Of refeeds and diet breaks

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  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
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    lightenup2016 wrote: »
    Yep, having pizza and Girl Scout cookies tonight, accompanied with beer. I just thought I had read that lower fat was important for a refeed, but if I don't need to worry about it that much, then I won't.

    GottaBurnEmAll--I'm sorry about your troubles with the cold! I'm sure it's worse up where you are! I don't enjoy running on the treadmill either, so I've been doing a lot of walking on my treadmill desk while working. At least I know that's pretty sustainable because I have to work! Killing two birds with one stone!

    So can you ladies tell me, does the running with a deficit not work for you even if you do the re-feeds? Or did you try that?

    I ran on a deficit until I started to get leaner. Once I didn't have a high enough body fat level, it started making me too hungry while I was still trying to lose weight.

    I could still lose some body fat, but I'm at an acceptable level, but close to lean for my age. It's a dance.

    It doesn't help that I can't stand to run with food in my stomach.
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
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    Nony_Mouse wrote: »
    anubis609 wrote: »
    Russellb97 wrote: »
    It's all about glycogen stores. Eat a surplus for a day with a focus on carbohydrates, at least 500 grams of pure carbs. If glycogen is restored then so will the hormones that factor into energy homeostasis.
    It's literally that simple.

    Physiologically, yes, 500-600g of glucose/starchy carbs will saturate glycogen. The long lasting belief was that was all that was needed to bump leptin back up. Even if you read Lyle's older books, RFL/UD2, he'll mention the same. Which came out to roughly around 5g cho/lb of bw.

    The reason this thread exists is because recent evidence suggests the delayed response in hormone up regulation in conjunction with overfeeding studies.

    1) Yeah, rodent studies = blah blah, but the takeaway is that hormonal response wasn't measurable until the overfeeding period was well into 1-2 days. For a rat. That's a long time for humans: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2875678/

    2) Human study following the oxidation rates in response to substrate overfeeding. TL;DR, there's also a delay to switch priority oxidation rates: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897177/
    Russellb97 wrote: »

    I'm saying that leptin has less to do with body-fat and far more to do with energy homeostasis. Glycogen depletion and saturation are tremendous signs of that. One day is enough. Two days work too.

    3) Actually, leptin is directly affected by adipose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptin

    Energy homeostasis = regulation between substrate storage and oxidation. Carb overfeeding > glycogen saturation > shift in oxidation priority to burning glucose > halt lipolysis > adipocytes signal leptin to regulate intake and stop overfeeding because it thinks it's getting fat (because lipolysis has stopped) > prepare for lipolysis and fat burning once enough glucose has been oxidized. This is how this works.

    You can eat all the fatty food you want along with carbs. That doesn't change the fact that during an overfeeding of carbs, lipolysis stops and stores any incoming fat. As a lean and active person, you can take the fat hit and be fine. Literally, no one cares what you do to your own body.

    Tell an overweight/obese person, or people who have a history of ED, to have a binge refeed and don't worry about the consequences is unsavory and practically arrogant to flaunt your weight loss and success in the face of those people. Just because it works for you doesn't mean it will work for everyone.

    This right here is why we still need an awesome button.

    Cosigned.
  • lightenup2016
    lightenup2016 Posts: 1,055 Member
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    anubis609 wrote: »
    lightenup2016 wrote: »
    There is so much information in this thread, I wish I could read through all of the info here. Is there a "magic" percentage of maintenance calories that seems to work to replenish glycogen? PP stated maybe half of BMR, but if my calculations are correct, that only puts me at 165g carbs, which I hit pretty often even at a deficit.

    I'm new to this whole refeed concept, having in the past cycled my calories (1450 cal x6 days, 2000 x1 day) but not paid attention to macros. Is it very important to keep fat lower than usual? When pre-logging for today, I played around with the numbers for quite a while, but with what I'll have for dinner with my family, plus what I feel like I need for satiety (ie, protein), I found it difficult to get carbs very high, fat very low, and protein where I'm comfortable. I settled at 257g carbs and about 61g fat, but only 74g protein. My usual default number of fat grams would be 69g for this number of calories.

    Thanks for any advice--I'd like to be proactive about not getting too low in leptin, high in cortisol, etc.

    Not a magic percentage, but muscle glycogen holds roughly 400g and liver holds about 100g, and ranges depending on total body mass, hence, the advice to eat ~500g of digestible (starchy) carbs. You could do it with fiber food, but the amount of food alone after subtracting fiber leads to a lot of stomach and digestion issues.

