I’ve decided that if by next week (which will make 4 weeks of no inches or pounds lost) if I have not lost I will plan to do a reefed. I’ve lost 35 lbs relatively with ease since mid June and I’ve just suddenly stopped. I consult with Fitday keeping with the 65-70% fat thing and average just a tad above my BMI in calories. I’ve tried going a little higher fat- nope. I’ve tried going a little higher carb (I normally average around 20 per day)- nope. Higher cals, lower cals—nope. I do take supplements (magnesium/calcium/zinc, potassium, multi, omega-3, B complex and B-6) and drink a lot of water. I’m not too big on exercise (always been sporadic at working out on this WOE) but I do try to get in a lot of walking on a pretty consistent basis. I don’t eat the bars or candy (every once and a blue moon but hardly ever) and I have not cheated. I have not added any new foods to my menus that could account for this sudden halt. I very rarely have aspartame but I do drink coffee (I’ve ALWAYS drank coffee). I don’t test for ketosis anymore but I still do get the “ketosis taste” and other symptoms often so I’m assuming I’m in it most of the time. Basically, I’ve been paying close attention and doing what I’m supposed to be doing and it worked before beautifully. It somehow just completely shut off without warning in the last month.



I’m wondering if my leptin levels have gotten too low. I’ve been doing some reading up on refeeding and they say low fat & high glycemic carb (but no fruit) is the way to go for a refeed. I’m not really sure what to do with my proteins though so I’m winging it. Also, most of the info I can find is for body builders (which I’m not!) I’m assuming I should go less drastic than they say you should go because I’m not going to have some big workout session to burn it off afterwards. I’ll try to hit above my BMI (which is around 1550 ish calories) but I don’t know if I’ll be able to go that high (they were saying 16 cals for every pound of body weight which would be 2560 cals!). I also read you should supplement with zinc (which I already take) and vitamin E during a reefed. I’ll add the vitamin E when I do this. I’m planning a 1 day reefed and I’ll go back to induction the next day.



Here is the proposed menu and Fitday stats:



Breakfast:

Coffee with fat free French vanilla creamer

2 cups Trix (or similar) cereal with 1 cup skim milk



Lunch:

3 cups pasta with 1 cup spaghetti sauce



Dinner:

2 thick slices of meatless pizza (I don’t like meat on pizza)

1 can of real Coke

Coffee with fat free French vanilla creamer





Total cals : 1997

Fat: 35 316 16%

Carbs: 361 1372 72%

Fiber: 18 0 0%

Protein: 57 228 12%

Alcohol:0 0 0%



For those of you familiar with reefed for people who are not body builders or on CKD, how does this sound? It’s all stuff I have in my pantry still and pizza is just a phone call away (besides there are not many carby foods I crave, but pizza still holds a spot in my heart!). It’s been so long since I’ve had low fat food—is this low fat enough? I have absolutely no frame of reference for fat anymore!



I know I’ll show a gain for a few days afterward but about how long would it take for me to see any loss (assuming this will work!)?



Any feedback anyone can give me is appreciated. I’m nervous as heck but I really think this will work. Years ago when I dieted on WW I would go out and have a “whatever I want” meal when I hit a plateau. I ALWAYS had a loss a couple of days afterwards. Something in my gut is telling me this will work for me, I have a feeling my body wants to hang on to everything it can for some reason—I just want to make sure I do the refeed right.

I used refeed with great success. .5 to 1 pounds lost every week for 3 months. Truth is when I reached my goal I was happy leave the refeeds behind and throw out my remaining Fruit Loops.

You seem to know what you are doing and your menu looks good. You might want up you calories. Maybe eat have more Trix and Coke. Pizza is not so good because the cheese is fat, but hey what the hell. I did pizza often enough because I like it. How about some candy, liqorice is highly recommended.

My recommendation is to eat enough high-carb crap that you feel aweful. Be prepared to not sleep well that night.

Expect to gain about 1 or 2 pounds. If you refeed on Sunday, the gained wait will be gone by Wednesday or Thursday and then you will loose some more. Weight yourself every morning, get to know how your weight flucuates on a daily basis.

I started refeeding every two weeks and then moved to every week as I became thinner. When it seemed I needed more smaller refeeds I stopped doing them. Body builders do refeeds like 5 hour refeeds every 3 days, but they are shoting for 8% body fat not 15%-20%.

If you feel yourself falling under the spell of carbs, forget the refeeds and be happy about how good you feel doing low-carb. No loss or a pound every 3 months is still the right direction, espically after years of gaining.

Good luck

i have read quite a bit about refeeding and have ried it. personally, i didn´t lose any weight, though i don´t weigh yself and i´m quite thin anyway, so its hard to tell.
it was really good to totally eat so much, although i did end up feeling quite sickly...only because i ate so very much. also though, it did absolutely nothing for my will power. but....i think my situation is very much different to alot of peoples so i say its worth a try and if it works, then continue with it.

