Of refeeds and diet breaks

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  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,939 Member
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    Sad, sad @anubis609
    Looks... well sized!
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,565 Member
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    That's...spectacular :o Hope it heals up soon!
  • Terebynthia
    Terebynthia Posts: 75 Member
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    Wowser - that looks sore!
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
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    Lol. Right on the money. You win. I can't confirm or deny that some analgesic properties of an EC stack may or may not have worked in that favor.
  • ZoneFive
    ZoneFive Posts: 570 Member
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    I'm looking for book or (online) course recommendations. And I'm requesting in this thread because I have a lot of faith in you who post regularly here.

    I've been searching for a basic human biology/nutrition book or class because I find myself at a loss trying to grok some of the more science-based comments and posts on MFP. It's a looong time since high school and college, and I honestly didn't pay serious attention to biology classes back then. There are a lot of gaps in my understanding of the basics, and I'm sure that even what I remember has been surpassed by better research over the years. (For instance, I'm pretty sure bloodletting has fallen out of favor by now.) I don't expect to become another SciBabe, but I need a serious review of the basics.

    Google and Amazon are so rife with woo and bro-sci that they're pretty useless, even when deploying a strong sense of skepticism. So I turn to you. Got any recommendations for a neophyte?
  • Terebynthia
    Terebynthia Posts: 75 Member
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    Would anything here be of help? https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/
  • ZoneFive
    ZoneFive Posts: 570 Member
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    Terebynthia wrote: »
    Would anything here be of help? https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

    Aha. Yes. MIT will be an excellent place to start out. Thanks very much!
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
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    anubis609 wrote: »
    This is a good example of what I've mentioned previously, where a response to hormonal down regulation will manifest in all dieters, not just lean. And the more aggressive the deficit, the harder those effects will be, and the shorter the dieting period will have to be.

    The diet break does not have to be so extended, though it can if that's your choice. Diet breaks are usually 2 weeks between dieting phases. So, after 2 weeks assess where you're at mentally, and if you would like to do another round of dieting, you can create a much more sustainable strategy.

    This is actually a very good segue into an article I just came across this morning, and it drives the point hard that leptin, and subsequent hormone cascade, does indeed take more than several days to return to baseline, and that reverse dieting (gradually increasing calories until maintenance is achieved) is doing nothing except just prolonging the deficit period:

    My advice would be to prioritize getting rid of the urges as opposed to maintaining your post-diet weight. However, the following advice may be able to accomplish both to some degree. The first step is to immediately return to a surplus for a few days post diet. It’s been shown that high carbohydrate intake has the ability to temporarily boost leptin levels in the short term [15-16] which is the science behind the concept of high-carb refeeds on a diet. Give yourself at least 3 days at a surplus with a hefty amount of carbs and then drop calories to maintenance levels once hunger levels and urges begin to subside. Those surplus days can be untracked (recommended) or tracked depending on your comfort level. But it must be a surplus followed by a maintenance period.

    Sorry to be so long in replying - internet access is still pretty iffy for me and I do a lot of keeping up via cell phone, but I absolutely detest trying to post anything with the stupid phone app!

    I did break down this weekend and raised my calorie limit to 1800. I kept trying to push for the last 10 lb loss before trying a break, but it just wasn't working. My weight has been bouncing around 272 lbs for the last month, though I'm having "plumbing" problems too which makes the scale wildly inconsistent.....

    I really have no idea where my maintenance level actually is. MFP says a sedentary person at my weight has maintenance at 2460 calories; calculator.net says 2360. While I've been sloppy in my logging lately, I still seriously doubt I'm consuming anywhere near either amount - I'm going over, yes, but not more than 500 calories a day and certainly nowhere near 1000 calories a day, and yet I haven't really lost any weight in 2 months. Water weight has been horrible the last 2 months, which makes it really hard to even tell what is going on.

    I've tried lowering my carbs to see if that would help and set my macros to 30% carbs, 40% fats, and 30% proteins, but I'm not meeting those at all and think I'm actually somewhere in the neighborhood of 45% carbs, 30% fats, and 25% proteins - and that's being generous. I think I'm averaging somewhere between 90 and 100g of protein a day and thats with me focusing on protein while still trying to balance calorie intake.

    Starting yesterday, I raised my limit to 1800. The side effect of this is that it helps the mental thing with the added 400 calories a day. Also, I'm attempting to reign in the logging and tighten it up - that means no more half cut sweet teas! Back to unsweet - as long as its strong enough to hold a spoon upright lol

    I'll leave it at the 1800 level and work on tightening up my logging for the next 2 weeks and then reassess at that point. If I still haven't quite hit maintenance, I'll up it again until I can find that maintenance point.

    Thank you for your advice! Its hard for me to understand at time as I'm not a biology major and struggle to grasp the intricacies involved in the whole nutrition thing; I do well to get a basic, simple plan going, and while I'm trying to get the macros better balance, I focus more on the calories and let the macros fall where they lie most days.
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
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    anubis609 wrote: »
    We do super low carb by actively avoiding pure happiness lol.

    But while we're on the topic, and because I can't seem to ever get away from the debate (I think I have a dark passion for joining them), let's talk about carbs.

