Of refeeds and diet breaks

anubis609 wrote: »

maybyn wrote: »

This thread is full of information!

So... I watched the whole video (in fact, I can credit this thread with me having the first time EVER listening to a podcast - I had to google "how to listen to a podcast on iphone" hahaha).

I get mostly what he's saying but one thing stood out to me. Lyle's main focus (it seems) is geared towards those individuals who are either in or going into competitive/non-competitive bodybuilding or weightlifting or are keen to go down that path (even for the little women he keeps mentioning).

So how does all these relate to endurance sports athletes?

Also, when you all talk about "lean", how lean is lean? I've seen a number of guidelines on BF% online and I know Lyle talks about BF% and refeed structures, what kind of leanness should we be focusing on?

FYI, I follow Matt Fitzgerald's racing weight formula for knowing what weight and BF I should be.

In the context of body recomposition, people are going to be following standard cycles of a deficit or surplus to lose or gain mass, respectively. Physique athletes are used as the general example since they've inconsequentially been the primary image of what pushing the human body's limit to retain/build lean muscle mass while shedding subcutaneous fat. His primary focus being women is relative to his women's book that is currently being edited for publishing, though it's also because women are predominantly more prone to dieting and disrupting hormone regulation - even if it's true for all people, amenorrhea is a symptom that requires troubleshooting the diet.

Regardless of the sport, lean body mass vs fat mass is going to play a part in how well the body accommodates nutrient partitioning. Generally the leaner you are, the better your body will be at partitioning incoming food to their appropriate places. What defines lean is "subjectively objective" in the sense that you don't need to be completely shredded, but you shouldn't be overfat either. I can't think of anything off hand to counter the thought of refeeding, but endurance sport athletes are arguably much more glycolytic anyway depending on the pace of the run, but underfeeding and overtraining can completely affect performance and hormone response, so Lyle's suggested refeed schedule can still apply to address that issue.

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

@maybyn, some text articles on the underfeeding/over-training thing:

https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html/

https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/too-much-cardio-followup.html/

ETA: he talks a little about endurance athletes in the Abbey Orr podcast, part one.

anubis609 wrote: »

You're welcome @maybyn. It's probably obvious where I get a lot of my sourced information lol but venturing off into the land of research articles and biochemistry, and they all tend to verify the same pathways and function, so it becomes regurgitated information quoted by the last person who last talked/wrote about it to me.

In the grand scheme of things, if you might classify yourself under the category of "chronic dieting cardio master" perhaps try a day or two at or just a bit above maintenance and see how you feel.

Alternatively, since you might be able to afford a classic carb-up given your sport, I vaguely remember Lyle stating in another podcast or article where endurance athletes were actually super-compensated at roughly 6-7g of carbs per pound of body weight (12-15g carb/kg) just to accommodate their heavy training cycle. It's a massive amount of carbs that you actually can afford without really affecting net body composition.

*g/lb or g/kg may be at lean body weight, I can't remember off the top of my head, but it sounds much more realistic if at lbm

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

Listened to the nutrition partitioning podcast, I thought of you when he mentioned neurotic endurance athletes, @maybyn

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

anubis609 wrote: »

maybyn wrote: »

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

Listened to the nutrition partitioning podcast, I thought of you when he mentioned neurotic endurance athletes, @maybyn

Haha, I was thinking that too! But then again, I'm nowhere near as neurotic as those elite athletes who do crazy, extreme things to get down to their correct weight each season!

I'm nowhere near elite, but I can guarantee I carry as much neuroticism in my diet and training

I prefer to think of myself as diligent (though more with diet than training, I need to up my game on that front!).

maybyn wrote: »

And I am only neurotic around this time of the year when I start training.

My natural weight is about 10 pounds higher so I have to cut each time. Otherwise, I also prefer to think myself as diligent like you, Nony!

heybales wrote: »

VintageFeline wrote: »

I just upgraded my fitness tracker. And it got me thinking as the adjustments are higher than my previous tracker (which I know lowballed me for some stuff). I may have inadvertently slowed my losses due to under-eating a little bit, making compliance at times tricky, lowering NEAT, tanking leptin and sending cortisol skyrocketing. And the off "binge" day wasn't doing anything when you consider it didn't help leptin and the upregulation of metabolism to deal with the shock significant increase in calories.

So if nothing else this, in combination with new watch, has made me look at what I'm doing a lot more in depth and also shows that you can know all of the things and still make things harder for yourself!

I think this hits on why many people from observation think the undereating too much causes fat gain. (one of the starvation mode myths)

It's the lowered TDEE, those few binge days in there, each of which is easily in surplus at that time and is indeed fat gain.

So they look at averages over a period of time, and it seems to show an extreme deficit the whole time, and yet they have more fat or same at some point (by whatever inaccurate method is likely used).

This is such a refreshing topic thread, hope it's a sticky by now since the title was improved.

Other day I found an older folder just out of high school ('87, pre-internet) with cut out or copied articles in it for reference, one of them was a study showing the metabolic adaption - they didn't test in study but article suggested every 10 lb loss taking a diet break for 2-4 weeks, even back then ahead of their time.