Of refeeds and diet breaks

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  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
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    bmeadows380 wrote: »
    @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....

    I have a deeply, deeply boring job and have found that I've done best keeping the nibbles at bay by eating multiple snacks throughout the day instead of a traditional breakfast or lunch meal. The only hot meal I eat most days is dinner. I have no idea if it would help you, but it sounds like you've tried a lot of other things already.
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
    edited March 2018
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    MegaMooseEsq wrote: »
    Whew, hope everyone else had a more calm weekend than I did - there was some epic emotional shakedowns going down in the Moose household the last couple of days. Thankfully all appears to have been resolved for the better, but I still feel a little concussed. In any case, my spouse and I quit smoking yesterday - I've been wanting to quit all winter and put my foot down about quitting by my birthday (which is tomorrow and also the first day of spring) so here we go! As a side-effect of that, we're going to be cutting way down on eating or drinking out for at least a month or so, so I've decided to take the next couple of weeks as a reverse refeed - two weeks of straight deficit! We'll see how that goes - I've done longer deficit stretches occasionally before but it's been a while, and I'm perfectly willing to jettison the idea if I start getting hangry or lose energy or whatever. The ice is finally melting enough to start running again and I'm not giving that up for a couple extra pounds off!

    I've started taking fish oil, too, so maybe that will help with something or other? I'm actually a little confused about what fish oil is supposed to do exactly, but I finally read one too many reputable people recommending it for me to keep ignoring it. At least I'm not prone to the fishy burps. I'm 7 workouts into my lifting program and am finally starting to get to actually heavy (for me) stuff - I probably started too conservative, but I figured spending the time to work on form wouldn't hurt. Even after just a couple of weeks I can really feel my strength improving, especially in the whole core-and-posterior area, and I think I maybe managed to flex my bicep yesterday? Not that my arm looks different or anything, but I'm just not sure I ever intentionally isolated my bicep before. Fun!

    In any case, that's how I'm doing, refeed crew- hope everyone (including the kitties) is doing well!

    Congrats on quitting smoking! Nicotine withdrawal hits some harder than others, so hopefully you actually are able to get through it. On that front, there are cognitive and physiological benefits to nicotine intake, including maintaining weight loss (I mean nicotine as a chemical, not in the form of a cigarette), so if you need to supplement nicotine replacement therapy (NRT; gum, lozenges, e-cigarettes, etc) then there's also no perceivable harm in those things. It's the carcinogenic effects of lighting up a combustible substance that does harm, not nicotine in itself. That said, it's also an addictive substance, so I'm not promoting the use of NRT haphazardly, I'm just suggesting them if you start feeling the negative associations with quitting cold turkey. https://examine.com/supplements/nicotine/

    As for fish oil, there are almost too many positive associations with it to not recommend it: https://examine.com/supplements/fish-oil/
  • SpanishFusion
    SpanishFusion Posts: 261 Member
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    What I really want to do is get back to it. Call these past 5 days a diet break, skip the planned one, and move back to my deficit, but I'm not sure that what I've done is enough to be a beneficial diet break.
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
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    Leeg5656 wrote: »
    Hey guys and girls! I had a week/end/week. Thurs - yesterday. A family member passed so there was an emergency 1000 mile round trip. I tried my best to eat as best as I could, but it is extremely hard when traveling like that. The first day was OK because I was able to pack decent food/snacks. The next days were full of Quick-Trip, take-out, drive-thru, and whatever was available before/after the funeral. I even grazed on M&M's because of nervous eating...there was alot of nervous eating actually. Needless to say, I went over my goal and probably over my maintenance (Heavy on the carbs). It wasn't a full on binge. I tried to be mindful, but ... This morning my body is trying to shed the slug (tmi, I know). This is what I call LIFE.

    My question is: I was planning on taking a diet break at the end of this month, but the last 5 days were at the very conservative at maintenance. (I'm actually not real sure because my logging was sloppy.) Should I just get back at it and then take the break when planned? Should I consider those 5 days my diet break and skip the end of the month break? Would that be enough time for my glycogen to be replenished? They were carb heavy days, hence the slug. Or should I consider those 5 days the first 5 days of a break and continue at maintenance for another week or so?

    Condolences to you and the family.

