DreamWeaver
Legend
How often for an endo who needs to lose a lot of weight for a contest. I was thinking every 5 days what do you think.
Bobo said:Depends on how long you've been dieting. When I start I don't even refeed until around 14 days. Then I do a couple weeks at 10 days, then 7, 5, etc....The less fat, the more you need to carb up to prevent any muscle loss. At 20%, you won't have to worry about that at all.
Draven said:How do you guys work out the 36/hr refeeds. I know on a 2 day refeed you do 2x the weekly cals at 70/15/15 and then roughly 1.5x week cals at 25/65/15 but I can't figure out what's best for a 1 1/2 day refeeds. If you start Friday afternoon and go to Sat night, how many cals do you take in the half day?
Timbo said:At a present 20% fat and just the beginning of a calorie-restricted diet, I see no need for refeeds. As per Bobo, perhaps a doubling of carbohydrate once in the first ten to fourteen days should suffice. This is simply to restore some muscle glycogen so performance does not suffer.
As you start to get lower into percentage bodyfat and fat loss stalls more readily, then refeeds may need be on the order of anywhere from three to five days. However, as contest time approaches, you will probably eliminate refeeds altogether in preparation of depletion training and nutrition.
It sounds like you're experienced with contest dieting, so you should need not need to experiment with the loading process. However, the earlier you can prepare the better. If you're ready a few weeks in advance, you can maintain relativley low carbs and then up the calories from fat to a maintenanace standpoint. This will only give you leverage against the other competitors who are likely under the supposition that they must diet all the way up to the show, and, unfortunately, come in flat and energy-drained. Good luck.