The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

199. Refeed Days: A Smart Strategy, or Just Another Excuse?

• Kristy Castillo

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You’ve probably heard the term “refeed day” thrown around. It may sound intriguing, especially if you’re deep into a cut and feeling drained. 


But…what *actually* is a refeed day, and do you need one?


I talked about it a bit in the last episode (go listen to ep. 198 first if you haven’t yet), but I want to dive deeper in this episode!


First off, a refeed day is NOT a cheat day, and it’s definitely not a license to binge. When done right, it’s a short and strategic break from your calorie deficit. 


When used intentionally, this can help with hormones, training performance, muscle recovery, and even consistency (yep - they can actually help you stick to your plan better)!


Ultimately, I want YOU to be able to make an educated decision for yourself. Refeed days can be a great tool in your toolbox…but they’re not magic, or required to see results. 


Get consistent, train hard, track what you’re doing, and THEN decide if this is a tool that fits your journey!


In this episode, we cover:

  • What a refeed day actually is + why it’s NOT a “cheat day”
  • 5 legit benefits of refeed days when used strategically
  • 5 situations where you should definitely skip the refeed
  • A simple calorie breakdown to show how it works
  • How to stay flexible with refeed days & still hit your goals
  • Key takeaways to help you know if a refeed day IS right for you


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Un-Fuck-Your-Fitness Podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go.

Speaker 2:

Hey guys, what's up, welcome to today's episode. I want to get right into today's topic, which is refeed day. What is a refeed day? What are some benefits of a refeed day and when to not refeed when you are not ready? And I want to jump right in because Friday's episode is the 200th episode of the Unfuck your Fitness podcast, which is insane, and we're coming up on 1 million downloads. Any day now that this podcast episode is coming out, we'll be hitting a million downloads and so this is a really big freaking week around here on Fuck your Fitness, christy Castillo Fit. So thank you guys, all so much for being here. But I want to dive into this episode so that the 200th episode on Friday, we can dive into some fun Q&As and I can talk a little bit about the 200th episode and 1 million downloads and really pour my freaking heart out, because I'm dying to do so. But this episode needs to be a little shorter because Fridays is going to be a little longer and usually Fridays are shorter and Tuesdays are longer, so we're doing it a little opposite this week.

Speaker 2:

But I'm excited about today's topic because in the last episode I talked about just what is a refeed day. What does it mean? When are you ready for it? Things like that. Because I got the question, of course, what is a refeed day? And or I got the question should I implement a refeed day once a week? If I'm doing a cut? And I couldn't just for my own sanity and for your benefit, I could not just dive right into that information of yes or no. Or here's when I really had to set the scene of when you are ready to do a refeed day, which I talked about in the last episode. So go check it out.

Speaker 2:

198 is all about how to know if you're set up to even do a refeed day. And then in this episode I want to talk about just because you're set up for one and you're primed and your body's ready and you know what it is, it still doesn't mean that you need it or that you should do it. So I want to talk about it in this episode and really give you my honest thoughts, because it's important that I do so and it's important that, even if you have the information on what it is, you still get to make the call on whether or not you do it. So to kind of check my notes here and to kind of dive into what a refeed day is, just to kind of make sure we're aware of what that is, and before I dive into it, I want to make sure we have the definition in front of us. Again, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, I prefer you go listen to that first, but if not, go ahead and listen to this one and then go back and listen to the previous episode, because that will really let you know what it is and to know if you're ready to do it, and then you can make an educated decision based on all of the things that I've talked about in this episode and the last episode and decide if it's right for you so a refeed day and the last episode and decide if it's right for you so a refeed day.

Speaker 2:

I talked a little bit, too, in the last episode about carb cycling and just how these are tools to maybe keep you more motivated, keep you on track, keep you inspired, give you something to look forward to, things like that. These are tools that can be used in your arsenal of health and fitness, but they're not necessary, or it's not necessary to use them all the time. Right, a hammer is an amazing, effective tool for its job, but you don't have to carry a hammer around with you. You probably don't need it every day. So just because you have these tools in your back pocket doesn't mean that you have to use them ever, and especially not all the time. So make sure it's the right time for you to be able to use these tools.