    Assuming you depleted glycogen throughout the week (liver glycogen gets depleted the fastest and first before muscle which needs to be depleted manually via resistance/endurance training), then the concept of a traditional refeed was to eat as many carbs as you could given your bodyweight ~4-5g/lb of bw for resistance/strength athletes, and upwards to 8g/lb of bw for endurance athletes, and even 12g/lb of bw for ultra endurance athletes.

    Refeeds are basically a controlled overfeeding. You're going to go over calories for that day, but that's not a worry. One day of overfeeding isn't going to derail you. Carbs are special in the fact that pure carb overfeeding needs to be pushed well into the thousands of grams before de novo lipogenesis (DNL) occurs - AKA new fat cell generation from overfeeding.

    The reason why fat remains as low as possible is because like I said in my response earlier is that carbs take priority as a fuel source to be burned (after alcohol - there's no storage for alcohol so the body stops burning everything else to burn off alcohol first), so any incoming fat goes straight to storage and waits until enough glucose gets depleted before insulin signals allow for lipolysis to happen again.

    Now for the caveat. You don't *have* to completely saturate glycogen to benefit from a refeed. Instead of having one day of complete carb overfeeding (which isn't even fun, btw), you extend that period over a few days, so you just have a slight surplus or even maintenance days with higher carb and lower fat. You could even reduce protein just a bit to make room for more carbs. This helps with allowing the [presumably already lean] dieter to feel psychologically satisfied and on point with their diet while continuing a fat loss cycle.

    The other advantage of taking a spike day and spreading it out over several days is that it reduces the temptation to fall into a binge/purge cycle. Some people never knew they had an ED until they developed one on their own by following some weird IIFYM gymbro advice, or just by chronically dieting and not seeing the development of anorexia happening because they were fixated on the scale. Whatever the case is, unless you're a die hard fanatic of bodybuilding levels of leanness, which aren't sustainable in the long term, no one needs to go to extremes to get results they should be happy to live with at a healthy body fat level.

    If this is true for men, surely those numbers would be lower in women, correct? I do thank you for the info. That is what I'd read about fat, is that it should be low so it's not stored. I'm so used to not worrying much about my fat intake that it's difficult to get it very low.

    I do like the idea of two days at maintenance, rather than one big blowout day. That will be my plan. Thanks again!
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
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    anubis609 wrote: »
    <snippage>

    The other advantage of taking a spike day and spreading it out over several days is that it reduces the temptation to fall into a binge/purge cycle. Some people never knew they had an ED until they developed one on their own by following some weird IIFYM gymbro advice, or just by chronically dieting and not seeing the development of anorexia happening because they were fixated on the scale. Whatever the case is, unless you're a die hard fanatic of bodybuilding levels of leanness, which aren't sustainable in the long term, no one needs to go to extremes to get results they should be happy to live with at a healthy body fat level.

    That bolded would be me, lightenup. While I wouldn't say I have a full-blown ED, I do verge on the edge of ED behavior with binge/restrict cycling and fell into it in the process of losing weight.

    I regularly eat starchy carbs and veg, keep my protein to at least 100 grams, and get a decent amount of fat. When I refeed, I run just slightly under maintenance (because my logging isn't super tight) and simply eat a lot more starch. Potatoes or extra servings of oatmeal or breakfast cereals are my favorite refeed foods.



  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
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    anubis609 wrote: »
    I heard that. I've been relatively busy myself. My body's prodding me to reduce consumption by reducing hunger. The joys of periodized eating. Though, I am up exactly 2 pounds after 1.5 months, so this controlled bulk is going well. Mini cut probably gonna happen around early/mid March for about 4 weeks, then back to lean bulk/gaintenance.

    Yeah I'm basically running an unintentional deficit on days I'm working (6 days a week atm), then eating all the fuds on my off day to balance it out and regain some energy. Deficits aren't huge, but up to 500 cals which at my size isn't the smartest thing. I have a chocolate supply in the lab now though, so that may help.
  • gamerbabe14
    gamerbabe14 Posts: 876 Member
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    Question...if I eat at maintenance once or twice a week, is a diet break really necessary? I'm still losing about 1-.5lb a week.
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
    edited February 2018
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    heybales wrote: »
    gamerbabe14 wrote: »
    Question...if I eat at maintenance once or twice a week, is a diet break really necessary? I'm still losing about 1-.5lb a week.

    Within the first few pages are some finer points as to WHY the 2 days in a row in studies have shown extra benefits for hormonal regulation.

    So just like most things it seems like - doing it a specific way shows best results, doing it slightly different can still show results. Shoot, like the start of weight loss, do many things wrong and still lose.

