refeed

All right, you got questions? Hopefully I have the answer. In today’s Q and A, I’m gonna go over the importance of refeed days. Let’s get right into it. So a client in the group asked “Sam, what are the importance of refeed days?” Now I’m gonna kind of change the headline a little bit. We can also call this cheat days. How important are those cheat days and or refeed days? So here’s the deal on that… Your body is going to do the best when it’s in a constant state of homeostasis, meaning it’s nice and level, knowing what it’s gonna get day after day after day. So if you can maintain a nice, healthy, consistent, balanced, nutritional approach throughout the week, that is gonna serve your body best first and foremost. So now that I got that out of the way, we can get into actually, okay, “that’s not always possible Sam, some days I’m eating a lot lower throughout the week, because I’m busy at work, I have to pick up my kids, you know, is it, is it okay if I eat more on the weekends in that instance?”

So here’s what I’m gonna tell you. It all depends on your goals and your behaviors around those refeed days.

So if we’re using that refeed day as a binge type situation where, Hey, let’s see how little I can get throughout the week. So I can really splurge on this refeed day. That is a negative habit in your life and you’re probably gonna go over calories, gain access, body fat. Now, if you’re using that refeed day as simply a tool to take you closer to your goals and that’s your intent behind it. Then by all means, go for it. But I still would caution you on the refeed days. 

How much are we refeeding? Are we going a thousand more calories over, are we going about 500? Typically a refeed day, a refeed or a cheat day really should only be about 3 to 500 calories in excess. And here’s why a lot of times when we get all those extra calories and we’re actually getting a lot of systemic inflammation in our stomach that we may not be used to. If you’re used to eating low calories throughout the week, and then you hammer yourself on a Saturday or Sunday with tons of calories, you’re gonna get loaded, you’re gonna get achy joints, not feel that well. And we tend to lean towards foods that promote that inflammation, you know, those processed foods that we wanna stay away from, that we seem to be able to during the week, but when it comes to those cheat days, we’re hammering down. 

So to recap, I’m gonna bring it all together here. Refeed days are appropriate for some, if you really struggle getting your calories in throughout the week, you can have, you know, a day in the middle of the week and a day at the end of the week that are a bit higher calorie. This would be called undulating your calories. Meaning one day is a little bit lower, the other day is a little bit higher. You could do this every other day, but you’re gonna ultimately want to kind of know how much are you going up? How much are you going down? Is it staying consistent? And also on those refeed days, we want to stay away from the highly processed foods, and don’t want to over indulge. So if you find yourself leading to that, the best approach and the best approach for most is gonna be – stay consistent throughout the week. Your body’s gonna reward you for doing that. All right. That’s all I have for today. I hope you guys found value in this video. If you’d like to give me a thumbs up, if you’d love to give me a heart and as always, stay strong.

-EarthFIT Coach Sam