When you’re trying to lose weight and burn fat, a sudden switch to a healthier lifestyle and/or reduction of calories (the amount of foods you consume) can become difficult to adapt to. Mainly it is because we reduce the portion sizes and we consume fewer calories than we used to. This calorie deficiency is necessary to lose weight and burn fat, however, this calorie deficiency can be hard to keep consistent. That’s why there are cheat meals and refeed days – they make this transition easier.
Cheat meals are there to help you get over it easier. However, there are also refeed days. Do you know the difference between cheat meals and refeed days?
To explain it easier, a refeed meal or refeed day is a planned increase in calories, either for one meal only (as a refeed meal), or for one entire day (as a refeed day). It is different from cheat meals (or cheat days) in terms of what exactly you’re eating during those meals (or days). Most people opt for the refeed days either once a week, or every other week, providing their body a break from calorie restrictions.
Why are cheat meals and refeed days important?
When you’re following a strict nutrition plan long term, it is not uncommon to start dreaming about various tasty but unhealthy foodstuffs. We totally get it. That’s why, to ensure that you won’t fall off the bandwagon, cheat meals or refeed days can be highly efficient.
So, in order to get the most out of your healthy diet, you should learn more about cheat meals and refeed days, this way, you’re going to know which one is best for you, and how you can do it correctly.
Why do we crave food so much?
The stricter you are with your diet, especially when you’re already in a low body fat percentage but you aim to get it even lower, and you’ve been on a low-calorie diet for a long while now, the higher the food cravings will become. This will make it a real challenge to keep on working towards your goals.
It is important to understand that if you do have such cravings, it still doesn’t mean that your diet plan is unhealthy or unsustainable. This could be the result of your body’s main instinct – survival. When you are eating in a deficit, your body is not receiving enough energy to sustain the current size. That’s why there starts to appear different feedbacks in the body processes in an attempt to survive.
During the moments when you feel those true hunger pangs with those deep stomach growls, it is your brain “telling” you that you should be filling your fuel reserves (mainly, fat cells), which are quickly depleting. As you continue this path, trying to reduce body fat long term, your body will find its way to respond, and that’s usually by increasing the leptin levels.
You may feel fine eating less, but the leptin levels signal your body to consume more, increasing hunger. This is what makes it very tempting to snack on everything you see. That’s why refeed days are so helpful.
What is a Refeed Day?
A refeed day can be highly effective in helping you not to fall off the cutting cycle bandwagon. It helps keep you on track by reducing the cravings over the idea of demolishing a giant pizza all by yourself and then topping it out with a box of cookies. During this period (whether you opt for a single refeed meal, or refeed days), you are going to allow yourself to intentionally overconsume calories.
Yes, consuming more calories is not helpful for your calorie deficit plan, but the food that you choose does matter too! You eat more calories, which will not aid weight loss, but you eat correct foods in surplus, and this will suppress your appetite. The problem with staying in a calorie deficit is that your hormones are changing and your hunger goes up. When you’re overeating (correct foods) once in a while, you’re still on track, but your appetite reduces.
But it is not only about appetite. Staying in a calorie deficit may make you feel lethargic and tired all the time. Moreover, when you’re staying in a calorie deficit for a good while, you’re at risk of hitting a weight loss plateau. This means that even if you’re already eating only a little bit, you’re still not managing to progress your fat-burning process.
Differences Between Cheat Meals vs Refeed Days
Having all of that said, you may think that cheat meals and refeed days are pretty much the same things. Well, they are not, and there’s a pretty big difference between them.
When you’re cutting, a lot of us reach a point where we start to crave foods that we are not allowing ourselves to have. It could be sugary candy, soda, high-fat foods, or something similar. Focusing on the foods that we cannot have makes it significantly harder to eat healthily. That’s why there are cheat meals – allowing you to eat whatever you love.
The problem is that “cheat meals” are actually a cheat. Its name alone indicates that you’re doing something wrong. When you have a cheat meal (or cheat day), you’re eating whatever you love, not paying attention to macros or the calorie intake. In short, they give you total freedom in your diet.
Refeed days (or refeed meals), also allow you to overeat, allowing you to eat as much as you can. However, unlike a cheat meal, a refeed diet consists of overeating a specific macronutrient – carbohydrates. That’s why the refeed days (or refeed meal), still do not allow you to eat donuts or cakes.
Similarities
When comparing cheat meals vs refeed days, both are designed to help deal with cravings, reducing the urge to fall off the wagon. However, refeed days and meals are not about eating everything in sight, but you just carefully increase the amount of carbohydrates that you eat, with an overall surplus of calories. At the same time, cheat meals and days are uncontrolled and unplanned amounts and types of nutrition. You eat whatever you like in unlimited quantities (similar to a dirty bulking plan). The refeed days (and meals) are carefully planned and controlled, with an increase in calories, especially in carbs, but still eating healthy, with enough protein and healthy fats.
Of course, the cheat meals and days will help curb those cravings even more, satisfying your tastebuds. But they will ruin your fat burning and weight loss progress significantly more than refeed days and meals.
Why Would I Need Refeed Days?
You are burning fat and losing weight only as long as you’re staying in a calorie deficit. You can’t reduce your weight by eating more calories than your body burns. Therefore, when you try to lose weight, the refeed days do not really make much sense, don’t they? Well, do they. Let me explain.
When you’re going on a total binge fest (such as during cheat meals) that wouldn’t do any good for your goals, a temporary calorie surplus (from quality and healthy foods) will help kick-start your weight loss progress once again. It is normal for the weight loss process to slow down or even completely plateau if you’re in a calorie deficit for quite some time.
