Of refeeds and diet breaks

I'm not sure how much I can talk/ask about this on MFP due to the nature of the beast, but I'm getting into LM's RFL and find myself wanting to ask questions/read others' experiences. Is there a good place for that on the internet that you guys know of? Figured this was as good a place as any to start since LM has been part of the discussion.

middlehaitch wrote: »

MelodiousMermaid wrote: »

I'm not sure how much I can talk/ask about this on MFP due to the nature of the beast, but I'm getting into LM's RFL and find myself wanting to ask questions/read others' experiences. Is there a good place for that on the internet that you guys know of? Figured this was as good a place as any since LM has been part of the discussion.

RFL, etc can be discussed on the ‘gaining weight and body building’ subforum.

Post any questions there.

Cheers, h.

Yep. And a few of us have ran the program.

Been learning bits about evolutionary psychology.

As well as leptin and ghrelin, other hormones seem to affect hunger. e.g. women need more energy intake during certain times in a cycle. (re Lyle McDonald.)
PMS is worse if you're not eating enough.

Running and exercise help with stress and burning off our fight/flight instincts when most of us have desk or indoor jobs that can be very stressful. But too much intense exercise increases stress (adrenaline and cortisol).

I've suspected for a while that testosterone compels men to continually compete and overdo it when they exercise. It's certainly pretty bad for women comparing ourselves to others in the gene pool. And social media and technology's effects on top causing us to want to look more awesome than the next person.

I have more I could say about this all leading to injuries, and unsustainability in fitness.

Dopamine and serotonin can also be nice happy comfortable influencers that make competitiveness less important and make us want to be happy just being with our tribe around our campfire safe from wild animals.

I guess these hormones can also be part of the reason people want to stick to a diet their peers prefer.

I see Metabolomics hasn't been mentioned.

I started learning about it a year ago, and have gone off on many tangents, coming back to this thread and always forgetting to mention it because reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolomics

"Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, the small molecule substrates, intermediates and products of metabolism. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind", the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles.[1] The metabolome represents the complete set of metabolites in a biological cell, tissue, organ or organism, which are the end products of cellular processes.[2] mRNA gene expression data and proteomic analyses reveal the set of gene products being produced in the cell, data that represents one aspect of cellular function. Conversely, metabolic profiling can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of that cell, and thus, metabolomics provides a direct "functional readout of the physiological state" of an organism.[3] One of the challenges of systems biology and functional genomics is to integrate genomics, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic information to provide a better understanding of cellular biology."

Today's "reasons" are to do with how individual hormones can be studied and how there are infinite ways the hormones relate to our body's biological/chemical makeup which changes moment by moment.


We can detect certain "imbalances" (I hate that word but people might relate) that language or categorisation of an influential concept helps us to process in a way that means we can make an alteration to our purposeful behaviour.


One thing I know I am on the fringes about is the effect of language on our behaviour.


A few more random observations:


Meat seems to relate to people's self-perceived relationship or power.

Bingeing can be the only cardio workout some people get. (The rush of shopping; eating; then the guilt.)

Likewise, computer gaming.

Or getting angry on social media.

Or smoking, and the worry that goes with it.

People can be paralysed by the fear of change.


Again, these are random thoughts that (at least in my mind) are to do with body chemistry and weight.

For recovery after an injury or surgery, your nutritional requirements do increase to meet the needs for your body to repair tissue, handle physical therapy, any meds, and so on. You can consider it a diet break, but in and of itself, it is an entirely separate situation. Once you're fully recovered and able to go ease back into your usual activity, you can then go back to your deficit as planned.

MelodiousMermaid wrote: »

I don't recall this being discussed yet, and I'm planning ahead, so figured I'd throw it out there. Is there anything out there that pushes the diet break into any sort of macros as "preferable/ideal" for a category 3 dieter? I know it's a bigger deal for Cat 1 and a bit for Cat 2, but I'm still solidly going to be Cat 3 on this break.

The reason I ask is that I'm considering mostly increasing fats and I recall something about 100g carbs a day, so will probably do that with mostly veggies. Hoping that's not net, because I really do not want to keep track. Since I plan to hop right back in after the break, I wanted to keep the WOE similar to what I'm currently doing (which is close to RFL). Thinking higher fat meats and cheeses with whatever fits my fancy and macro budget (with protein still high).

On a related note, if any of you has experience/knowledge to help with this, does going from effective keto to 100g carb/day mean I need to switch to "normal diet" sodium levels?

In his Facebook group Lyle McDonald said in March "Full diet break simply needs to have at least 150 g/day [of carbs] for hormonal reasons and it's more that calories need to come back up to maintenance." In terms of sodium levels, I would think that "normal diet" levels would be most appropriate as you'll not be shedding water like you do with minimum carbs.

Hey! Well... I probably need this kind of break. I am now underweight (53kg / 181cm / 6% body fat) which is worrying for my health, and my friends and family are feeling concerned as well. I feel rather fine though, I eat a varierty of food, exercise regularly (5-6 times a week), but with my stats and activity level, eating ~1600-1800 kcal is far far from being enough. I know I need to eat more, stop calories counting and allow myself to chill about nutrition... Hard to let go but the day I manage to go around 1900-2000 I feel way better. Anybody with similar experience? What made you break the "diet"? What was/is your strategy? Thanks!

