First of all, this post is for a very select few of my dieters who are in the low bodyfat% range looking to get leaner (while training) and those that are truly eating a low carbohydrate diet for fat loss and health. If you're not in this category, the information below is too advance for you. (unless you really want to learn something about the hormone leptin/metaoblism and fat loss stalling issues.)
In the bodybuilding community, we don't call it "cheat days". we call it "refeeds" and it literally means just that.
This is where it came from...
For any caloric deficit diet to work, we have to restrict some foods. The more, the quicker the fat loss.
The less miserable/hunger inducing the diet is, the better. As long as it provide all the essential nutrients the body needs for optimal hormonal functions, enough fuel to support activity & recovery, the rest should be eliminated to create the greatest caloric deficit possible for leaning out.
1. First thing we cut is carbs because it's not essential to the human body. Period. Unless you're training and only on training days, you may increase it.
2. Second is all the non-essential fats from plants/industrialized products. If you eat plenty fatty fish 4-5 servings a week, that's enough on the EFA. If not from fish sources or grassfed meat (which i suspect most of you don't get it cuz heb/walmart is just right around the corner), taking 10g of fish oil (3g of epa/dha)/day is sufficient to meet the requirement while keeping all other protein products lean.
3g (1g of epa/dha) on non-dieting days for the rest of your life if you continue to live in america and don't eat fish.
3. Third is getting the minimal protein to support lean muscle mass, this is no mystery. For general weight loss, 1 g/lb of LMM is plenty. If you get hungry, this is the variable you want to play with more or less to ensure you don't take in more calories than needed from sugar sources. This means female @ around 80-100g, men 120-160g depending on your body comp. and training/resting days. The more unnecessary carbs you take in the less protein you need, gram to gram. Carbs will spare protein metabolism.
My general recommendation is just to eat a pound of meat a day and if fat loss is too slow (esp. for females and sedentary ppl), drop down to .7lbs a day. If fat loss is too rapid and you're afraid to lose lean mass (performance suffers), or hunger is an issue, eat up to 1.5lbs of meat a day.
The three rules above for dieting down body fat fast is basically a "Protein Sparing Fat Loss Diet". For those who are obese, diabetic, or not completely sedentary, ketogenic diet might be more useful (and less miserable) and it's basically a low to moderate protein, high fat, low to zero carbs regime (cyclical).
Lyle McDonald from body recomposition wrote about PSFLD in his book.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/the-rapid-fat-loss-handbook
My general recommendation is just to eat a pound of meat a day and if fat loss is too slow (esp. for females and sedentary ppl), drop down to .7lbs a day. If fat loss is too rapid and you're afraid to lose lean mass (performance suffers), or hunger is an issue, eat up to 1.5lbs of meat a day.
The three rules above for dieting down body fat fast is basically a "Protein Sparing Fat Loss Diet". For those who are obese, diabetic, or not completely sedentary, ketogenic diet might be more useful (and less miserable) and it's basically a low to moderate protein, high fat, low to zero carbs regime (cyclical).
Lyle McDonald from body recomposition wrote about PSFLD in his book.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/the-rapid-fat-loss-handbook
Leptin
Both chronic low carbing and low calorie diets lower your hormone leptin. The fatter you are the less this concerns you. Assuming you're not metabolically defected or anything (leptin/insulin resistant).
Leptin is a lipo-stat regulator (one of many) produced from your fat cells that signals hunger when it's running low. It's registered by your hypothamus through the blood/brain barrier. Leptin helps keep some body fat on you and make sure you get hungry when you chronically drop body fat or increasing activity (basically, when you're chronically at a negative energy balance).
When you're going under 12% BF (for men) or 17% for women or lowered food intake for weeks, your leptin can drop drastically. This is the body's defense mechanism to make sure you don't starve to death and induce hunger to ensure you eat more and save your body fat.
When people give in the hunger, they typically eat more calories than the total deficit they originally created (overall during the leptin drop) due to body's need to over-compensate in case this periodic starvation occurs again.
This is why some misinformed dieters would drop calories drastically for days, fit into their dress for photoshoots, then put all the weight back in the next few days, sometimes more than their original/pre-dieting weight.
This is why some misinformed dieters would drop calories drastically for days, fit into their dress for photoshoots, then put all the weight back in the next few days, sometimes more than their original/pre-dieting weight.
Sidenote: I'm also not talking about "starvation mode" like most trainers refers to when you don't snack more than 5x a day or when ppl going on a 24-36hr fast. That's not starvation. That's fasting and it's perfectly natural. Periodic fasting is part of our human evolutionary past and we are perfectly adpated to deal with these semi-starvation/intermittent fasting conditions.
Anyways, typically after a contest or simply a mental break down from hardcore dieting, ppl can bounce back and eat 6,000kcal/day easy for weeks.
Anyways, typically after a contest or simply a mental break down from hardcore dieting, ppl can bounce back and eat 6,000kcal/day easy for weeks.
One of the main side effects of chronically lowered leptin production on most fad/crash diets is unsatisfiable hunger. The greater the deficit, the more you will feel it. Unless you have some insane lean genes, on a really good stim (caffeine/ephedrine), or just really, really, really mentally determined to lose body fat, your low leptin level will break you down eventually.
So to trick and raise your leptin back to normal level (reboot metabolism and reduce hunger) without offsetting the overall deficits you've generated for fat loss, you can refeed your body with carbs for a day/meal to replenish what you may lack from the diet. Simply eat at energy balance/maintenance amount of calories on training days is sufficient and there's no need to binge.
Also, make sure you cut fat down on this day. Fat doesn't play an immediate role in leptin restoration so keep it low even if you're doing low carbs/paleo.
