Do you need refeeds?

I had a question in my DM’s whether refeed days were mandatory for a diet…

The short answer is NO. 🙅🏼‍♀️

A refeed day is a controlled increase in calories and carbohydrates to help you recover from a calorie deficit.

They are a tool you can use for diet adherence, managing social outings or breaking the monotony of dieting with a little extra room for calorie-dense foods over 2 days so that you can still live while on a fat loss journey.

👉🏻 There is some discussion that the refeed days from carbs can assist in increasing leptin levels and, therefore, periodically reduce any downward regulation caused by dieting and help maintain a steady rate of fat loss over time.

But mostly, refeed days are utilised for diet adherence.

If you are in a steady deficit, not too aggressive and managing your calorie intake, then not needed.

If you're in an aggressive deficit and struggle to do much with your calories, then yes it's a tool you can use throughout your diet phase.

Particularly around managing social occasions or menstrual cycles.

How to set up your refeed

Simply recalculate your new TDEE off of your current body weight. From there, calculate the difference in your current calories and calories for your TDEE.

Let’s say it is a 500-calorie increase. Then, all you need to do is increase 500 calories from your deficit calories for 2 days.

This increase in calories largely goes to carbohydrates. 500kcal/4 = 125g carbs.