Speaker 2:

But a refeed day, specifically, is a short strategic break from a calorie deficit, typically one to two days of eating per week at maintenance calories, not a surplus. We're not going crazy, right, not balls to the wall, with an emphasis on higher carbs. Note the carb cycling that I mentioned. It's not a cheat day, it's not a binge day and it's not magic, but when used intentionally, it is powerful. So the benefits of a refeed day One hormonal support. It gives you a leptin boost. Leptin drops during dieting. That can cause increased hunger and it can cause a lower metabolism. A high-carb refeed day may temporarily raise leptin levels, meaning you have better hunger regulation. So that is one thing. That is a huge reason to be able to do a refeed day. If it works for you, that's a benefit. Second benefit is improved training performance. Carbs replenish glycogen, which means more strength, more endurance and better recovery. Also, this can help reduce fatigue. It can help reduce feeling flat in your workouts or just physically not feeling like big and muscular and like you're able to flex your muscles physically, and this can help fight against sluggishness in the gym. So it can improve your training performance by adding a refeed day once or twice a week.

Speaker 2:

Muscle preservation is the third reason. So chronic deficits can lead to muscle breakdown. We know this. When you are in a deficit, your body has to use muscle or fat to be able to lose weight. Right, if you're in a deficit, you're going to lose weight and that's going to come from water or muscle or fat, and chronic deficits lead to muscle breakdown. If you go into a refeed day sometimes, this can help with preserving your muscle and having your body use fat for fuel instead of muscle. Refeed days also help reduce catabolic stress and they support muscle repair.

Speaker 2:

Number four a slight metabolic boost meaning eating more, especially carbs can slightly raise your energy output via thermogenesis, which means you're digesting more food. You have the calorie burn of your body digesting more food. It increases your NEAT, which is your non-exercise activity. So just sitting around, if you are consuming more food, you are having to use more energy to burn that, so it's increasing your NEAT and it gives you better training intensity. If you're working out harder, you're able to lift heavier, maybe you're able to do more reps. That's gonna also give you more benefit as far as building muscle, calorie burn, things like that. And also, number five, better adherence.

Speaker 2:

So planned maintenance can make a difference in more sustainability. You can be like oh, I'm so hungry, but I know I have a refeed day in two days, so I'm going to push through. Whereas if you're doing like a six-week cut with no refeed days or no kind of fun days planned in, you're like, my God, I'm already starving and I have five and a half more weeks left of this. This is nearly impossible, right? It can help reduce cravings, it can help prevent burnout of your diet and nutrition plan your cut, and it can help with that fuck it mindset where you're like oh my God, I can't do this, I'm so hungry, I need some goddamn Oreos. And you won't have to do that every day because you'll have this day planned into your schedule. So those are the benefits of a refeed day.

Speaker 2:

It's really important that you know these things, because a lot of people are just going to tell you to do a refeed day. A lot of coaches out there are like here's your calories for you know, maybe Monday through Saturday and then Sunday is a refeed day. Here's your macros for the refeed day and then get back to you know your cut or deficit calories on Monday. But you're not going to know why. A lot of reels out there, a lot of podcasts, a lot of whatever you're getting your information from, it's not going to tell you the full story of why. It's just going to say this can help you burn fat, this can help your metabolism, this can help you adhere to this program better if you implement a refeed day. But what is it? Why am I doing it? So I really want you to know those types of things when you should not refeed. This is important.

Speaker 2:

If you are not consistently in a deficit which I talked about in the last episode if your intake, your calorie intake, fluctuates or weekends wipe out your progress, you just can't stick to a plan, right? You're like I tried to be in a deficit, but I mess up every weekend. I have to start over every Monday. You're not ready, because a refeed is just going to add more calories onto that. And if you're already saying fuck it on the weekends, you're already adding on more calories. So if you're not consistently in a deficit, you don't need to refeed. Not necessary, not helpful, not structured, not going to help.

Speaker 2:

Number two if you're early on in a cut, your hormones and your performance haven't dropped much. When you're early in a cut, your body hasn't adjusted yet. So focus on building momentum instead of taking a break from the plan. If you're in a cut phase, be in a cut phase. Yeah, you're going to be hungry. Yeah, you're going to not want to adhere. Yeah, you're going to get bored. You're going to lose momentum, motivation, all the things. That is what it is. That's part of being in a cut. When you're early in a cut, you need your body to still adjust. Give it some time, give it a couple of weeks. Then, when you are consistently in a deficit, couple weeks, then you can add on a refeed day if it makes sense. But you only want your refeed day to be at maintenance calories, not above. You still need to track. It needs to be mostly carbs. It's still very, very structured.

