Why You Need To Boost Up With Refeed Days

If you workout regularly or if you follow one of my favourite workout programmes you’ll have heard of refeed days.  It’s when you specifically increase your calories for one day by eating refined carbs to rebuild your energy stores and improve your muscular strength and endurance.

There are a lot of myths out there about refeed days, so I thought it might help to lay out the benefits of what a refeed day is and why we need them.

A refeed day shouldn’t be confused with a “go crazy and eat everything in sight” kind of day however!  We still balance our macros at each meal and follow the guidance on portion size.  Nutrition timing still plays an ever important role so that we eat certain food groups at certain times to keep our muscles lean and strong while keeping the blubber off.

Benefits of a refeed day

A refeed day essentially helps to restore the glycogen stores in our muscles and liver.  When we eat carbs, our bodies break them down into glucose (blood sugar).  We then use this blood sugar as our main energy source.

When we’re exercising hard, we break down our muscles and if we combine weight loss with an exercise plan our glycogen stores get low.  Consequently, this puts our bodies into a state of physical and mental stress.

Refeed days mean that we eat high-glycemic carbohydrates.  Normally we advise you against eating these because they make your blood sugar spike and work against your health.  However, refeed days are different as they are only occasional.  They also serve a purpose which benefits us.

After a while of working out regularly AND following a diet which helps you to lose weight, our bodies become deficient in carbs, particularly in glycogen. So, on a refeed day, when we increase our carb intake, the carbs help replenish the glycogen levels instead of being stored as fat.

Muscle glycogen allows us to push harder during our workouts, so that when we top up our glycogen stores on a refeed day, we can train harder the next day.

Another reason for refeed day is because it feels like a dietary hug.  Carbs release serotonin, a feel-good hormone.  When you’ve been careful with your food choices for so long, it’s a real treat to enjoy a “forbidden” fruit!

How we do refeed days

Our refeed days are called “modified refeed days”.  We don’t overdo it and funnily enough a lot of our challengers find the refeed days tough to do, because by the time the refeed day rolls along, they’ve already set up their healthy eating habits.

The first refeed day in my favourite programme isn’t until day 35 so we’ve all created and maintained healthy eating habits by this stage.  Essentially, we use refined carbs on these days so they digest quickly and do their job quickly which is to replenish our glycogen stores.

Are refeed days necessary?

Yes they are!  To get the best out of your workout programme, when you see a refeed day coming up, enjoy it!  It IS important to stick to your nutrition plan and keep your eating methods tight, but it’s also important to take a breather every now and again, especially when that breather day has an important role to play in our overall mental and physical health.

If you’re looking to lose weight healthily, build lean muscle and learn how to eat clean, fill in my application form to learn more about it. I’ll be in touch soonest!

Save