Of refeeds and diet breaks

17172747677221

Replies

  • VintageFeline
    VintageFeline Posts: 6,771 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    I'm not knocking the chest strap. My purpose with the Garmin was to use it for training and get super accurate information about a variety of things. I just hate wearing them.

    Yes yes, I was just pointing out you don't have to use it if super accuracy isn't needed as most if not all of the devices have wrist read now. I thought you were saying that was a minus, that in order to use heart rate you needed the strap which isn't the case now. So no need to switch out watches if you want all day HR and don't like chest straps. I never minded my chest strap but I don't need the accuracy and have found my OHR to be good enough. It's very nice not to have to strap up!
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    Ah. I'm just conflicted, since I think the strap is both a positive and negative. ;-)
  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,752 Member
    To those doing refeeds. Do you eat your exact maintenance calories or go over? The reason i ask is i see a few folks struggling to get enough food in, this is a foreign concept to me :tongue:

    Sorry if this was explained 50 pages ago, my memory is not that good :open_mouth:

    I've been doing mine a bit different as I'm on a diet break anyways... But still doing a high carb day for fun. I have two lower carb days during the week, so add those carbs on, plus decrease fat a bit and add those cals on as carbs as well.

    The only thing I struggle with is completely changing my thoughts to how I plan meals and the foods I choose. I get sad that I have less "protein" (ie, meat, eggs, fish) because so much protein comes with my carbs. Keeping fat low as low as I do is also hard. It takes me forever to plan my day... But then I have no issue eating the food. It's fun.
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    Yeah, I think once I hit maintenance proper I will still do higher carb on the weekends. Higher carbs on hike days are kind of a necessity, and carbing up the day before seems to be an effective strategy too.
  • eponine1984
    eponine1984 Posts: 220 Member
    A garmin vivosmart 3 has been added to my husband's amazon cart in anticipation of Christmas. My sister-in-law likes her Fitbit, but I'm really more about the heart rate and calorie burn tracking. Years and years ago (like ten years), I had a polar heart rate monitor that had the chest strap and watch. It worked well for tracking workouts and giving me estimated calorie burns, but it wasn't something I wore all the time.

    Refeed continues. Not quite bacchanal levels of indulgence but still good. More family parties, more food, more wine. That's how refeeds work, right? Eat all the things? No?

    Oops.
  • maybyn
    maybyn Posts: 233 Member
    @Luna3386, I'm lucky in that I don't really have problems and it just comes when it comes. A bit like @VintageFeline but I'm not on the pill and my cycle is not that regular.
    maybyn wrote: »
    @Christine_72, interesting, never thought to use an app at all.

    @bioklutz, I have not gotten cramps since my 20's. I'm also of an age (46) where I need to watch out for perimenopause but don't think I've got any symptoms yet. I also don't feel any different?!!

    @collectingblues, yeah too young though I've heard anecdotes about some women experiencing symptoms that early. Hope things resolve for you soon. Are you getting any thyroid meds to regulate your hormones?

    Yup -- I'm well-controled with synthroid. TSH/T3/T4 are all completely normal, both within range, and within what I usually run. There are some female triad things at play, so right now, this is all supposedly "normal" for me/the recovery process.

    But -- for apps, if you're looking for one, I use Clue. It's generally accurate within a couple of days for me.

    Thanks for the tip on the app. Will check it out.

    Hope the female triad issues resolve themselves soon. I read that you had some good news in your later post after this one? Maintaining a stable weight at TDEE is a good thing!

  • maybyn
    maybyn Posts: 233 Member
    Regarding trackers, I've always only ever had a Garmin so I can't compare with other brands but my husband likes his Tom Tom.

    As for accuracy of calorie burn and using it to gauge TDEE, I find it very accurate for me personally. They have several data inputs for calculating burns including HR (which is good because I've got a very low RHR and it takes time for me to get my HR up so I get less burn). I'm also usually very accurate with CI and that helps. In reading other posts in the forums, sometimes people can either be over-estimating or under-estimating CI and may find their tracker's CO inaccurate that way (either too low or too high).

    I think with trackers, whatever brand you decide on, you need to get the type suitable for your activities. I have a forerunner because I use it mainly for tracking runs (pace, HR, distance etc). If you want something that can track swims for example, you need to get something specific for that. Likewise, if you want to track floors climbed or if you want a long battery life (mine's not that great), then get something specific to that.