That’s because when you’re lowering the calorie intake and going into a calorie deficit, your hormones will also start to change. It is your body naturally looking for ways to limit weight loss (entering the survival mode, as the body doesn’t know you’re aiming to burn fat, it “thinks” you can’t find food and you are soon going to die from lack of it). For example, the leptin levels can start to decline.
Leptin is produced by fat cells, and it is a hormone that “tells” your body that it has enough fat stores. This encourages calorie burn and regulates your appetite. Yet, if the hormone gets too low, the brain receives signals that you’re in calorie deprivation for an unknown period. Therefore, the body “tells” you to eat more and start burning fewer calories. This is “adaptive thermogenesis”.
Adaptive Thermogenesis
When you continue your long-term path to reduce your body fat percentage, adaptive thermogenesis will set in, signaling to your body that you should eat more and burn less. This is a protective process of your body that will alter metabolism, increasing energy intake and decreasing energy output. This will slow down weight loss (entering the weight loss plateau). That’s why you crave food. Your body releases different hormones and stops the production of other hormones. In the end, the rate at which you burn calories will significantly slow down.
I guess it is obvious why refeed days are so helpful. They are basically slowing down adaptive thermogenesis. It is like you are “talking” with your body, saying that it is not going to die from food deprivation, offering the calories it needs to activate fat-burning processes and decrease the food craving processes.
The food craving is one of the biggest struggles during a cut. You need to control those hunger pangs to keep on track. We’re just humans, after all. By significantly decreasing the intake, it shocks your body, making it “want” to hold even more onto what it already has. That explains why drastic changes don’t work. It is better to eat 80% long term than attempt to eat only 20-40% because you wouldn’t be able to maintain it long term (and is unhealthy).
Still, even when you’re eating just 80-90%, you’re still suffering from hunger pangs. Luckily, there are different ways to manage your hunger. Refeed days are a perfect example of that.
Refeed Days Benefits
When you allow yourself to occasionally have some of the foods you crave, you will help increase fullness as you encourage fat cells to release more leptin. In fact, that’s how refeed days (or meals) are working. You intentionally eat significantly more calories, providing your body the energy that it needs (and even more than that), forcing the leptin levels to decrease, and suppressing your appetite. That sudden increase in calories and decrease in leptin levels will reduce the cravings for unhealthy foodstuffs too.
That’s why refeed days are extremely helpful for those who struggle to stay on track long-term and/or feel as if their weight loss has stopped. Generally, by sneaking a refeed meal into your schedule every once in a while (of course, you still need to stay in calorie deficit most of the time to see fat-burning and weight loss results), you’ll get mainly two benefits:
- May prevent a plateau in weight loss
- May help prevent binge eating
I guess we’ve all noticed that it is the initial few weeks when we notice the fastest and biggest results. This is also the time when we’re full of motivation and enthusiasts. But it doesn’t last long until the results stop and we’re unsure what to do next. That’s because of the body’s survival process (adaptive thermogenesis). The referred days will help prevent these plateaus in weight loss as you increase your calorie intake.
At the same time, you’re planning out a refeed meal, so you won’t start eating everything in the fridge. You’re upping your calories, but still being careful about what you eat. You increase carbs selectively. This will help you avoid craving the sugary foods, and prevent you from going on a total food binge.
Refeed Days Downsides
As with anything under the sun, refeed days do come with their downsides.
For example, it could be pretty easy to get carried away. It is still important to have self-control because when you allow yourself to have a refeed meal, it can be pretty tempting to go overboard. In the end, it is important to understand that refeed days are only once in a while, as you still need to stay in a calorie deficit to see the weight go.
Besides, refeed days are still a “diet” mentally. Unlike cheat meals that allow you to eat whatever you want in unlimited quantities, they still emphasize diets as a way to lose weight. They just allow for a temporary calorie spike.
Lastly, it may be necessary to do more research about it because some researchers argue the topic of adaptive thermogenesis.
What Does Refeed Days Look Like?
Planning is vital to ensure that you do not go overboard. So, if you’re in your cutting cycle and you plan to add refeed days, you should do it correctly. Not only should you plan exactly what you’re going to eat during those days and how much, but you also need to plan the exact refeed day.
Generally, most guys who are on long-term strategy opt for refeed days every two weeks. Nonetheless, this can be adjusted depending on your goals, gender, and body fat percentage. Keep in mind that women need a higher body fat percentage to stay healthy than men. They naturally tend to carry more body fat percentages than men. For example, the minimal healthy body fat percentage for men is around 5-6%, whereas for women is about 15%.
- Men with a body fat percentage of 10% and more can go for one refeed day every 2 weeks. With body fat less than that, may opt for refeeding days 1-2 times per week.
- Women with body fat higher than 20% can go for one refeed day every 2 weeks, and those who are below 20% may opt for refeed days 1-2 times a week.
In The End
The refeed days are designed to help your body (and sanity) stay on track. They offer a break from a strict calorie deficit and that can help you in various ways. A temporary break has the potential to build a healthy relationship with food too, because too restrictive diets, especially long term, will definitely ruin this relationship.
Refeed days will help improve your leptin levels, curb weight loss plateaus, and keep you on track with your body fat goals. With the potential to lower your risk of going on a total binge fest, there are a lot of benefits that you may enjoy from your refeed days. But considering that some research still argues its ability to help, it is completely up to you whether this strategy is best suitable for your weight loss goals.
In the end, we are all humans and we all get hungry. That’s completely normal, especially during a cutting cycle aiming to burn fat and lose weight. This is why we are here to help.
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