BUT, as my friend pointed out, the whole idea of low carb diets, or ONE of the ideas of low carb diets is to stop your body craving carbs. suddenly eating so many carbs may do well for losing weight, but not so good for the cravings.
another thing is, the way i see it is if you refeed, you give into leptin....and constantly refeedind kind of makes you a slave to leptin, whereas, pushing past the plateau and just sticking it out, is like pushing past the leptin barrier, and once your past it, the weight SHOULD (in theory) just fall off. course its awfully hard to have so much will power when you get no benefits immediately.

You said it Lady V! I know I *should* be a great person with iron will power and stick this out. Then I think about some of the people on the boards who have gone through 6 month or 9 month stalls. I'm sooooo not prepared for that! My will power is intact now. I don't crave carbs and I'm really happy with this WOE. I'm very proud of how I've done so far and I have not cheated since I started. My entire family is eating this way now and we plan on keeping it up for the long haul. But with a few months of NOTHING (not to mention the holidays coming up ) I will be tempted to cheat eventually-- I KNOW me (that's how I got heavy in the first place!).

I don't think I could fight the leptin thing in the long term. I've been hungry lately. Not for sweets or anything in particular -- just wanting food. The kind of mindless munching you do in front of the TV. Although I don't actually have hunger pangs, I just want to eat constantly lately. I've been fighting it but it's getting harder. I have NEVER felt like that on this WOE before -- I'm usually quite satisfied. I've read being low on leptin can do that. It makes your brain want to keep eating because it's getting signals that your body is starving. I really think the best thing for me is to nip this in the bud before it gets the best of me.

I'm scared to do the refeed because of cravings. The way I look at it though, I'm going to have cravings either way. I could ignore it and just loose control one day, going off to the carby dark side never to return. Or I could plan this out in a very methodical fashion. I'm not doing this to satisfy the senses (except for pizza . . .), I'm doing it to help my body. Also, if I eat myself silly with carbs hopefully I'm make myself so sick that I won't want to do that again for quite some time (I'm planning on a lazy sleep day for the day afterwards!). Even if I'm playing head games with myself trying to rationalize what I'm doing -- as long as I believe it and I successfully fool myself into not making a regular thing about "cheating," that's what counts.

So I'm on the last lap -- this week I'm getting a lot of exercise and eating well. I'm going to try to do what I can to loose weight under natural circumstances so I don't have to resort to the refeed. Come Sat morning I'll weigh and measure before breakfast. If nothing, I'll break out the Trix.

George, thanks for the tip on the licorice. GREAT idea. The family and I are planning on going to the movies that afternoon and Twizzlers will be the perfect thing to snack on (along with a big ol' coke!). I know the pizza isn't the best choice but if there is anything I miss it's pizza-- I had to figure out a way to fit it in! Bad thing is, I bet by the time dinner rolls around I'll feel so awful that I probably won't even enjoy it! I'll keep you guys posted. . . . .

As long as your at a movie have some popcorn too, but sadly no butter. Kind of takes you back to our low fat days, doesn't it except your not supposed to eat healthy carbs.

I believe the will power issue is related with how obscessed you are about loosing weight. Hey, if I gave up Coke and chocolate bars to do low carb in order to loose weight, I knew I could eat them again for a day - especially considering they don't taste as good as they used to. If you can be content stalling for weeks at a time then refeeds are probably not for you.

I found as I became thinner the refeeds became pointless. The amount a weight I would loose each week slowly diminished with the less fat I had on my body.

Another thing to try at the same time is caloric staggering.
http://www.allyourstrength.com/nutrition_1202_cs.html
After a refeed, back on low-carb, I would vary my calories somewhat like the article describes. The overfeed is the carb refeed.

Thanks for the link George. At one point I was kind of trying to do this but I would only vary by a couple hundred cals OR do super low carbs one day and high the next so my average would be 20 per day by the end of the week. I mainly ate the higher cals/carbs on weekends and my weekday levels would only vary by a little bit. Maybe I'll try this again but with a more calculated approach. I was just kind of winging it when I did it before.

Also, it will take some getting used to. I'm accustomed to eating the same types of things each day. Eating a lot one day wants to make me keep eating that way the next! But like the article says, If I do it for a while my body should get used to it. I'll start think about how I'm going to do this and put it to the test. Thanks again!

Hey George--

Just curious, do you also workout? Being a man, you surely have a metabolic advantage over me but I'm also wondering if intense workouts are also part of your equation.

I'm sitting here crunching some numbers based on what I read in your link. This is what I can came up with based on 1600 cals (10x my body weight) approach and 25 average carbs per day which comes out to 11,200 cals and 175 carbs per week. I just based it off of the percent of cals consumed each day off the guy in the article (i.e. he had 60% of his normal cals on day 1, etc.).