    As for the diet break conundrum, consider the past 5 days of untracked/relaxed eating as part of your diet break. It's up to you to extend it, but from here on out track to maintenance if you do extend it, then get back to your regularly scheduled deficit. Being flexible in what life throws at you is part of life long maintenance. In the big picture, those small unexpected blips don't amount to much. If you're consistent with your diet 42/52 weeks of the year, that's just over an 80% adherence rate, which falls in line with part of the 80/20 rule (usually applied to nutritional quality, but assuming those 42 weeks focused on nutrient density, then it works out to be the same).

    I think there's a bit of confusion regarding glycogen repletion and diet breaks. Those two concepts are mutually exclusive and separate ideas from each other.

    With refeeds you can completely saturate glycogen in about 2-3 days by eating a buttload of easily digestible carbs and topping off stores in succeeding days. Glycogen depletion occurs when you perform aerobic and total body anaerobic exercise consistently throughout the week while keeping carb intake minimal.

    Diet breaks are literal as the name implies. Taking a break from a diet (period of calorie deficit). This is to give your body and mind a reprieve from the cumulative stress buildup from a chronic deficit, and to get hormonal regulation back up to speed to match your current lower body weight.
  • SpanishFusion
    SpanishFusion Posts: 261 Member
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    anubis609 wrote: »
    Leeg5656 wrote: »
    Hey guys and girls! I had a week/end/week. Thurs - yesterday. A family member passed so there was an emergency 1000 mile round trip. I tried my best to eat as best as I could, but it is extremely hard when traveling like that. The first day was OK because I was able to pack decent food/snacks. The next days were full of Quick-Trip, take-out, drive-thru, and whatever was available before/after the funeral. I even grazed on M&M's because of nervous eating...there was alot of nervous eating actually. Needless to say, I went over my goal and probably over my maintenance (Heavy on the carbs). It wasn't a full on binge. I tried to be mindful, but ... This morning my body is trying to shed the slug (tmi, I know). This is what I call LIFE.

    My question is: I was planning on taking a diet break at the end of this month, but the last 5 days were at the very conservative at maintenance. (I'm actually not real sure because my logging was sloppy.) Should I just get back at it and then take the break when planned? Should I consider those 5 days my diet break and skip the end of the month break? Would that be enough time for my glycogen to be replenished? They were carb heavy days, hence the slug. Or should I consider those 5 days the first 5 days of a break and continue at maintenance for another week or so?

    Condolences to you and the family.

    As for the diet break conundrum, consider the past 5 days of untracked/relaxed eating as part of your diet break. It's up to you to extend it, but from here on out track to maintenance if you do extend it, then get back to your regularly scheduled deficit. Being flexible in what life throws at you is part of life long maintenance. In the big picture, those small unexpected blips don't amount to much. If you're consistent with your diet 42/52 weeks of the year, that's just over an 80% adherence rate, which falls in line with part of the 80/20 rule (usually applied to nutritional quality, but assuming those 42 weeks focused on nutrient density, then it works out to be the same).

    I think there's a bit of confusion regarding glycogen repletion and diet breaks. Those two concepts are mutually exclusive and separate ideas from each other.

    With refeeds you can completely saturate glycogen in about 2-3 days by eating a buttload of easily digestible carbs and topping off stores in succeeding days. Glycogen depletion occurs when you perform aerobic and total body anaerobic exercise consistently throughout the week while keeping carb intake minimal.

    Diet breaks are literal as the name implies. Taking a break from a diet (period of calorie deficit). This is to give your body and mind a reprieve from the cumulative stress buildup from a chronic deficit, and to get hormonal regulation back up to speed to match your current lower body weight.

    Thank you.
    I guess I get so confused when I hear people talking about hormones and glycogen and this and that. I honestly thought that a refeed was just a mini diet break and that they both served the same purpose. :blush: Thanks for the clarification.
  • SpanishFusion
    SpanishFusion Posts: 261 Member
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    What about hormones? Does it take them a certain amount of time to readjust? I was for certain that I read someone saying that Lyle said that a diet break needed to be 10 days to 2 weeks to straighten something back out.
    I guess that I'm still confused... a little.
  • andreascjonsson
    andreascjonsson Posts: 433 Member
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    Hi! I am planning on incorperating refeeds in my diet plan. Firstly i read around and saw that they recommend 1 day refeed, bit here it stood that you should have atleast 2 days of refeeds. I am reasonably lean. Would 2 days every 2 weeks be a good place to start? Putting in my pic for reference of my current fitness level. I have been dieting for about 2 and a half months
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
    edited March 2018
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    andreascjonsson wrote: »
    Hi! I am planning on incorperating refeeds in my diet plan. Firstly i read around and saw that they recommend 1 day refeed, bit here it stood that you should have atleast 2 days of refeeds. I am reasonably lean. Would 2 days every 2 weeks be a good place to start? Putting in my pic for reference of my current fitness level. I have been dieting for about 2 and a half months