    The CO aspect can be an albatross around your neck though, especially if you have an ED. When I first got my Garmin which tracked calorie burns (I had old ones which did not), I used to be so anxious if I didn't burn enough. In my head, I had to reach a specific number and if I didn't reach it during the day, I'd try to make it up at night (till midnight even and continued the next day, especially if I binged...)
  • maybyn
    maybyn Posts: 233 Member
    To those doing refeeds. Do you eat your exact maintenance calories or go over? The reason i ask is i see a few folks struggling to get enough food in, this is a foreign concept to me :tongue:

    Sorry if this was explained 50 pages ago, my memory is not that good :open_mouth:

    I am loosely following a refeed approach and go over with mainly carbs if I need to on that day.

    Getting enough food in has not been a problem for me even when I eat 3k cals while keeping fats to 50g but I think that's because I usually only eat high when I need to (my refeed days aren't fixed days).
  • ZoneFive
    ZoneFive Posts: 570 Member
    To those doing refeeds. Do you eat your exact maintenance calories or go over? The reason i ask is i see a few folks struggling to get enough food in, this is a foreign concept to me :tongue:

    Sorry if this was explained 50 pages ago, my memory is not that good :open_mouth:

    I'm not able to hit my exact numbers most days -- I'm mostly under, with a few days over. Part of that is being unsure of how much of my exercise calories to eat back; I aim for about 1/3 on just-walking days, maybe 1/2 on swimming days. I seem to be hovering within 3.5 lbs of my beginning weight, so I think I'm in the right maintenance range. The other part of it is not yet feeling comfortable with having no calories left over at the end of the day. I'm trying to wrap my head around that, but haven't got there yet.

    My break ends on Sunday, and I'm actually eager to get back to deficit. Eating at maintenance has been like walking on a frozen pond, unsure of when or if the ice will break. These two weeks have been really eye-opening, and I'll definitely do a break again around the end of February or so. I realize I need to do more reading on human biology and nutrition to grok things better.
  • ZoneFive
    ZoneFive Posts: 570 Member
    anubis609 wrote: »
    ZoneFive wrote: »
    I'm starting my second week of diet break and I'm really surprised that maintenance eating takes at least as much planning as deficit eating. I'm used to eating at deficit by now, and it's much easier to plan. MFP's default split for carbs requires a lot more thought. I'm not sure I trust such a high level of carbs, partly because of the diabetes and partly because I find myself trying to bump up the carbs with sweet/baked baked things. That's a habit I've been trying to break, and this isn't helping.

    On the other hand, I thought resetting my leptin levels was more dependent on my carb intake, so that more carbs (within reason) are necessary. Maybe just not as many as the MFP default.

    I'm up just 2 lbs from last Monday and well within normal fluctuations and the expected gain (glycogen replenishment, right?). I KNOW it's normal, I KNOW it's expected, and I KNOW it's water weight -- but there's still a little twitch in the back of my brain that wants me to go back to deficit RIGHT NOW. These two weeks are experimental; I'll keep eating 2460 calories for the next week, but I'm working hard on not tinkering with the macros. My inner perfectionist wants to keep the experimental protocols the same for the full two weeks (my inner perfectionist is a scientist) and have that time as a learning experience. That'll also leave me room for Thanksgiving's carbs, which was the point of picking this time frame in the first place.

    I just don't trust the carbs -- or I don't trust myself with that many carbs, one or the other.

    Maintenance is sometimes more difficult than planning a deficit or surplus, especially if being in a specific diet pattern for a long time.

    Just from dealing with diabetes myself and working with others, carb tolerance is going to be variable. My suggestion specifically for diabetics is to eat according to your glucose monitor. If you're medicated and are still running high, the ingestion of digestible carbs is what's going to determine a large portion of that. Obviously, by focusing on nutrient density and fibrous carbs, you reduce the postprandial excursion so that your glucose doesn't spike so high and drop so low between meals.

    Resistance training and regular exercise increases insulin sensitivity so on those days where carbs are higher, your body will be better equipped to partition glucose into muscle glycogen instead of partitioning them into fat cells.

    Even during maintenance feeding, my carbs are about 75-150g on average, and I adjust total calories with fat macros. Fasting glucose ranges from 70-88mg/dL every morning.

    Not to say you need to low carb, just make sure you're using your own levels as a guide for food choices. It's a bit of a way to entertain your inner N=1 researcher while still being able to maintain manageable health markers.

