekly refeed might be smart. What’s your diet like right now?
[quote]protein-pro wrote:
It is better to cycle your cal intake during the week… keep your body guessing… an occasional refeed in the weekends can help too…
say 2000, 2200, 2400, 2200, 2000, 2300, 3000 thats for a week…[/quote]
Not really…it’s the overall calorie deficit that matters. I’ll agree it’s important to fuel the body with more cals on more energy demanding days (legs for example). Try cutting back calories on your off or cardio days first. You should progressively dial back the calories the further into a cut you get. Your BMR will decrease as your weight decreases. Before you jump into the “refeed” mindset, try making small changes for a week and see what the scale reads. Refeeds have their benefits as far as leptin upregulation and muscle sparing, but I have found are only necessary once someone gets to a low level of BF (<10%). However, if you’re on a CKD, a weekly or bi-weekly refeed might be smart. What’s your diet like right now?[/quote]
So we agree, as far as i can see?! But the question was if a week off from the diet is a way to start burning again? It is possible, but i prefer to mini-cycle during the week…
And the refeeds, i think its not the bf that makes it necessary, but the time you are on a diet?
Yes, it’s fair to say that. Our body is quite adaptable and it will establish a new maintenance level if you allow it. It doesn’t know you want to lose your gut, it just knows that resources have become limited and it isn’t sure when it’s next big meal is going to be, so it goes into conservation mode to preserve it’s resources.
If progress has stalled altogether, try throwing in scheduled refeed days every 1-2 weeks. If that doesn’t help, try bringing your calories back to maintenance for 1-2 weeks.
If you have on and off training days there’s really no need to cycle your cals from day to day like that because you’re essentially cycling them with your various activity levels.
Obviously your caloric intake should be related to your expenditure for the day (ie. hard weight session, just cardio, complete ‘off’ day…). Something else to consider, and this was first brought to my attention in an old Chris Aceto article, is that you do not need a caloric deficit every day, but should instead think in terms of a weekly deficit. This is what basically forms the underlying theory behind the cyclical approach many make use of (I use a cyclical approach myself). Adopting a method like this provides a couple of benefits; it allows you to have some almost ‘normal’ days during the week (great for someone new to severe dieting. It also creates a more preventative situation as far as the body downshifting it’s metabolism, and thus losing any of the ‘diet’ effect which is trying to be achieved.
I know there will always be people suggesting to just keep dropping numbers, but the body will keep downshifting, and eventually it gets so used to eating <2000 cals a day, that even going slightly over can have a negative effect on your physique. I’m presently down to about 187 from 209 a couple of months ago. Except for the last week, my average daily intake has been 2700 calories. I offset this with high days of 3000, and low days of 2200. The number of low, med, and high days each week gives me slightly under a lb of weight loss BEFORE I even factor in expenditures of weight sessions and cardio… and let me add that it’s very easy to suffer through a ‘low’ day if you know that the next day will be more normal
Stu, quick question since you seem to have a very good grasp on a cyclic approach.
I am implementing a cyclic approach at the moment, but am cautious (due to having binge eating disorder in the past) of high days, as there is a fine line between a higher intake and me getting out of control on the calories.
Due to this I would like to limit them, but still implement them due to their benefit of preventing this ‘down-regulation’ of overall metabolism. Do you know of any overt signs of a reduced metabolism (aside from loss of heat expenditure) that could be useful indicators of when I can use these days on an as-needed basis?
Resting temperature is the best measure of metabolic rate. This is to be measured upon awaking before any activity takes place, have thermometer ready at bedside. It takes about 5 seconds, you place the thermometer in your mouth and press button, presto.
I keep my ‘high’ days at about what my maintenance numbers would be (sometimes I even have to make sure I get enough carbs, just so the medium and low days are enough of a difference). It does drop a bit as a show gets closer, although if I go 100 or 200 cals over, I don’t sweat it. I figure that the pendulum has to swing wildly in one direction to go just as far in the other (I always liken dieting and playing with your body’s processes to a pendulum).
As far as limiting them, well, the number of ‘high’ days is really dependent on your time frame, and nature of your goal. As I’m in a contest diet mode, I don’t want to have a bunch of high days, just enough to trick my body a bit, replenish glycogen stores, and help me power through my toughest training sessions (usually of my weakest bodypart). Presently, I have one high day every 6 days. You could have 2 if you want, 3 may be pushing it a bit (unless your cycling in a gaining phase). My low days are 2 every 6, but my friend John, who has a lot more weight to lose before the show has 3 every 6.
are you cutting weight for a comp? or to look better?
if its the latter, then scale weight shouldn’t impact your diet arrangement. when you get farther into your diet and your still losing fat, its not as noticeable on the scale after youve dropped water and glycogen. unless your not losing fat AND no scale drops then think about a refeed. I’d say start with a fat refeed first, drop protein a bit, carbs a bit if you can manage, and up the fat to help remind your body what its fuel source should be.
ive been able to put off carb refeeds for extra weeks doing a fat refeed but still not going over maintenance and i still keep dropping fat.
i was freaking out too when the scale was budging only a half pound a weeks sometimes but was getting leaner in the mirror and more vascular plus my lifts werent going down at all so a carb refeed wasnt needed. doing John Romaniello’s most recent fat loss program btw. just my .02
[quote]Peter Orban wrote:
Resting temperature is the best measure of metabolic rate. This is to be measured upon awaking before any activity takes place, have thermometer ready at bedside. It takes about 5 seconds, you place the thermometer in your mouth and press button, presto.
