Hey guys, Sean Nalewanyj here of SeanNal.com and BodyTransformationTruth.com, and in this
video I want to go over the topic of incorporating a refeed day into your fat loss diet as a
way of improving your long term results.
Now this is a debated topic, so I’ll just be giving you my thoughts on it, I’ll be
going over what a refeed day is, the potential benefits, who should use them and how to structure
them for the best results.
So to put it simply, a refeed day is a planned increase in your total calorie intake for
one day that you can add in certain intervals throughout your cutting phase.
This is NOT the same thing as a typical all out “cheat day” that a lot of other dieters
use where they just go ahead and eat anything they want and in whatever amount they want,
that can often be quite counterproductive for some people, a refeed day again is a controlled
increase in calories where you still monitor your macronutrients and you still keep your
total food volume within certain limits.
Now, what is the point of a refeed day?
The idea behind this is basically to temporarily re-elevate levels of a hormone called “leptin”,
which plays an important role in regulating a lot of things throughout your body including
metabolic rate, hunger and energy levels.
Your body is always trying to maintain a balanced state, and so as you continue to diet over
time and maintain a calorie deficit, thoseleptin levels will gradually drop as basically a
survival mechanism to spare fat, and the longer that you’ve been dieting for and the lower
your body fat levels drop to, the further and further thoseleptin levels will also go
down with it.
As a result, you end up with the typical “dieting side effects” that most people experience
when they try to cut, that includes a slow-down in metabolic rate, an increase in appetite,
a decrease in strength and energy, and even a decrease in your overall motivation levels
and your mood.
So these effects are normal to a degree and you can’t eliminate them altogether, but
using a refeed day can temporarily offset them by increasing those leptin levels.
So you’ll feel physically and mentally better, and you might also experience faster overall
fat loss by slightly offsetting that slow down in metabolic rate.
Now that last point is a debated topic, some people argue that the increase is small and
only very temporary, while others who have had a fat loss plateau absolutely swear by
refeed days as a way to speed up the process, but in any case, it’s definitely not going
to hurt you if you do it properly, and in my experience the physical and mental boost
that a refeed day gives you, it does make it a worthwhile technique to use for most
dieters.
Since you’ll always have that upcoming day to look forward to where you can go ahead
and bump your calories up and enjoy certain foods that you might otherwise normally limit
during your regular cutting diet, the chances of “accidental” binge eating go down and
the overall process just becomes more enjoyable for you.
And on top of that, a refeed day is also going to give you a small increase in your glycogen
levels, and that's going to improve your training performance for a couple days after your refeed
is over.
So how often should you refeed, well this varies from person to person, but basically
the leaner you are and the longer that you’ve been in a calorie deficit for, the more frequently
you’ll likely want to do refeeds because the effects of the diet are going to be more
severe on your body in that situation, and on the other hand, beginners who have a higher
body fat percentages and who have not been dieting for very long, those people aren’t
going to need to refeed as often (if it all) in the beginning stages.
Just as a general rule though, I'd say to go with a refeed day once every 1-2 weeks,
that works well for most people, and again just going with the higher or lower end depending
on your level of leanness, how long you’ve been on your diet for, as well as how the
diet is affecting you individually.
Refeed days are not necessarily a must for everyone though, and if you’re just starting
out, you'reconsistently losing fat each week, and you feel fine both physically and mentally,
and you just have no real desire to eat more food, then you can definitely just skip over
this technique for the time being and save it for later on when you might need it then.
And as a side note, if you’re bulking or if you're just maintaining, then refeeds are
not going to be necessary for you.
Now, proper refeed day structure is pretty straightforward and I’d recommend just keeping
it simple.
The basic method that I would recommend is to just take your calories and increase them
back up to your calorie maintenance level, so roughly the number of calories that you
would need right now in order to maintain your current weight, and from there just assign
those calories to carbohydrates, since carbs have the strongest effect on boosting up leptin
levels, whereas protein and fat are going to have a minimal impact there.
So just take the calorie increase and divide it by 4, and that's going to give you the
additional grams of carbohydrates to consume since carbs have 4 calories per gram.
So if you went from a cutting intake of 2000 calories and you bumped that up to a maintenance
level of 2500, then on your refeed day you’d keep protein and fat the same and you would
just consume an extra 125 grams of carbs.
And usually for cutting diets I just recommend going with 1 gram of protein per pound of
body weight daily, and 25% of your total calories from fat.
Also keep in mind thatv after your refeed is done you’re probably going to notice
a small gain in body weight, but this is just a result of the increase in total food volume
that you're consuming, extra water retention and extra glycogen and that's going to decrease
over the following day or two.
So that’s really all there is to it.
Refeeds are a good way to maximize overall adherence to your diet long term by giving
you short breaks where you’ll get a nice boost in your energy and your mood and you'll
get to enjoy some additional food, and on top of that it might also have some direct
effects on optimizing your metabolic rate as well.
So thanks for watching this video lesson, I hope you found the information useful here
today.
If you want to learn everything you need to know in order to maximize your muscle building
and your fat burning progress when it comes to proper training, nutrition and supplementation,
along with concrete step by step plans that you can follow, make sure to head over to
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by clicking the icon at the top of the video or using the link in the description box below.
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Talk to you again soon.