    I'd put you maybe around 18% bf (give or take a couple points in either direction), mostly in the lower abdomen area, which is the primary problem area for men.

    That said, you're perfectly fine to do a 2 week deficit > 2 day refeed which is pretty standard. But if you've been strict dieting for 2.5 months, then take a 2 week diet break at your new lower body weight maintenance first. Then go ahead with your plan. If you're not already strength training, focus on that as your primary activity, unless you're a marathon athlete. But I think adding some size to your frame would help offset some of the bf% estimate from a visual aesthetic perspective. You don’t need to fulk and get powerlifter big, I’m just talking general strength training and it’s fine to train like a bodybuilding bro with a various amount of rep ranges for hypertrophy.
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
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    Leeg5656 wrote: »
    anubis609 wrote: »
    Leeg5656 wrote: »
    What about hormones? Does it take them a certain amount of time to readjust? I was for certain that I read someone saying that Lyle said that a diet break needed to be 10 days to 2 weeks to straighten something back out.
    I guess that I'm still confused... a little.

    Hormones are dynamic within a few days as well. It's an extremely rough example and hardly accurate, but it serves its purpose in demonstrating what I mean.

    Let's use leptin as the primary hormone example. For whatever weight you are before dieting, let's assume it's at 100%.

    After a few days on a deficit, leptin starts slowly dropping. After 6 weeks on a chronic deficit, and lost a good amount of body fat, it's now at 60%. When you do a refeed for 2-3 days, it bumps it back up to 70%. When you go on a diet break for 2 weeks it goes up to 90%.

    Then you diet again for 6 weeks, and lose a bunch of body fat, and leptin dropped from 90% to 50%. Go on a diet break to bring back up to about 80%.

    Diet again. It drops when you lose body fat. Diet break again. It goes up slightly, but it will never be as high as it originally was because you now have less body fat.

    The longer the diet break, the more of a hormonal regulation you're able to maintain, but never at previously obese levels. It works that way because you're no longer obese. But now that new peak at a lower body fat, is your new 100% for that body weight. If you want to increase it further, then you gain weight, but since you don't want that, you accept the new low as a new max level.

    I hope that makes sense, but that's horribly simplistic of how it kind of works.

    Or think of it like a belt or pants or something. If you want to fit into your old bigger size, you have to gain weight. If you'd rather donate those old pants (forever gone), then you accept the fact you have to buy a new wardrobe to fit your leaner size and that's now your new pant/belt size.

    ETA: As we get leaner, the less of a longer deficit period you need to have because you simply don't have enough body fat to sustain it, so lean dieters can be at a deficit for 3 days, 1 day maintenance, deficit 3 days, 1 day maintenance, just to keep hormone levels from dropping suddenly. The 1 day maintenance kind of acts like a slack line to pull it back up before it plummets. And the extremely lean hardly need to diet at all. They can actually get away with alternating days of deficit and maintenance, which on average becomes a very slight deficit, if any and maintain body fat at a low level.

    I need simplistic. Thank you.
    I think I'm going to use the last 5 days as the beginning of my diet break and go on for another 5-7 days at maintenance. While I did eat at maint or above, I actually didn't eat the things that I really wanted. I have been jonesing for a real cheeseburger with a real bun. It was one of the foods that I was saving for my diet break.

    And oh yes, I hope your leg is back to it's normal size and color.

