Refeed Plans - preferences?

heybales

maverick4x4 wrote: »

July check in: Still doing 5 deficit, 2 maintenance. Sun-Mon are maintenance at 2100ish. Tues-Sat are deficit at 1600ish.

Weight Jumped from mid-190s to 202 at Thanksgiving with first refeed. has ranged from 205-210 since. 10-15 lbs...sadly probably not all water weight

Strength came up a bit, but so did the fluff (waist and moobs).

I think I've had a lot of days where I was up to 200 over on the deficit days...and then 300-500ish over on the maintenance days. Planned weekly total: 12,200. Actual: 14,000-15,000. If 2100 was truly a maintenance value, that would be 14,700 cal/week. Looking back over the last 25 weeks, many weekly averages between 1850-1950, and a few between 2000-2200. Weekly average should be 1742. I've only hit that 6 times in '21.

So...I've been maintaining. Great. Still fairly lean, and like I said, stronger, but not as lean as I'd like to be. I'm not as lean as at 195...I'd like to get back to that level of lean and maintain there (whatever weight that is).

Eating stricter the last 4 weeks...no real change yet on the scale, but maybe noticeable? (comments at the gym).

So...do I continue with the program I'm doing and just execute it better, or try something different for a while? Hoping to look a little better for a trip to the beach in early August.

I'd say if that method isn't getting you there - modify.
Sure you could say hold to the plan better - but maybe it really doesn't work out well for you.

Have you tried alternating weeks, since a maintenance week so often, can be a tad more unreasonable on the diet side - if you can handle it.

Or, if you have a couple days of lower activity, there's the 5:2 diet that gives an average 22% deficit.
5 days eating at maintenance, 2 days eating 25% of maintenance.
May be hard mental challenge, but you can just keep saying "till tomorrow" just twice a week.

But either way gotta adhere to the plan. Just about making the plan perhaps a tad easier to follow.