    But what you can make happen that helps you adhere and sustain trumps minor efficiency improvements.
    Like if 2 days at maintenance made you binge mid-way through the deficit days - any efficiency improvements are lost.

    Very much so. As much as studies show what might be the ideal, it's always going to come down to individualized patterns that actually work to adhere to your diet. Diet breaks serving as a mental and physiological reprieve from being in a chronic deficit

    I will reiterate that if a person starts their diet in an overfat state, they have enough energy stores to support an extended dieting period. The diet break as discussed in this thread is to address the problems leaner dieters run into when trying to maximize fat loss and have been in a chronic dieting phase, AKA they're on a permacut.

    Not to say that normal or over fat dieters can't run into the same problems, but generally, the leaner they are, the harder they feel the effects of a diet, simply because there's not enough body fat to sustain a long dieting period.

    Losing scale weight, which can be psychologically motivating, isn't necessarily the same as knowing that hormone response is slowly down regulating to meet a reduced energy intake. Just pay attention to overall mood, hunger, energy, recovery, rest, etc. to let you know whether or not you might be cutting too aggressively or for too long.

    All in all, do you need to have a diet break? The short answer is eventually; everyone benefits to have one at some point. But when that happens is dependent per person.
  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
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    @anubis609 "permacut" ... I like that!

    So true. The idea of a giving up deficit, especially after losing a lot of weight over the long term can be very difficult, psychologically, to give up. Even with a small deficit, such as that for a recomp, feels like the new normal. And truly eating at maintenance can feel like over-eating, perhaps even a binge for that person.

    For many people, "normal" portions are so oversized (Hello, Cheesecake Factory!). However, for us long-term losers/maintainers, I think "normal" can come from a very different perspective. Weighing and measuring, we know what portions are in relation to the serving size on the packaging--how they were intended.

    Changing from a weight-loss deficit to a recomp deficit was challenging, and still is. I am definitely worried about regaining weight. (I gave away all my fat clothes--no safety blanket!) It was "safer" to go into recomp.

    Meeting, gotta run! :smiley:
  • gamerbabe14
    gamerbabe14 Posts: 876 Member
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    heybales wrote: »
    gamerbabe14 wrote: »
    Question...if I eat at maintenance once or twice a week, is a diet break really necessary? I'm still losing about 1-.5lb a week.

    Within the first few pages are some finer points as to WHY the 2 days in a row in studies have shown extra benefits for hormonal regulation.

    So just like most things it seems like - doing it a specific way shows best results, doing it slightly different can still show results. Shoot, like the start of weight loss, do many things wrong and still lose.

    But what you can make happen that helps you adhere and sustain trumps minor efficiency improvements.
    Like if 2 days at maintenance made you binge mid-way through the deficit days - any efficiency improvements are lost.

    I've spent some time reading the thread and also listening to some of the great videos. I was under the impression that the diet break was longer than 2 days and a refeed was 1-2 days of a higher carb diet. So if I was already at maintenance frequently enough, would taking a 1-2 week diet break aide me when back in deficit or if I am already getting some of that benefit today. Psychologically, I'm feeling good.
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
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    gamerbabe14 wrote: »
    heybales wrote: »
    gamerbabe14 wrote: »
    Question...if I eat at maintenance once or twice a week, is a diet break really necessary? I'm still losing about 1-.5lb a week.

    Within the first few pages are some finer points as to WHY the 2 days in a row in studies have shown extra benefits for hormonal regulation.

    So just like most things it seems like - doing it a specific way shows best results, doing it slightly different can still show results. Shoot, like the start of weight loss, do many things wrong and still lose.

    But what you can make happen that helps you adhere and sustain trumps minor efficiency improvements.
    Like if 2 days at maintenance made you binge mid-way through the deficit days - any efficiency improvements are lost.

    I've spent some time reading the thread and also listening to some of the great videos. I was under the impression that the diet break was longer than 2 days and a refeed was 1-2 days of a higher carb diet. So if I was already at maintenance frequently enough, would taking a 1-2 week diet break aide me when back in deficit or if I am already getting some of that benefit today. Psychologically, I'm feeling good.

    You're correct. The diet break is a literal break from dieting to eat at or around maintenance for an extended period of time, 1-2+ weeks.

    At your current pace, if you are eating maintenance calories intermittently during your dieting phase - by definition "dieting phase" is a net calorie deficit on average - then you wouldn't need the diet break necessarily, if you're not feeling any of the hard negative effects.

    Obviously, there's a point where you literally couldn't lose any more body fat and survive (talking about essential body fat requirements), but for the most part, the way you've set your eating pattern is fine. It's what is allowing you to continue dieting without it being too aggressive.

    "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

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