If you’ve been hanging around the weight loss crowd for a while and are a bit more into the nutritional side of things, you might have come across the term ‘refeed’ before.
Many people are completely baffled when it comes up though, as they aren’t entirely sure what exactly this so-called refeed involves.
Here’s what you need to know.
The Objective of a Refeed
The main purpose of a refeed is going to be to make dieting run a whole lot smoother.
You see, whenever you are on a reduced calorie intake for an extended period of time (which any of you who are currently on diets are), you’re going to see negative side effects.
These side effects include such things as hunger, decreased energy levels, agitation, intolerance for cold, and so on.
Basically, your body is making it hard to keep going with your diet. It wants you to stop and EAT already.
A refeed aims to solve this problem.
The Science Behind The Refeed
What the refeed essentially is doing is helping to restore some of the hormones that help regulate the ‘fat burning furnace’ in your body, otherwise known as your metabolic rate.
When certain hormones – leptin being the primary one, get too low, that’s when you really see problems start to set in, and why you also start showing a slowed weight loss.
Your body is fighting further weight loss from taking place in order to protect itself against starvation. Pretty smart plan as far as it’s concerned.
When you overfeed the body though, that’s when it senses that it’s no longer starving itself, and will start running more effectively.
Since one high calorie meal isn’t really going to make all that much of a difference (it will help, but the results will be nothing to write home about), you’ll want your refeeds to ideally last anywhere from 5 hours to two whole days.
This will give the body a stronger signal to return it’s metabolism back up to normal speed and help take away some of the very intense feelings of hunger you are likely experiencing.
How To Do a Refeed
So, that brings us to how exactly you need to plan out your refeed.
Ideally you want to be eating anywhere from 2 to 5 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight during this period.
So, for a person who weighs in at 150 pounds, this would translate to 300 to 750 grams of carbohydrates (or 1200 to 3000 calories).
What range of this you’re on will depend on how strictly you have been dieting along with how long the refeed process is going to last.
Since the body is going to respond best to a higher carbohydrate intake, the majority of the food you are eating during this time should be higher carb in nature, while still meeting your protein requirements for the day (1 gram per pound of body weight), and while keeping fat relatively low.
So, if next time you hear the word refeed, keep this information in mind.
When implemented properly into a program, they can really help speed the weight loss results you see, while making the diet much more comfortable to be on.
Plus, who doesn’t love periods of high-calorie, high-carb eating?
For more information on a diet I actually designed right around this concept, please check out the Cheat Weight Loss Program.
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