Refeeds: How and Why I Do Them (And Why You Probably Shouldn't)

Last week, I did a refeed.

I had been in a 1,000+cal/day deficit for the past 4.5 weeks, and my muscle glycogen stores were low.

How low? I had no clue.

But I felt it was time for a refeed!

So, on Friday and Saturday last week, I filled my glycogen stores back up.

What Is A Refeed?

First off, a refeed is a planned increase in carb intake designed to refill muscle glycogen stores and improve energy levels and performance.

It also allows for a mental break from dieting.

Typically, total caloric intake is increased to about maintenance levels, with all of that increase coming in the form of carbs.

And usually, protein and fat are decreased a bit in order to eat more carbs.

A refeed is not a “cheat day.”

It is not a day where you just eat whatever you want.

Why I Did A Refeed

 One of my favorite things to do is conduct experiments on myself.

Evidence-based research and studies are cool, but there's nothing like testing things out on yourself and seeing how you respond.

That's my main reason for doing this.

Curiosity and fun.

There are two other reasons I'm doing this:

1. I planned to race a 5k on Sunday
2. I had been feeling extra hungry, fatigued, and weak for the previous 7 days

After the race, I plan to cut for another 2-3 weeks.

This refeed will help me get through those next 2-3 weeks.

And refilling muscle glycogen stores (probably) improved my performance in the race on Sunday and (definitely) gave me a bit of a mental break from cutting.

And since a 5k doesn't use that much muscle glycogen, this "refeed" will likely improve my performance in workouts for the next week or two.

If I was at maintenance and eating my normal 500-700g of carbs per day, I wouldn't have "carb loading" like this for a 5k.

But because I'd been in a deficit for over a month, there was a good chance my muscle glycogen levels were pretty low.

How Much I Ate During My Refeed

Here's what my macros were like for the 4 weeks before the cut:

~2,700 calories: 185P 85F 275-335C

Here's what I planned to eat last Friday and Saturday:

~3,400 calories: 160P 60F 500-600C

Here’s what I actually ate:

Friday     3,561: 158P 83F 539C

Saturday 4,100: 175P 69F 701C

As you can see, I went a bit overboard 🤣

About 2 hours before the race on Sunday, I ate:

552 cal: 16P 13F 96C

This was a Chobani S'mores yogurt, graham crackers and PB, and rice cakes.

One thing to note is that even though I almost doubled my carb intake, my total caloric intake had me at about maintenance levels on Friday and probably only ~600 over on Saturday.

One thing I was very interested in was how much weight gain this would cause.

First off, any weight gain would have been temporary and 100% muscle glycogen and water.

How Muscle Glycogen Works

Every wonder why many people lose 5+ pounds in the first week of a cut?

It's almost always because they reduce carb intake which reduces muscle glycogen which reduces how much water the body holds.

In other words, they lost mostly water, not fat.

That's one "trick" a lot of weight loss coaches use to gain buy-in from clients: they have them start with a very low carb diet so they lose 5-10# in two weeks and think that person is the greatest, smartest weigtht loss coach ever.

Anyway, back to how weight fluctuations due to muscle glycogen work:

Generally, for every gram of muscle glycogen, the body stores 3g of water.

And the higher your muscle mass, the more muscle glycogen you can store.

Since I have a fairly high amount of muscle mass, I can likely store somewhere between 900 and 1500g of glycogen.

This means when fully topped off, I will also be storing 2,700-4,500g of water with it.

So, theoretically, if my glycogen stores were fully depleted, I could gain 8-13+ pounds from refilling them!

That said, I didn't expect to gain anywhere near that much, as I had been eating a good amount of carbs (~300/day) during my cut.

And I didn’t.

I wasn’t sure how low I was, but I was reasonably sure that I was nowhere near fully depleted.

Before the refeed, I guessed in a Twitter post that I had been at 30-70% capacity most of the time over the previous 2-3 weeks.

I also guessed that I would gain a minimum of 2 pounds and a maximum of 4 pounds by Sunday morning and that I would be back at my pre-refeed morning weight (~181-182) by Tuesday or Wednesday of this week at the latest.

And I was pretty close on those guesses.

Sunday and Monday, I was 183.0 and 183.4 in the morning, a gain of about 2 pounds.

