The word diet can give you nightmares. This is why because most people associate it with very strict 24/7 diet. However, this doesn’t have to be the case.

Researchers showed that sometimes cheating will not mandatorily ruin your diet. Moreso, there are hard indications that dietary “refeeds” can keep the key to success. So what is a refeed? It is the interruption of consecutive days of low-calorie dieting. They need to be planned so you won’t affect the course of the original diet. Also, eating more may not be enough. The secret here is to get extra calories from a specific macronutrient.

How Come Refeeds Work?

Some say it is a physiological, others that it is a psychological one. However, the benefits that come from refeeds are:

• it can improve the fat loss due to the interruption of the body’s adaptive responses to the same calorie intake;
• it can increase the metabolism, which of course will lead to a long-term fat-loss
• it can elevate the leptin levels. Doing so, your appetite will decrease and with it so will the food cravings.

The secret here is not to transform your diet into an everyday cheating day. This can be a disaster for all the hard work you’ve managed to do. You can wake up and find that along with killing your willpower, you’ve also killed all your progress.

Most of the studies regarding refeed were made on people who needed to lose weight and not on the people who lift weights or who want to get toner. So let’s see what is the effect on active people

Continuous Dieting Vs. Diet Refeeds

A clinical study was made on twenty-seven resistance-trained men and women. They were distributed randomly to keep one of the two methods:

• A seven-week diet that included two consecutive days of maintenance calories per week (group A)
• A seven-week continuous diet with no diet refeeds (group B)

Group B managed to reduce their calories by 25 percent below maintenance and was not permitted to stray from this caloric restriction.

Group A was directed to reduce their caloric intake by 35 percent below maintenance for five consecutive days, and then to raise their caloric consumption to their maintenance levels for two consecutive days each week. The thing was that group A had to increase their calories solely through carbohydrates. This specific method is known as carbohydrate refeed.

With this organization, both groups averaged a 25 percent cutback in caloric consumption each week.

However, carbs were not the only macronutrient taken into consideration. Protein is vitally essential when dieting, especially for women. It is also imperative for sustaining performance during exercise. Because of this, both groups were told to eat enough protein. More exactly everybody had to consume 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body mass per day, regardless of their group.

Every participant trained four days per week and tracked their macronutrients every day during the seven-week study. After this period these were the results:

• Regarding metabolism. Metabolic rate developed a comparable model as the lean body mass measures. Both groups encountered a slowing down of their metabolic rates, but group A did much better. Group B experienced a notable drop of 78 calories per day, while group A obtained a non-significant fall of only 40 calories per day.

• Regarding body composition. Subjects from both groups lost a comparable volume of body weight and fat mass. The more interesting finding was when we analyzed the lean body mass outcomes of the two diet groups. Group B lost a meaningful amount of lean body mass during the regime, almost three pounds. Group A was able to control better their lean body mass. This meant losing less than a pound of lean body mass!

But what does this mean?

Our research shows the obvious advantages of including a diet refeed into a weight loss plan. Having two consecutive days per week in which you grow your caloric consumption in the form of carbohydrates will permit higher support of lean body mass and metabolic rate.

Additionally, there is likely a mental bonus of having these intermittent refeeds. Knowing that you will have a pause from reducing each day of the week will encourage you to stick to your regime for a long period. Even if you will do this you will still be able to lose a good amount of fat!