    You’re welcome and thanks, it’s normal in size and shape. But has some random splotches of painless bruising discoloration. I have to put my leg modeling on hold for a while. Lol
  • andreascjonsson
    andreascjonsson Posts: 433 Member
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    anubis609 wrote: »
    andreascjonsson wrote: »
    Hi! I am planning on incorperating refeeds in my diet plan. Firstly i read around and saw that they recommend 1 day refeed, bit here it stood that you should have atleast 2 days of refeeds. I am reasonably lean. Would 2 days every 2 weeks be a good place to start? Putting in my pic for reference of my current fitness level. I have been dieting for about 2 and a half months

    I'd put you maybe around 18% bf (give or take a couple points in either direction), mostly in the lower abdomen area, which is the primary problem area for men.

    That said, you're perfectly fine to do a 2 week deficit > 2 day refeed which is pretty standard. But if you've been strict dieting for 2.5 months, then take a 2 week diet break at your new lower body weight maintenance first. Then go ahead with your plan. If you're not already strength training, focus on that as your primary activity, unless you're a marathon athlete. But I think adding some size to your frame would help offset some of the bf% estimate from a visual aesthetic perspective. You don’t need to fulk and get powerlifter big, I’m just talking general strength training and it’s fine to train like a bodybuilding bro with a various amount of rep ranges for hypertrophy.

    Thanks for the helpfull answer! I have been in a deficit for the entire time but 2 weeks feels super long to me since i want to be done cutting as soon as possible. Becouse, just as you point out, my upper body just feels so small atm and i want to start bulking to fix that. I am currently doing strength training and also some mma mixed with 1h cardio sessions.
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
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    andreascjonsson wrote: »
    anubis609 wrote: »
    andreascjonsson wrote: »
    Hi! I am planning on incorperating refeeds in my diet plan. Firstly i read around and saw that they recommend 1 day refeed, bit here it stood that you should have atleast 2 days of refeeds. I am reasonably lean. Would 2 days every 2 weeks be a good place to start? Putting in my pic for reference of my current fitness level. I have been dieting for about 2 and a half months

    I'd put you maybe around 18% bf (give or take a couple points in either direction), mostly in the lower abdomen area, which is the primary problem area for men.

    That said, you're perfectly fine to do a 2 week deficit > 2 day refeed which is pretty standard. But if you've been strict dieting for 2.5 months, then take a 2 week diet break at your new lower body weight maintenance first. Then go ahead with your plan. If you're not already strength training, focus on that as your primary activity, unless you're a marathon athlete. But I think adding some size to your frame would help offset some of the bf% estimate from a visual aesthetic perspective. You don’t need to fulk and get powerlifter big, I’m just talking general strength training and it’s fine to train like a bodybuilding bro with a various amount of rep ranges for hypertrophy.

    Thanks for the helpfull answer! I have been in a deficit for the entire time but 2 weeks feels super long to me since i want to be done cutting as soon as possible. Becouse, just as you point out, my upper body just feels so small atm and i want to start bulking to fix that. I am currently doing strength training and also some mma mixed with 1h cardio sessions.

    The reason for the 2 week diet break is for the hormone regulation and psychological reprieve as I outlined above. I mean, sure, you could grind it out longer if you can stand it, but unless you're planning to walk on stage and get judged for being a human string of beef jerky for a few days, it's not worth the struggle IMO. It also gives you an idea of how to eat normally when you're no longer cutting and just eating like a lean human being. No one wants to cut forever, and to gain some size and strength, you're gonna have to be in a slight surplus for a period of time. But without that 2 week maintenance buffer, jumping straight into a bulk the day right after a deficit will shuttle more nutrients for storage than muscle and fuel.

    Think of it this way, dieting is slowly starving yourself by depriving the body of nutrients for X amount of time as a loose metaphor. If it suddenly saw all the food, the first thing it wants to do is make damn sure you don't do that again, and will pack it away for a few days before it realizes "Oh, you're not trying to get fat? Oops, well I stored some energy just in case you think about doing that again." The body is hard wired to survive by doing everything it can to avoid discomfort. If getting fat keeps it from suffering, it's going to.

    That said, do you have to consistently be on a diet break for 2 weeks? No. You can have a working week of maintenance calories as a diet break before starting another round of cutting. Whether it's optimal, that's subjective, but I certainly don't feel that it adds positive reinforcement to the long-term game of life. The phrasing of "wanting to be done cutting asap" leads me to believe that patience isn't in the cards for your goals.