Speaker 2:

Number three if you're mentally in a place to only use a refeed day to justify overeating I think a lot of us have been there then you are not ready to add in a refeed day. This was me a long time. This is kind of like people overeating in the winter and just being like, oh, I'm bulking, I'm in a build phase, I'm bulking up for getting my muscles all bulked up for my somber body, kind of joking around about it. The same kind of thing, right, if you're like, oh, it's my refeed day, oh, it's my cheat day. No, it's not. You're just lacking structure and you're trying to sound cool or sound like you have a plan, make it sound like oh, I'm doing this on purpose, this is all part of the plan. It's a refeed day. No, it's not Okay, it's not a free-for-all.

Speaker 2:

Like I just said, it needs to be structured, it needs to be planned, your body needs to be primed and ready, otherwise it's too much food too soon. It takes you out of a cut, out of a deficit, out of plan, and your progress is not going to progress. It's not going to happen, you're not going to see it right. No tracking means no strategy. Again, this isn't just overeating, it's not a cheat day, it's not a going to the party and drinking all the alcohol and having a fun day. That's not a refeed day. That's okay if you want to do that. Or have a cheat day, have a fun day, whatever you want to call it, where you don't track and things like that, but don't call it a refeed day. My clients go on vacation all the time or have a birthday party for their kids and I'm like cool, prioritize protein, get a shit ton of steps in, eat protein early in the day, so you kind of hit that goal early, be kind of lacking in carbs earlier in the day and then later on have your pizza, have a drink, have a cupcake and don't track it. That's fine, we'll get back on track. That's not a refeed day. That is just a fun day where we're allowing ourselves a little bit of slack, off time.

Speaker 2:

Right, if you're not training hard, you also don't need a refeed day. This is number four. If you're not lifting consistently or depleting your glycogen, a carb-based refeed has less value. If the goal is to refeed your muscles, refeed your body, fill up those glycogen storages again and you haven't depleted the glycogen and you don't need to replace your carbs and your body is kind of good where it's at and you're not really pushing yourself, then you don't need to replace those glycogen stores and the refeed day has no purpose. So if you're not training hard, you do not need a refeed day Again, this isn't something just be like oh, just refeed day, just a cheat day. Refeed days are very, very structured.

Speaker 2:

Number five if you're trying to fix a bad plan, which is kind of all these things in one right, if your deficit is too aggressive, one day of extra food is not going to fix that. If you are severely under eating and you put a refeed day in there once a week not going to fix the problem, it's not going to fix anything by adding a refeed day onto a bad plan or lack of structure may need a full diet break or you may need to return to maintenance for a period of time before you try a refeed day. If you are in too aggressive of a deficit and you are not seeing results, or you just feel like shit and you're so hungry and you're so lethargic and your body is not doing well, one day of eating at maintenance is not going to do shit for your body. You need to hire someone to help you through that because you are, quite honestly, going to be stuck and this is one of those all or nothing cycles that you can get stuck in. So you need a full diet break or return to maintenance calories, which I love maintenance calories I talked about that a couple episodes ago Not a refeed day.

Speaker 2:

So I want to give you a quick example of kind of saw like a calorie breakdown of what this would look like. So for an example of this, if we have you at, this is an example of an 1800 calorie goal daily. Seven days at 1800 calories per day brings your weekly average to 12,600. So seven days, 1,800 calories per day that gives you 12,600 calories for the week. So if we're adding in a refeed day and that's our we still have to stick with that calorie average for the week. So we take that 12,600 and we can manipulate it. So your options would be to add one refeed day at 2,100 calories, but then you have to reduce a day to 1,700 calories to offset that, okay. Or and that still brings your average to 12,600, or you have one day at 2,100 calories and you bring the other six days down to 1,750 instead of instead of 1800.

Speaker 2:

So in the first example, one day you're eating 2100 calories. One day you're eating 1700 calories. The other five days you're eating 1800 calories, whatever you kind of want that to look like. The other example is one day you're eating 2100 calories. The other six days you're eating 1750 calories, which is 50 less than the 1,800. It just it kind of depends on what your week looks like and what you're able to do and your workout schedule and all you know those kinds of things that you can plan into it. But it's not about daily perfection, it's about that weekly average.