Tracking this before you start cutting calories will give you a baseline to compare against. As soon as you see a 1 degree drop, instantly refeed.[/quote]
whats the logic behind this? ive heard thibs mention it in velocity diet logs but not in an article at all as far as ive read.
decrease in thermoregulation= decrease in BMR= decrease in fat loss?
can sleep/recovery/overall stress affect this? wouldn’t fat loss result in lower thermoregulation since theres less insulating fat?
[quote]Peter Orban wrote:
Resting temperature is the best measure of metabolic rate. This is to be measured upon awaking before any activity takes place, have thermometer ready at bedside. It takes about 5 seconds, you place the thermometer in your mouth and press button, presto.
Tracking this before you start cutting calories will give you a baseline to compare against. As soon as you see a 1 degree drop, instantly refeed.[/quote]
FWIW, that method won’t work as well for women. Our resting temp fluctuates naturally during the month, increasing as we approach ovulation and the dropping immediately afterward. It can be as large as a 2-degree difference for some women. So I guess to use this method a woman would first need to chart her waking temp at maintenence for a full monthly cycle as a baseline before dropping the kcals. I don’t know if any other women were following this thread (and I apologize for the TMI to the guys), I just wanted to put that info out there.
Some amount of metabolic slowdown is basically inevitable when cutting calories. So there’s two ways to handle it.
Take a break. I’ve seen recommendations for “carb-ups” ranging from one meal to 5 hours to 1 or 2 days. Also, you can take a full break of attempting to eat at maintenance for 14 days.
Cut another 10% off your calories. If you cut calories enough, you’ll eventually lose weight. The consequences might just be unbearable after a while.
Some sort of carb cycling or refeeds seems to help keep metabolic slowdown at bay but it will happen. That’s why its best to start off with a moderate deficit and moderate activity level. And slowly decrease cals and increasing training as needed. Eventually if progress stalls then a diet “break” may be in order. Lyle Mcdonald suggests a break every 4-12 weeks depending on how lean you are and how hard you’ve been dieting. He recommends a 2 week break at maintenance eating atleast 100-150g of carbs per day.
Supposedly thats the minimum amount of carbs to up regulate your thyroid and it takes about a week to fully recover. It takes another week for your other hormones and metabolic process to come back up to normal. If you’ve been dieting with very low carbs and calories for some time and progress has stalled I’d suggest a diet break.
If I were you, I’d keep the body guessing…caloric deficit for 5 days…and slightly ‘up’ them on Sats and Suns. I think you’re body’s adapted completely to the whole 3 days with weights, 3 days with HIIT mantra. Mix it up… do weights 5 days a week with volume and low rest periods. Do steady state cardio for a change (on the weight days), and try doing HIIT on Saturdays and Sundays.
I think a big thing is just moving. If I find my self at home for a while doing nothing having already gone to gym and just being at home for rest of day ill do cardio at night or middle of the day just to keep the metabolism up.
Very informative posts as always Stu. I have a question for you though and it is purely inquisitive. It makes sense to me that cycling your calories is intelligent, especially from the perspective of certain days requiring more energy, and others requiring less. It also stands to reason that doing this would keep your metabolism “guessing” for lack of a better term.
Wouldn’t however the same thing be accomplished with having on and off days but keeping your calories consistent? Under those circumstances, aren’t you technically still cycling your calories through your activity level? I believe I first read about this by Berardi. I’m just curious since I’m sure you have played around with both.
DaVinci- I understand what you mean, the simple fact that if you are burning through, thereby actually requiring, more calories due to physical activity, the day’s net value would be different than an ‘off’ day with the same intake. Truly the argument is very convincing, and you may be right, however, as you stated, the body is quite adaptive, and can become complacent to even the most minute aspects of day to day matters.
Sure we can really get into the tiny details, such as the actual macro breakdown of the numbers ingested, and their corresponding Met Coeeficents, but sometimes you don’t really need to overcomplicate matters (at least, I don’t need to -lol)
While you can achieve weight loss through a consistent deficit each day, albeit with different activities each day, the goal of most BBers should be not only to lsoe weight, but to maintain as much muscle mass as possible when dieting. The real magic of a cyclical approach, is that some days your body will think it’s receiving nutritional support for muscle growth (and will react accordingly - build muscle), and others, it will think it’s dieting (and will react accordingly - Burn fat).
So in addition to (ideally) burning body fat AND building (more likely maintaining) muscle, the back and forth will keep your metabolism speeding a long,… the real goal of any effective weight loss program.
Again, I don’t disagree with you, I just think their are better ways for my own particular goals. Hell of a good point though!
Even if you were to disagree with me Stu, I would still be all ears. Just like you, I’m just looking for the optimal approach and your logic makes more sense than mine does. I will have to try this in a month when my next “diet” begins.
I know you said that you don’t overcomplicate matters, but how are you calculating your calories from day to day with this approach? Where are you cutting/adding the calories from day to day. From my experience I would tend to obviously cut my peri-workout carbs and only keep my carbs added in the mornings for breakfast on my off days. On your heavy + light days, are you simply adding in more carbs timed around your workouts?