    Just to get it out of the way, first and foremost, dietary carbs are entirely optional as a macro. Full stop. They are biologically non-essential for survival. So all of the "you need carbs to live" statements can just see their way to a biochemistry and nutrition textbook. Our bodies make their own internal glucose from substrates taken from amino and fatty acids. This is known as gluconeogenesis: to make new glucose. In ketogenic diets, after a while of restricting carbs, our organs are perfectly adept at running on fatty acids (also known as being 'fat adapted') and glucose gets exclusive rights to fueling certain cells and parts of the brain where ketones can't.

    Now for the intricacy. Survival =/= optimal. Just because we can survive without them doesn't mean they need to be eliminated or reduced to an unsavory degree. Dietary carbs are a pure fuel source. Runners and high performing athletes carb up prior to their events because they act like diesel fuel; easily burned and powerful catalysts for energy. Bodybuilders carb up during their bulk because carbs are an anabolic source of energy that use insulin to drive glucose into muscle cells instead of fat cells during anaerobic resistance training. But guess what macro usually gets reduced during their cut phases? Yup. Carbs. Because in a caloric deficit, they all know that energy is going to be reduced and when you don't need as much energy, you don't need as much of the fuel to supply it.

    For the average joe/jane, an excessive amount of carbs isn't necessary. To clear the air, when I'm referring to carbs, I'm talking about glucose, sucrose, and fructose. If the first thing anyone thinks of is donuts, pastries, or ice cream, those are classified as hyper-palatable, easily overeaten treats that are a combination of carbs+fat+salt and low protein, designed to make anyone overeat, likely due to their low protein content.

    For any, and I mean literally ANY, diet to work, adherence is the absolute dictator of progress. Your style of diet does not affect your mailman's, just like a facebook/mfp/internet group's style of diet doesn't affect yours. As long as protein is constant between all diets, the only other 2 macros that get swapped around are carbs and fat, with vegetarian/vegan and keto/carnivore dieters representing the extremes of either end, respectively.

    Boy do I wish the keto/low carb crowd could grasp the 1st and foremost statement! I hear so much woo on that one - one friend absolutely insisted he could eat a million calories and lose weight because the body is running on ketones only and not on sugar at all....

    I've wondered if lower carb would be a benefit to me, but despite trying to get the carbs down, I'm not really succeeding. I'm lucky to hold to around 40-45% carbs and struggle to get to 25% protein and 30% fat. I like my meat, but I like vegetables too, and I just don't want to build my diet completely around meat and dairy-besides which, I have to be real careful with the amount of dairy I consume anyway. I don't mind giving up fruit - I don't eat a lot of fruit anyway, but I do like my vegetables and prefer a rounded diet.

    Its nice to know that low carb isn't completely necessary - I do get tired of getting the sermon from the keto-ites who swear that my satiety problems would all go away if I'd just do keto.......
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    edited March 2018
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    Nony_Mouse wrote: »
    Remind me what size deficit that is for you? It may simply be too aggressive for you, even if all the general rules of thumb on what you should be able to sustain say otherwise. I say take a break, even just for a couple of weeks, then restart with a higher calorie limit.

    I was hoping that 1400 was at around 1,000 calorie deficit as I was shooting for averaging 2 lbs off per week, but I'm not sure it actually is 1,000 deficit for me. I haven't lost anything in 2 months - I'll post a 3 lb loss only to gain it back the next week. I'll be down 3 days straight then on my weight record day, I'll pop up by 3 lbs. I've been really struggling with a water weight yo-yo lately. I'm averaging right around the 272-273 lb mark and ahve been since January; I can't seem to get below 270 lbs for the life of me!

    I started at 375 lbs. I dropped 100 lbs last year; I'd like to lose at least 50 this year, though I'm not off to a very good start :( If I go by the conventional wisdom of not losing more than 1% of your body weight, I'm still in the range where 2 lbs/wk is still safe; its just not working right now. I know I'm over eating; I just have a really hard time believing I'm over-eating to the tune of 1,000 calories a day. I've got that built in calorie calculator working in my head most days, so when I do eat something, my brain is automatically calculating the calories in the item, and while I know my eyeballing of portion sizes is off, I wouldn't think it was that bad!

    Still, I am going to try to tighten my logging up for the next 2 weeks and try to reign in the "cheats" and see where that gets me; perhaps I am worse off than I thought I was. I'm going ahead and moving my calorie limit up to 1800, too. According to the calculator, that should be somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1 lb a week loss technically; we'll see if I actually lose that. I'm hoping the bump up will help with the satiety problems I've been having.

    I lost the 100 lbs last year with a continual deficit; I didn't know anything about diet breaks until late in the year. With that in mind, if I can find my maintenance level, would the 2 weeks at maintenance still be recommended, or would I need more than that to compensate for the long stretch of deficit? And while I'm doing this, should I deliberately boost my carbs to 50% or higher of the total (not that that would be that difficult for me.....)

