The beginning of a diet is always an exciting phase, running high on dedication and will to transform yourself. For the first couple of weeks/ months it’s usually smooth sailing you exercise regularly and maintain a proper diet and your body fat percentage declines progressively. If your goal is to lose fat, eat fewer calories. Seems pretty simple. However, as most of us know, cutting calories is not an easy feat, especially when working toward a 10, 12, or even 16-week transformation challenge. Following a strict diet requires lots of focus, determination. As your body reaches a plateau you decrease the calories more and add cardio, but you can’t go far by just cutting the calories and adding more and more cardio in your routine. When you’re …show more content…
Yes, that’s right eating more to lose more fat. Not just anything and everything, though there’s more to it than that. This weight loss technique is known as “refeeding,” and here’s how it works…When you give your body more calories than it needs, leptin levels are boosted, which can then have positive effects on your fat oxidation, thyroid activity, mood, and even testosterone levels.
The effect of a proper refeed is it makes you feel better both physically and psychologically, you’re much less likely to fall down the slope of “just one more cheat day,” and you will also experience acceleration of your fat loss over the following 3 to 5 days.
So what is Refeeding?
Refeeding can be defined as a planned increase in calorie intake during dieting. Refeeding can yield a myriad of psychological and physiological benefits:
• Decreased risk for binge eating because of hunger regulation
• Restored muscle glycogen so better performance in gym.
• Increased motivation from boosted testosterone, and leptin (a hormone responsible for satiety and metabolism).
Leptin!! Sounds
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Whereas refeed day is structured and controlled overfeeding.
The two big questions here are
1. How often should you refeed?
2. How much should you increase the calories?
How often should you refeed?
This really varies from person to person but as a general rule. The leaner you are and longer you have been on deficit the more frequently you will need it, if you are closer to 10% body fat, then you can start with 1 refeed day per week. Higher the body fat percentage lesser frequently you will need it, so if you are 20% body fat or higher, then you should start with a refeed day once every 3-4 weeks
How much should you increase the calories?
This is a Trial and error method – Try -> Error ->Adjust ->Repeat. Try it see how your body responds, see the changes in your body after refeed. Start with minimum and slowly you can keep on increasing the carbs.
Nutritional recommendations
Calories - you can increase your calories by 20- 30%.
So if you’re cutting at 2000 calories, then you would be doing your refeed days at about 2400-2600