@mgmgmg1981 - More than a refeed or diet break, you need to eat some calorie dense food! There's a good thread at https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10247171/carbs-and-fats-are-cheap-heres-a-guide-to-getting-your-proteins-worth-fiber-also/p1 that has a link to a Google Sheet that might help you find calorie dense foods that you can enjoy to get your count up. The spreadsheet is at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12LrMGp8HiWl2FW-odoexKBMxeDTMUhwd4ooT6VoolJk/edit#gid=0

If it were me, I'd keep tracking and logging. See what it takes to start putting some mass back on!

mgmgmg1981 wrote: »

anubis609 wrote: »

Just as a disclaimer - without any background information, if the reason you've achieved such low bf% was due to anything other than attempting to compete and place in a physique competition (which in and of itself can bring its own issues), you will need to seek support and help. I'm not dismissing your situation, but it is an extreme on the other end of the bf% spectrum that is rarely stated so openly.

For the most part, if completely stopping activity is a potential trigger for an underlying problem, then definitely reduce the frequency of activity. Learn to eat more energy dense food, as proposed, and definitely eat more than 2000kcal, given your height, weight, and bf%. Reversing a deficit to a surplus might even be more daunting than the opposite. If nutrition monitoring is causing you to be neurotic about it (speaking from experience), then yes, take a break from counting and relearn how to enjoy life. You will likely trend towards remaining lean, which is fine, but it's okay to allow some extra bf% as well.

Hey @anubis609 -- thanks for your help & insights. Again this is quite mind-opening for me right now. I was also surprised with this super low BF% when I got to weigh myself on a scale that had this feature. It may or might not be super accurate but it's definitely too low and linked to my very low weight.

To me, the biggest move will be to stop calorie counting and just eat mindfully like I always did before. There's no reason to fear this and gain some weight. I don't look good and training has reach some sort of plateau. It's pretty counter-productive when you think of it because I put so much effort to exercise and prepare meals but can't reach these higher kcal counts.

It's all about mindset. I'm hungry constantly, I should just hear my body signals and skip the methodic approach this is not tight to my eating habits!

Thanks again for your feedback...!
Have a good day.

Sounds like you're aware of the situation. Handle it as best as you can. I wish you success.

bmeadows380 wrote: »

I know the information is here somewhere, but after 219 pages......

I plateaued for over 18 months and regained over 25 lbs. Then in June of 2019, I finally started losing again, getting 17 lbs off in 6 months. After the holidays, I started losing at a faster clip finally in January, and am down another 18 lbs as of this morning.

I consider the holidays to be a diet break, so its been almost 3 complete months at steady weight loss. I still am 100 lbs above healthy BMI, and I'd like to lose at least another 40 lbs before December.

My question is, when should I schedule a diet break? Should I really be doing it soon, or with my stats, can I put it off until the end of May? I have a week's vacation schedule for then if it doesn't get cancelled, which would be a good time for it, but that's going to be 5 months from my last break.

though I admit, even though my head knows its healthy and a very good part of losing weight, my other self is balking at the idea, afraid to take the break as its afraid I wont' be able to restart afterwards.....

So you lost a, presumably substantial amount much greater than 25lbs over a ??? time period.

Then, over 18 months, you had a regain of 25lbs at a rate of a bit more than 0.32lbs a week, or a surplus of about 160-170 Cal a day.

Then you went into a deficit, and lost 6 months and 17lbs, so, about 320-350 Cal a day deficit. Then you increased the deficit to 2.5months and 18lbs, so, about 830-875 Cal a day deficit. You have about 100lbs left to lose. (the numbers may need to be double checked, I sort of run them on a napkin )

So there is the mental and the physical.

How are you tolerating the deficit? Mentally? Physically? Do you have any re-feed days (not diet breaks, but one or two re-feed days) that you do from time to time? Have you done any recently?

What was the situation during your 18 months of slow gain? Were you just trying to maintain but failing due to hunger? Due to changes in types of food eaten? Were you trying to lose and thinking you were in a deficit but weren't?

You're effectively 10lbs down from your previous low at this point if I've read it right.

Thinking back at my own loss, I will admit that I might be tempted, in your place, to continue losing at this point while focusing on sustainable long term choices.... what I call finding things you can do long term.

THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD NOT MODULATE THE SPEED OF LOSS. And/or have re-feeds.

What I don't know is if I would engage in an extended diet break unless you are viewing it as a new test of longer term maintenance?

So I might, for example, do a re-feed for a couple of days and then change my current almost 2lb a week loss to a closer to 1lb a week deficit a while? Basically you're probably aiming for 1000 Cal and getting 850 Cal. I would personally slow things down a bit to a deficit of no more than 25% of TDEE, which in conjunction with the occasional re-feed and the occasional maintenance week would probably bring it down to between 20 and 25% of TDEE.

Which brings us to the original diet break question, which to my mind involves several as opposed to a single week of maintenance eating... have you considered just going for a maintenance week during the vacation, or was that what you had in mind when you said diet break?

Just some random thoughts for you to consider together with everything else