    I'm striving really hard to get at least 100g of protein in a day; most days, that's a struggle. I've started back to using milk for my coffee, eggs for breakfast, protein bars when I can get them into my calorie range; I'm just having a really hard time getting enough protein in with my calorie budget limit and still get a varied diet! I keep jerky to snack on, and cheese, but I have to admit that while I love cheese, a 1oz portion at 80 calories doesn't provide much protein and really doesn't hold me long at all. Same problem with jerky and other lower calorie snacks. And fruit will actually make me hungrier! I know I should bring more vegetables for snacks, but I haven't won that battle with myself yet.
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
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    mph323 wrote: »
    Try putting garlic cloves in roasted artichokes - they come out spreadable like butter. Trim the artichoke, cut off the top, open up the leaves somewhat, drizzle olive oil, cut into the center and insert a garlic clove or two, wrap in heavy foil and bake for an hour or so (depending on the size) at 425 degrees. You can mash the soft garlic with butter and spread it on crusty bread with dinner.

    One more and then I'm caught up lol

    This sounds like heaven! I'm off to get an artichoke to night lol Though I've never done anything with one that was whole and fresh; I've always just used the jarred ones.....

    I wonder what this would taste like on flat bread, with shredded chicken, roma tomatoes, spinach, a little basil, and maybe some black olives and a little cheese? sort of a mediterranean pizza......
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
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    oh, one more - did anyone see the article on the front page concerning diet breaks? I'd love to see your comments!

    http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/taking-break-from-diet-lose-more-weight/
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
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    ZoneFive wrote: »
    I'm looking for book or (online) course recommendations. And I'm requesting in this thread because I have a lot of faith in you who post regularly here.

    I've been searching for a basic human biology/nutrition book or class because I find myself at a loss trying to grok some of the more science-based comments and posts on MFP. It's a looong time since high school and college, and I honestly didn't pay serious attention to biology classes back then. There are a lot of gaps in my understanding of the basics, and I'm sure that even what I remember has been surpassed by better research over the years. (For instance, I'm pretty sure bloodletting has fallen out of favor by now.) I don't expect to become another SciBabe, but I need a serious review of the basics.

    Google and Amazon are so rife with woo and bro-sci that they're pretty useless, even when deploying a strong sense of skepticism. So I turn to you. Got any recommendations for a neophyte?

    @ZoneFive Chris Masterjohn has a very good list of books to get started if you're interested in nutrition, microbiology, chemistry, and A&P.

    https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2017/08/05/textbooks/
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
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    @anubis609 Thank you very much!

    I have found that my brain and my stomach are not on the same wavelength when it comes to fullness, and there have been times where my stomach is telling me "I'm full" but my mind is craving more food and is screaming "it's hungry". Its actually a very strange feeling, but also a powerful one because its the mind part that is extremely difficult to overcome, especially as the day goes on and the stresses that accumulate over the day wear out my self control.

    I've definitely learned not to keep snack foods in my house as I know I can't stop at a few. And there's a few that are going to have to go because my intake of them has slowly crept up over time. I can't tell you the number of times I'll go into the kitchen on a evening and open the pantry door and the fridge door wanting to snack on something, and I've gotten better at not having anything there to catch my attention, but sometimes my brain is very creative...... I've gotten better in many ways - donuts don't tempt me anymore, and I can usually bypass cookies and brownies now when they show up in the lunchroom. But a lot of it is my mind wants to eat - it doesn't really care what kind of food it is, it just wants me to be eating something, and doesn't listen to the signals to tell me I'm done. What I do gravitate toward are breads and bread-like substances, the heavy starches, etc. I've gotten better at just saying no--I'll tell the waitress at Olive Garden to not even bring any breadsticks out because I know that I won't be able to stop at a half or even one - but breads and starches get my attention way faster than even the sweet stuff. And I still can't bypass pizza.....Carb items like bread are usually what fulfills my cravings and has the biggest saity hit for me than anything else. Sadly, they tend to be high in calories, too, and do nothing on the protein front. I'm finding a few alternatives and even have figured out how to get homemade bread down to a decent level, but its still something I limit - to the point of keeping a loaf of bread in the freeze and popping a slice in the toaster on occasion because if I don't, the loaf spoils before I finish it.

    I do need to change up what I'm eating and get back to logging better than I have been. I've tried skipping breakfast to save more calories for dinner, but that backfires on me because I'm so hungry that by the time I get to my "feeding window" I over eat to compensate. Skipping dinner doesn't work as the evening is when I really get hungry and snacky - so I've already found that intermittent fasting doesn't work for me. If I'm out in the field and working, I can skip lunch, but if I stuck at my desk all day long, the drive to snack is insane. I think a lot of it is a response to boredom or tedium; if I'm working on a project I enjoy, I get so enveloped in it that I forget to eat. Unfortunately, my job does not fall into that category!

    And I am fatigued on the diet front. Other than attempting a break back at Thanksgiving, I've been at it non-stop for over a year. It was just very hard to give myself permission to take a break. I'll work this week on reigning the logging back in, then look at trying to change up what I'm eating to see if that can help on the saity front. I have increased my calorie limit for now, and that's already been helping today. And if the danged snow would go away, I'd start working on getting some exercise in to help....

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