    If patience isn't your strong suit, and you're hellbent on neglecting sound advice, then at least having knowledge on how to safely cut hard and quick for rapid fat loss would be a better tool to use. RFL (https://store.bodyrecomposition.com/product/rapid-fat-loss-handbook/) and/or UD2 (https://store.bodyrecomposition.com/product/the-ultimate-diet/) would be your best bets. UD2 (my recommendation between the two if I had to choose, but both are good) would be used more likely after you've achieved a level of leanness using RFL, but you can also use UD2 solely to meet your body comp needs, since it carries some nuance for a surplus for hypertrophy.

    Neither book is a maintenance strategy guide. They're meant to get you to your goal as efficiently as possible. How you learn to keep your ideal body going is going to be dependent on you.

    As for your strength training, just follow the rule of progressive overload: increase weights, reps, and/or sets over time and you'll be stronger by virtue of measurable counting. Example: say you can bench 150lbs now for 3 sets of 5 reps. If you are able to bench 155lbs for 3 sets of 5 reps, congrats you got stronger. If you can bench 150lbs for 4 sets of 5 reps, congrats, you got stronger. If you can bench 150 for 3 sets of 6 reps, congrats you got stronger. The way you apply those changes to your needs is still going to be heading towards progress, as long as intensity is present. Benching 95 lbs for 5 sets of 10 reps doesn't do diq if you aren't going to failure. Even then, it's just painfully tedious.

    The way Lyle simplifies this boils down to "Lift the thing. Put down the thing. Repeat 2 - 8 times. Add weight to the thing. Repeat as needed."
  • ceiswyn
    ceiswyn Posts: 2,256 Member
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    I have - to my slight embarrassment, now I’ve read this - lost weight continuously for the last year and a half without taking a diet break. There were several occasions that I called ‘diet breaks’, but which were in reality just losing weight more slowly.

    I’m now only 20lb from goal and set to 1lb per week, but I’ve noticed that I’m occasionally feeling hunger in a way that I wasn’t previously even on fewer calories.

    My question is this: is it worth taking a proper diet break at this point, or have I already screwed up sufficiently that there’s no point and I may as well just keep going until goal?
  • anubis609
    anubis609 Posts: 3,966 Member
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    btente wrote: »
    anubis609 wrote: »
    With refeeds you can completely saturate glycogen in about 2-3 days by eating a buttload of easily digestible carbs and topping off stores in succeeding days. Glycogen depletion occurs when you perform aerobic and total body anaerobic exercise consistently throughout the week while keeping carb intake minimal.

    You can replenish glycogen sufficiently in a single day or if you're like me and an amateur competitive eater in a single meal. My latest personal experiments show elevated glucose levels for four days after a re-feed post glycogen depletion (three days fasting).

    Glycogen depletion occurs with prolonged caloric deficit and doesn't require exercise for depletion. It also requires both carbohydrate and protein intake reductions as the body can produce substantial glycogen levels from gluconeogensis. My latest personal experiments also show elevated glycogen levels can be maintained on a protein/fat only re-feed for at least three days post glycogen depletion (five days fasting).

    Yes, you can replenish glycogen in one day, but the period of not eating slowly dips into liver glycogen, and that period of not eating is sleep. Therefore, you'd have to top it off in the days succeeding day 1.

    Liver glycogen depletion occurs with a prolonged caloric deficit. Muscle glycogen doesn't follow that rule. It exists to live for fueling the muscle groups where they reside. Using extended fasting as an example, if you needed to sprint for your life (for whatever reason you want to use), muscle glycogen (and ATP) is used in that process to run like hell.

    Gluconeogenesis can replete muscle glycogen in about 18-24 hours after those stores have been used, so to consistently deplete them in preparation for a refeed, you would have to consistently use them. Gluconeogenesis can use any substrate that can be broken down to create carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules.

    As for measuring glycogen levels, unless you're taking muscle biopsies and measuring them in a lab, glucose levels only indicate free-floating glucose in the blood, which is not indicative of storage capacity.

    For the purposes of a carb refeed, aside from leptin/hormonal regulation, is if you're following CKD, you want to be glycogen depleted from a total body perspective to prime the muscles for an anabolic response to stimulus and that glucose/insulin spike is what's going to be the catalyst for that.

    But I'll bite.. what experiments are you running? What's your hypothesis, method, and data from the results you've seen?

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