Also, make sure you cut fat down on this day. Fat doesn't play an immediate role in leptin restoration so keep it low even if you're doing low carbs/paleo.
For anyone who's actually keeping carbs under 20-40g a day and possibly eating 600-1,000 kcal deficit overall, a refeed of +200g/carbs once (maybe twice) a week is a good start, then tweak it from there depending on, fitness/energy level, hunger, and fat loss stalls.
Read this to understand what are some safe carbs for refeeds.
A bonus of refeed later in the day is that it increases seratonin which help you get a good night sleep. This is why I always eat my starchy carbs and fruits before bed.
Sidenote: If you think about it, 200g on carbs is basically how most Americans are eating now. 200g = 800kcal. On a 2000kcal/day intake for maintenance (for a female, higher for men and training), that's about 40% of carbs... USDA actually encourage us to eat up to 60%!! They literally want us to refeed our fat cells daily! Now you know why USDA's guideline does not work for general health or weight loss.
So to keep your refeeds simpler, just eat like a Standard American Diet and you're set.
Learn more about Cyclical Ketosis for ketogenic dieting while training.
Martin Berkhan from Leangains.com suggest that overfeeding with carbs may offset the leptin drop but only temporarily. As soon as you get back to dieting again, leptin is lowered. He preach the idea of more frequent refeeds (post workout, perhaps 3x/wk) while still very high in carbs is not as high as once-a-week (ketogentic type) refeeds. On his refeed days/training days, fat is kept low while protein and carbs is still pretty high. On rest days, carbs is low while protein is high and fat should be moderate to low depending on perference/deadlines.
When Cheat Meals Gone Bad
The reason people implement cheat meal after a workout is because the incoming nutrients and energy supply the muscle where it's most depleted/needed. Also, it helps with long term adherance to dieting.
On the other hand, cheats are completely useless for the overweight folks on the physiological level. Overweight Dieters simply don't defend starvation (or slowed metabolism) as strongly as those who are lean. They still have plenty of "fuel" (body fat) to go around for replenishing the muscle. Overweight dieters tend to lose less lean muscle mass when they start cutting calories or non at all if they eat enough protein and train with resistance.
What also makes a cheat meals seriously counter-productive is the fact that 80% of the time, dieting trainees over-estimate their energy expenditure from exercise, thinking just because they lost 6lb from their 2 hours bootcamp workout, they believe they burned 3 lb of fat (which is equivalent to10,500kcal) or something stupid like that. So they felt safe eating a 800kcal sandwich followed by a 800kcal milk shake or hit the buffet and put down 3,000kcals in a single meal, even though they probably only burn around 600kcal (if lucky).
On the other hand, cheats are completely useless for the overweight folks on the physiological level. Overweight Dieters simply don't defend starvation (or slowed metabolism) as strongly as those who are lean. They still have plenty of "fuel" (body fat) to go around for replenishing the muscle. Overweight dieters tend to lose less lean muscle mass when they start cutting calories or non at all if they eat enough protein and train with resistance.
What also makes a cheat meals seriously counter-productive is the fact that 80% of the time, dieting trainees over-estimate their energy expenditure from exercise, thinking just because they lost 6lb from their 2 hours bootcamp workout, they believe they burned 3 lb of fat (which is equivalent to10,500kcal) or something stupid like that. So they felt safe eating a 800kcal sandwich followed by a 800kcal milk shake or hit the buffet and put down 3,000kcals in a single meal, even though they probably only burn around 600kcal (if lucky).
Cheat meals are completely different from refeeds. A cheat meal can be anything, (size/macronutrient-ratio) unlike refeed where its focus is getting enough carbs and calories to normalize leptin sensitivity and production. Fat people generally produce plenty leptin.
A cheat meal is mentally rewarding from hardcore dieting but serve very little physiological purpose unless it's after a workout at a sensible portion with the right macronutrient.
Refeeds... what it is and what it's not.
1. Refeeds are appropriate for bodybuilding and athletes eating low carbs/calories before a contest/leaning out phase 1-2x a week. (cycling)
2. Serve to reboot leptin (overall sympathetic nervous system output) to normalize metabolism and hunger. The fatter you are, the less you need it. Men above 12-14% bf, female above 20% don't need to do this. Know your bf%.
3. Portion and frequency of refeeds depend on how long and hard you've been dieting. 200-250g of carbs once a week on LC or ketosis diets for leaning out or 100-150g 2-3x/week post workout for strength training.
If you get plenty carbs post workout and you're not eating less than 100g of carbs on non-training days. you don't need refeeds.
4. Ketosis/Low Carbs is generally not great for endurance athletes (esp. during training season) but if you're chunky and only train recreationally, you can be on ketosis (assuming at a negative energy balance) and not worry so much about refeeds or performance drop as long as you get a nice portion of carbs post workout.
5. Cheat Meals are great for the overweight population eating low carbs/calories long-term for psychological reasons but if you're super committed to lose fat or just super obese/diseased, you don't need cheats. Seeing your weight loss and improved blood tests periodically should be mentally rewarding enough and the fuel that's still around your body will "refeed" you. No major leptin problem there.
6. If you're not on VLC, ketogenic diet, or a protein-sparing fat loss diet, refeeds are unnecessary. (pointed out in #3)
7. Don't let either cheat meals or refeeds to become a binge. Eat just enough to do what it's suppose to do... fix cravings, curve hunger, reset metabolism, deal with social events & fuel workouts. To read all there is to learn about bodyweight regulation, stubborn fat, and the hormone leptin, read lyle's articles here.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/index.php?s=leptin
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