Ok, - had my first refeed yesterday with
Protein: 305 grams
Carbs: 790 grams
Fat: 54 grams
Took me a lot of time to get through all that, - meals lasting much longer due to the large volumes of pasta, bread, rice wafers etc.
Woke up this morning 3 lbs heavier than yesterday: Anybody else experience this ?? Is that just extra water retention ??
DD90…definately water…I’ve experienced this also and when getting back on your low carb diet, will lose the 3# water gain in a day or 2 depending on how low dropping carbs and volume of glycogen depleting WO’s and/or cardio.
Before I jump into this thread waves hello to everyone-got referred to this website by a member of Dave Draper’s Irononline listserv, and I’m alternating between reading and laughing my butt off.
Anyhoo…I’m wondering if there’s any optimal bodyfat percentage at which to start refeeds, and whether sex has anything to do with it. I’ve only just started doing anything lowcarb/ketogenic and I’m at something between 17 and 18% bodyfat. Female, incidentally, and lifting about four years, and 22 yo. I’ve got Lyle’s book, and Mauro’s, and Dan’s is on the way…but I’ve only found a few articles online and otherwhere that discuss fewer refeeds for women or those at a higher bf percent.
Generally speaking, the lower your BF%, the more often you’ll need to overfeed, and vice versa; however, PLEASE realize that your bf% determines your baseline leptin levels only, or the amount of leptin you will have circulating throughout your system when consuming maintenance calories.
What is much more important, and will play a greater role in how often you need to overfeed, the caloric value of your overfeed, and the length of your overfeed, is your level or caloric restriction. Even if you are 20% body fat, if you drastically restrict calories, your leptin levels will crash and you’ll need to refeed more often than if you were on a moderate diet, etc.
I’m really trying to hammer this point home, as it comes up quite often.
Definitely…I found some articles by Elzi Volk where she mentions that the frequency needs to go up as you reach lower bf levels…I’m wondering also about the male/female differences.
How is the refeed (overfeed) influenced by working out during the day? On refeed-day Im bouncing with energy, and can perform like a madman in the gym (as opposed to after three day on T-Dawg), so I would really like to take advantage of that situation.
And what about cardio? Obviously, cardio during the refeed is meaningless as one only would burn carbs, but say 5-6 hours after refeed-stop? Your body would surely still has felt “overfeed” even if the cardio is performed the same day?
If you want to workout on that day; go ahead. In fact, I’ve done this a few times with nice results (sometimes I just want to completely relax and have an “off” day, but other times I like to get in there and throw some weight around). If you do this, I would suggest that you bump the caloric content of your refeed up by about 25-50%.
As far as cardio is concerned, resuming with some HIIT the next morning and then an afternoon/evening moderate, longer duration session is the absolute best approach, IMO.
in regards to workouts on refeed days, take a look at the post on the thread “whats wrong with fat on refeeds”
Vain
I have been doing my workouts exclusively on my refeed days (Chads NB3 program - 2 times a week) and I’ve seen good results while using no androgens.
Beamuh
Well…
Since alot of people were “starting to try refeeds” I was wondering what are the results?
Also some questions for Da joel, Timbo and E.C (and all others)
I’m going to start doing refeeds. I’m on a 2500 cal, -900 deficit, and about 120-150 grams carbs a day. about 7.5% BF. should I drop the carbs/cals on non-refeed days for the refeed to be efficient? btw I’m not using an androgen. I am using methoxy-7.
I have a problem with controled refeeds - the insulin surges makes them “out of control refeeds, eat the house down and go barge on the supermarket like a shipwreck survivor”. any tips beside, “suck it up, pussy”?
Thanks
S-MAN.
After a couple of months of changing variables, I’ve found something useful for me. I have an 8-h refeed about once every five days. For the most part, that’s clean (black bean soup, oatmeal); I just don’t worry about carb grams or calories, and eat what I’m hungry for. I’ll also have a couple of sweet things, like cookies or fat-free frozen yogurt.
As far as controlling the refeed, I recommend starting later in the day. It’s not best from a nutrient partioning standpoint, but when you go to sleep, the refeed is over. Personally, I use my martial arts class as a check; I’ll start at 11am, and eight hours later I know I’ll be out the door, going to train. I’ll be occupied the next three hours, and when I get home at 10, my body’s ‘food. now’ mechanism is switched off.
Hope this is useful.
Glute, send me an email and I’ll send you another article regarding overfeeding when not using androgens. You could also use my CD/EDT approach w/ the no androgen recommendations.
Joel