What's better?

mzhus11
mzhus11 Posts: 10
in Food and Nutrition
Cheat day or Refeed day? Which one is better?

Replies

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Cheat day or Refeed day? Which one is better?

    I've yet to understand exactly what a cheat day is so I'll go with refeed.

    A refeed is a well planned out day, not a free for all. When I did refeeds while cutting I still had a calorie goal and had a much higher carb goal and lower fat intake...it was planned out, not just a free day or whatever.

    Cheat days seem to be for people who have borderline if not full blown disordered relationships with food and label foods as "good" or "bad" and generally "cheaters" practice deprivation dieting and have little understanding of actual nutritional requirements so they think that eating anything beyond their celery stick or salad sans dressing is "cheating".
  • mzhus11
    mzhus11 Posts: 10
    Is it safe to assume that for the average person who just wants to lose weight, they would have cheat days? For those who are more into bodybuilding have refeeds?
  • DeadliftAddict
    DeadliftAddict Posts: 746 Member
    Is it safe to assume that for the average person who just wants to lose weight, they would have cheat days? For those who are more into bodybuilding have refeeds?

    I would say this is is correct. There are some meals that you may want that just doesn't fit in a refeed day. I don't do either for that reason. I schedule one or two meals during the week where I can get something I wouldn't normally eat for whatever reason. It may take me over my fat macro for the day or whatever. Although now that I do intermittent fasting I don't really have to worry to much about this.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Is it safe to assume that for the average person who just wants to lose weight, they would have cheat days? For those who are more into bodybuilding have refeeds?

    I would say this is is correct. There are some meals that you may want that just doesn't fit in a refeed day. I don't do either for that reason. I schedule one or two meals during the week where I can get something I wouldn't normally eat for whatever reason. It may take me over my fat macro for the day or whatever. Although now that I do intermittent fasting I don't really have to worry to much about this.

    Actually, I wouldn't say it has anything to do with body building. I'm not a bodybuilder by any stretch of the imagination. When I was cutting fat (dieting...I just hate that word) I had a re-feed every couple of weeks...the purpose of this re-feed was to attempt to avoid metabolic adaption to my deficit and let my body know that things were just temporary. The increase in carbs was intended to up my leptin levels to normal, if just for a short time, and re-charge my metabolism.

    Personally, the science is pretty dicey IMHO...but it seemed to work for me. I never really had any kind of plateau and lost my 40 Lbs pretty consistently.

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