Day 1. 960 cals 17 carbs
Day 2. 1200 cals 19 carbs
Day 3. 2000 cals 27 carbs
Day 4. 960 cals 17 carbs
Day 5. 1200 cals 19 carbs
Day 6. 800 cals 16 carbs
Day 7. 2800 cals 60 carbs
Avg per day: 1417 cals and 25 carbs

I wonder if because I don't do intense workouts if this will not be realistic for me? Perhaps also I'll plot this out over a 2 week schedule instead of doing it every week.

This concept REALLY makes sense to me and the more I think about it the more I would like to give it a shot.

P.S. considered the popcorn but I don't think I could do it without the butter. That's the BEST part! I'd rather munch on Twizzlers . . . .

Sure, looks fine to me. I just generally ate more some days and less others. Having never been a calorie or carb counter I don't really know the numbers. I do not or have ever exercised at all, I dispise exercise unless it is in the form of a sport. I walk and do agility with my dog, and play with my 2 young children.

I started out doing refeeds every two weeks and it became clear based on my weight loss, watching the scale every day, that I needed to do it every week. Just as it became clear when once a week was not enough, at which point I did not want to deal with it any more and I stopped refeeds. I that point I just tried to be patient and enjoy how good I feel with low carbing.

Butter on popcorn gets into an interesting notion. Refeeds are not cheats because they are part of your diet plan. Pizza and butter on your popcorn during a refeed iare cheats. I must admit I cheated during every refeed. What's the point if you can't enjoy it a little.

hi again, sunspine, i really hope the refeeding works for you, as it has obviously worked 4 others. i think my problem with lack of will power (wanting to keep refeeding the day after) was the fact that after the refeed, i STILL didn´t notice a change...even though it may have been there. as i said, i don´t weigh myself.

have you ever considered weight loss pills? some people swear by them, others condemn them. if you would like more info, let me know....and good luck, i hope it goes well.*

I don't know what the temptation will make me feel. I'll either feel really sick, enjoy it or have some combination of both. As long as I remain in the mind-set that this is for a "reason" and it's not spontaneous cheating (well, except for the pizza-- I'm really trying to work that in!), I think I'll be okay.

Actually Dexatrim was the only thing that helped me stay on Weight Watchers years ago! Now though, I've become really conscious of my body and I don't think I could do that again. Aside from just in the last week, I have not had any cravings. I usually have to force food on myself, so I don't need an appetite suppressant. And some of the other pills scare me. I had a friend that tried Metabolife and when she went off of it she gained weight like crazy! For me, the natural approach is best. But thanks for the offer though!

Wow, eating some sugar can be condemed but using weight loss pills is OK

I believe in weighing myself every morning in order to understand weight flucuations.

The morning after the refeed, you will weight 1 to 3 pounds heavier. You need to gain a little fat to raise Leptin levels. I believe most of the weight gain is water. If you didn't gain some weight, you probably didn't eat enough carbs. By the end of the week, back on LC, you will have lost the gained refeed weight plus a bit more.

I think I am going to try the refeed on Halloween. What better time to get junk . I was planning on buying a pizza for the kids. I will have pop ,pizza and candy.

Do you think this will work? I hope I dont get sick. I know I can go back to low carb. Do you go thru a carb withdrawal afterwards? The 3 lbs I lost in my signature, came right back . Today I am at 172. Probably just water.

No carb withdrawal afterwards, you just feel crappy that evening and night.

I you are considering refeeds, please remember its about Leptin, and Leptin is produced by fat cells. If you are already lean, it will not have as big an effect since you don't have much fat. If you are obese, it will also not have much of an effect because you already have enough Leptin.

I think refeeds are most appropriate if you are 10 to 35 pounds overweight. When you get into that range, the pounds don't come off so easily. Every pound off starts feeling like a stall. The last 15 pounds being so hard to loose makes alot of sense when Leptin theory is considered.

Okay, Guess what? I was a pound down this morning! Hopefully this means I'm moving again. If this is real, I'll postpone my refeed until the next stall. I'm definitely going to start staggering my cals and carbs (without all-out, huge refeeds-- just maintenance level type days) though. I hope that will help with any Leptin issues. If that little bit of tinkering stops helping at any point I'll dive in a go for a big refeed (aka-- sugar induced coma!).

Awww, I was kinda curious to see how this would have turned out. I don't know if there is such thing as a "golden shot" with refeeds but I'd rather keep it in my back pocket until I REALLY need it. Thanks for all your help though, I've really learned A LOT! I'm sure I'll be trying it eventually . . . .

Since you have put off your refeed, it could be a chance to search the web on Leptin and find out more. Do a search for Leptin on this web site Avant labs, it has a set of three great articles, and the forum has a bunch weight body builders trying to get to ridiculously low bodyfat levels occasionally with good Leptin information.