Speaker 2:

So if you are in a cut and you are ready and you're a couple weeks in and you're like, okay, I think I'm ready to kind of figure out this refeed day, essentially carb cycling kind of use this tool. This is the way you would do it you figure out the macros you're at right now or the calories you're at right now, divide that out per day and then figure out what you want your refeed day to look like within that calorie window. As long as you are in this example, averaging weekly 12,600, you can use that refeed day. But again, it has to be structured and it has to be mostly carbs, so those calories that you're adding to the refeed day and the calories that you're taking away from the lowest calorie days. You want to take those away from carbs, and that needs to be your main source of fuel for your refeed day. So I hope this was very helpful in terms of just being a quick kind of not a yes or no, but a here's some reasons to refeed and here's some reasons to not refeed, and you can again make that decision for yourself, which I think is very, very empowering.

Speaker 2:

And if you try it for a couple weeks and you're like I don't really like the really really low calorie day, I don't really like how tricky it is to figure out maybe my refeed day. You could take your refeed day, though, and if you have a birthday party coming up or you you have a family reunion, or you have a night out to have a date night, whatever, you can take your refeed day and move it. It doesn't have to be every Saturday. It can be Friday one week, it can be Sunday the next week. Remember, the scale, though, is going to change, so if you are someone who weighs daily after a refeed day, the scale is going to change A lot of times. It will change for the better, because a lot of people say like I was dieting and then I went out and had some pizza and I woke up the next day and actually lost two pounds.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because your body for all the reasons I said in the beginning, your body loved that extra fuel. Your body replaced that glycogen stores, it fixed the hormones. It feels so much better and it was able to use that and that's the whole point of this. That is essentially a refeed day Again. Maybe it was just a fun day, maybe it was just a less structured day, maybe it was just, you know, a day to let loose and not track, whatever we call it when I'm coaching. But I'm like, yeah, it's okay to go off plan every once in a while, it's okay to have a refeed day, it's okay to have some structure In that example when I, like I gave you earlier, when I'm telling a client you know, stay a little low carb in the morning and afternoon and then pack your protein in in the morning and afternoon, go for a really, really long walk, get your workout in, and then later you can have other things.

Speaker 2:

Right, you already got your protein in and you got your steps and you got your workout in. You were lower carb during the day. So have some fun and your body will really enjoy it. But that's not a refeed day Technically. That's just a day where you're giving yourself a little grace and watching the scale reflect that. So takeaways that I want you to remember are well, first of all, refeeds are not earned, or are earned sorry, they're not automatic. They're earned so you have to have things in place, preset, to be able to earn them.

Speaker 2:

It's not something that you just implement and kind of wing it right. If you're consistent and you're training hard and you're feeling depleted, a refeed day might help. Oftentimes it will. And it's not something, also, that you have to do every single week. You can manipulate this to kind of work for your schedule. If you're feeling, like God, I'm feeling really lethargic and depleted, go ahead, implement one. You don't have to do it every single week for the rest of your life, though. Okay, it can just be one or two week kind of a thing.

Speaker 2:

If you're inconsistent or under-recovered, fix that foundation first. That's always where you want to look. Is that foundational piece, and then make sure you track and evaluate and then implement Never guess, always plan it out and then the last thing would be to just make sure you are ready. Make sure this aligns with you and that it makes sense for you, and if it does, give it a try, there's nothing wrong with trying and realizing. This is not for me and it's not something that I need to implement.

Speaker 2:

So I hope that these last two episodes really, really answered your questions about refeed days, carb cycling, those kinds of tools. They can be very, very helpful, but it's not just something that you want to wake up tomorrow and say, oh, it's a refeed day because I'm feeling extra hungry. That's not what a refeed day is, and so now, if you hear something on social media about a refeed day or carb cycling or these kinds of tools to add in, you will have way more knowledge on the topic. So if this episode is helpful, please like and share and subscribe and leave a comment on Spotify and leave a review on Apple. I would love it so much and I will talk to you in the next episode, episode two freaking hundred. I'll talk to you then.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. So much If you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time. Bye.