I was a day late on my pre-refeed morning weight as it took until Wednesday (181.4) and Thursday (181.6) to get back to 181.x.

I think one of the most interesting things about this was that even though my weight increased over the weekend since I was still in a weekly deficit, I was actually still losing fat.

That's pretty cool.

I expect to be under 180 within 3-5 days at my current loss rate.

And there is a very good chance I will do another refeed around October 10/11.

So What Did I Eat?

Donuts, ice cream, candy, pizza?!

No.

This was a refeed, not an "eat like an asshole and ruin your cut day."

I ate (mostly) the same stuff I'd been eating on the cut, just a lot more carbs.

Instead of 400g of potatoes, I ate 700g.

Instead of 125g of French Toast, I ate 200g.

Instead of 150g of rice with Teriyaki chicken, I ate 400g of rice.

And I threw in a bagel, some rice cakes, and maybe even a little sorbet.

My Full Refeed Meal Plan (With Macros)

Here are all of my meals for Friday and Saturday:

Friday

12:00 PM

French Toast: 200g sourdough, 2 egg whites, 10g sugar, 10g butter

1 Chobani S’mores Yogurt

1/2 Bagel and cream cheese

1,028 cal: 47P 24F 151C

3:00 PM

Air Fryer French Fries: 650g potatoes, 7g olive oil, 50g ketchup

1 Ice Cream Sandwich

706 cal: 15P 11F 143C

5:00PM

Chicken Teriyaki: 150g Rice, 4oz chicken thighs, 30g sauce

4 Rice Cakes

1 Trader Joes Mini Ice Cream Cone

681 cal: 31P 9F 117C

7:00 PM

Ground Beef and Chicken Tacos with Rice and Cookies

We ate out, and this was an estimate.

1,147 cal: 65P 40F 128C

Saturday

10:00 AM

1 Chobani S’mores Yogurt

4 Rice Cakes

2 Chicken Sausage

1 Bagel with cream cheese

745 cal: 33P 16F 117C

12:00PM

Chicken Teriyaki: 6oz chicken thighs, 350g rice, 40g sauce

757 cal: 47P 9F 117C

1:00 PM

French Toast: 250g sourdough, 120mL milk, 1 egg, 2 egg whites, 10g sugar, 5g butter

873 cal: 45P 18F 129C

3:00 PM

225g Raspberry Sorbet

3 Rice cakes

1 Ice Cream Sandwich

543 cal: 8P 4F 127C

5:00 PM

Air Fryer Fries: 750g potatoes, 8g olive oil, 50g ketchup

655 cal: 14P 9F 134C

7:00 PM

Blue Cheese Burger: 1 bun, 3oz bison, 10g blue cheese, sugar free BBQ sauce

4 rice cakes

528 cal: 28P 15F 78C

All of the above are things I regularly eat during a cut, minus the sorbet and ice cream sandwiches.

I still eat them, but not every day.

Really, I ate basically the same meals I’ve been eating for the past 30 days; I just increased the amount of carbs.

I eat air-fried potatoes, french toast, ground beef/chicken thighs, Greek yogurt, and rice virtually every day.

Why You Probably Shouldn’t Do A Refeed

Once I started eating more, my body REALLY wanted to keep eating.

I could have easily eaten 2-3,000 more calories each day.

Seriously.

It’s like that old Pringles saying “Once you pop, you can’t stop.”

In the case of a refeed during a cut, it’s very true.

Once you start eating more, your body makes it very, very difficult not to go nuts and eat everything.

If you are considering a refeed, you should be able to answer yes to the following questions:

• Am I under 10% bodyfat?
• Have I successfully cut weight at least two times before?
• Do I have a good reason for doing this?
• Do I truly understand how it works, how to do it correctly, and what to expect?

The truth is that most people shouldn’t do refeeds.

They are very risky.

It’s extremely easy for a refeed day to turn into a cheat day, a cheat 3 day or a cheat week.

You can easily undo multiple weeks of progress if you aren’t able to control yourself.

And there is much more to it than what I detailed above.

And to be fully honest, most people don’t need them.

Most people have spent their lives “refeeding” every single day.

So until you demonstrate that you have the discipline to handle it, and are lean enough to require it, I don’t recommend you try it.

That said, if you are seriously considering trying one, shoot me a DM or an email, and I’d be more than happy to give you some advice.