How to successfully re-feed/diet break?

lemur_lady

With Christmas looming I have been worrying about how to get through the holiday period without gaining loads of weight. Its going to be especially hard as I will be staying with the in laws and won't be able to weigh food or get away for workouts. I have been doing mfp since June but did have a short break in august as we were on holiday without internet access. I ended up gaining 7lbs which then took about 3 weeks to get rid of. I have since then considered that my first 'diet break'.

I would like to take another diet break soon as my weightloss is slowing up ( although not completely stalling) I was hoping a quick break of maybe a week or so might start things up again. Christmas therefore seems the ideal time to do it seeing as I will therefore not have to be so strict as to what I can and cannot have and won't feel like I am not joining in with the others.

My question is how do you successfully undertake a diet break/refeed without gaining? The obvious answer to this is to eat at maintainence but when I have done this before for more than a few days it has resulted in a gain. Are the benefits of diet breaks actually real I.e will it reboot my metabolism? Or is it all myth?

I am currently on around 1960 cals a day. Would adding 250 be a decent enough refeed or will it need to be more to get any benefits to my metabolism? I apologise if I seem a dumb asking all these questions but I really don't know an awful lot about the whole thing, just heard snippets of bits like 'leptin levels' and 'adaptive thermogenesis' and thought id ask for help from someone who knows what the hell im going on about.

TIA

vvvalentines

When you go back to eating at maintenance after eating at a loss for a while, your glycogen stores replenish and you gain what's basically water weight in your muscles. It might be discouraging, but it's not a big deal and should come off again easily when you start eating at a loss again because those stores are the body's first-used source of energy when caloric intake is insufficient.

Good luck on your break!

Mokey41

You don't need to refeed or boost your metabolism or take a break. You aren't going to lose weight by eating more. At this point you should be able to eyeball food pretty well and not need to weigh everything to stay in budget and as you proved to yourself before when you take a break you must go way over if you gained 7 lbs.

If you're losing weight with an end goal in mind you have to make this a lifestyle change not a diet. You aren't going to be able to to take breaks and go back to your old ways after you lose weight or you'll be right back where you started from. 1960 is a really decent budget of food to live on and adaptive thermogenesis is a term used for people who have been on very low calorie diets for an extended period of time.

p4ulmiller

My question is how do you successfully undertake a diet break/refeed without gaining? The obvious answer to this is to eat at maintainence but when I have done this before for more than a few days it has resulted in a gain. Are the benefits of diet breaks actually real I.e will it reboot my metabolism? Or is it all myth?

I'm not quite sure I understand. To lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories (smaller portions, etc) and if you can't weigh your food, then you'll have to make the best guess you can.

I don't think it's actually possible to "reboot" your metabolism.

Just do the best you can and get back to routine when you get home. No big deal, it's about the new lifestyle way of eating.

Letje_Lux

To prevent weight gain, don't regularly go over your maintenance calories. Stick with small portions of healthy foods and you should be okay.

I would suggest bringing workout clothes. When I'm visiting family, I get up early and use their treadmill or go for a run outside. I don't see why that would be a problem. You can do some bodyweight exercises in your room too.

Best of luck!