    I saw my doctor this week, and have been given the okay to halve my metformin dosage. (Hooray!) We discussed my last bloodwork, which indicated that I was well below the pre-diabetic levels, and he asked me what my morning BG was like. I reminded him that he'd never prescribed a meter for me. He blinked and said, "Why didn't I do that?" (He's a nice guy, but I'm beginning to think I need to switch doctors.) A year and a half of metformin, and no glucose meter; I should have asked about it months ago.

    Long story short, I now have one and my Dr. Inner N=1 is actually getting some hard data. I'm enjoying the data collection part of this more than I thought I would.

  • maybyn
    maybyn Posts: 233 Member
    @heybales, thanks for the awesome post and detailed explanation.

    I think mine's accurate because most of my burn is from steady state cardio. My Garmin does not attribute any burns for weight lifting and hardly anything for steps outside of purposeful exercise.

    It also adjusts my burn downward for cardio (which I always assumed it was from my HR and vo2 max number). E.g. I did a 14 mile run today (very hilly, very technical trail) and the activity recorded just over a 1k burn, similar to the standard 0.63 x distance x weight, but I was attributed only 941 for it. So what you're saying is true in my case anyway.
  • VintageFeline
    VintageFeline Posts: 6,771 Member
    @haybales you may mean the Vivoactive 3 for the native lifting app? Though it may be on the Vivosmart too, I didn't look at that device.

    There's now cardio (which is primarily what I use as I don't really steady state unless walking), yoga, rowing, swimming, cycling and some kind of random ones like paddleboarding that are all native (as in no need to download an additional app). I think they use tweaked algorithms for the burns. On my previous device that I used with a chest strap (first gen Vivoactive with downloaded app for cardio) my burns were pretty accurate, I always ate back those calories and the burns on the new device align with what those were.

    The general activity outside of exercise though may be a bit inflated for me but as we always say, track results and adjust as necessary.
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    Apparently I suck at maintenance, because I'm now 300g below start of diet break weight (aka 800g off ultimate goal). I guess I will up cals by 100 per day? Thoughts @anubis609 and @heybales? Carbs have been mostly above 150g all week, so really doubting it's water weight (and also doubt I could have accumulated any cortisol-related water weight between last diet break and this one, losses have been way too stellar). I would need to go back and dig out numbers for CI, but even pre-diet break I thought I was dropping faster than I should have, just hard to work out sometimes with water weight fluctuations, starting a new strength programme, yada, yada...
  • eponine1984
    eponine1984 Posts: 220 Member
    We're traveling back home post holidays. My husband and I are getting ready to head to the gym so we can maintain that we've been "active" during this break. Tomorrow will be another travel day and then I'll be able to weigh in on Monday. I had originally planned to continue the diet break another week, then deficit for two weeks, then another diet break over Christmas. I'm debating returning to the deficit next week. That would be a one week diet break, three week deficit, then two week break. I know it won't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. I think I'm just sorta feeling that post-holiday gotta-work-the-turkey-off surge. Too many decisions.
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    We're traveling back home post holidays. My husband and I are getting ready to head to the gym so we can maintain that we've been "active" during this break. Tomorrow will be another travel day and then I'll be able to weigh in on Monday. I had originally planned to continue the diet break another week, then deficit for two weeks, then another diet break over Christmas. I'm debating returning to the deficit next week. That would be a one week diet break, three week deficit, then two week break. I know it won't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. I think I'm just sorta feeling that post-holiday gotta-work-the-turkey-off surge. Too many decisions.

    If it helps the decision, one week diet break is not enough to do what you want in terms of restoring hormone levels, needs to be 10-14 days, and if you've been at a deficit for a while, 14 is preferable to 10.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,394 Member
    Enjoy the extra Cals!

    It is also hard to get your activity level fully dialed in when you're comparing burns while hiking with elevation to burns you regularly get at work.

    I am sure that my Fitbit was partially more accurate (by about 3%) when I first got it because pretty much all my activity was steady state and within the sweet spot that heybales described.

    Unless I load a backpack now the same would not apply...
  • alteredsteve175
    alteredsteve175 Posts: 2,716 Member
    Nony_Mouse wrote: »
    If it helps the decision, one week diet break is not enough to do what you want in terms of restoring hormone levels, needs to be 10-14 days, and if you've been at a deficit for a while, 14 is preferable to 10.

    I am planning a break for January. Any advantage to an even longer break - say 4 weeks or so?

  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    Oh hai! I have cell reception!! Wait, I can't post a pic from mobile? Ok, you'll have wait a couple more hours...

    Back to it!