Originally Posted by alex.mitev
If you train hard on the reefed day, you shouln`t feel tha much guilty the next day. On the hand this could be detrimental to the purpose of refeed - replenish partially/fully your glycogen stores. This is not and has never been an exact science. So many variables and sooner or later it all comes down to knowing your own body:) - not anyone is able to get there which accounts for flourishing personal training industry.
Getting to your question - since you said you`re prone to holding water, having your carbs built up gradually would mitigate that effect your body is likely to experience. What do you think would happen if you jumped from 50 to 200 - that`s 4-fold increase after all. Not only will you gain weight due to water retention, but you`ll most likely (not saying for sure) will keep that with you for the following 3 days by having your current carb intake - and not to forget you do not refeed now, which will only amplify the above-mentioned process.
The main reason of bringing your calories/carbs up every x days is mainly to prevent metabolic slow down (hormone restoration occurs), diet adaptation, cortisol control, mental break, and muscle loss to a degree. Remember the more muscle mass you bear the more calories you`d burn at rest. If you include very low carb days following refeed ( i consider 50 grams to be very low) you`re more likely to :
1. Burn more fat - remember that metabolism would be elevated due to refeed, and any physical activity on that low calorie / carb day will make use of more fatty acids. Lyle Mcdonald refers to more than one study supportive of this concept
2. get rid of the little extra water you might have gotten hold of.
3. Prime your body to better utilization of the 100 carb grams just around the corner.
I can go on and on, but think that`s enough of rationale?
I`d like to once again reiterate my standpoint - this is not an exact science and approaches should be different.
For instance, I started dieting with only one refeed a week. I reached 15% bf but hit plateau then. What i actually did was having 3 low , 1 high carb days and it worked fine. I never had to drop below 180 gr of carbs on a daily basis. THe leaner i was becoming the more food i could get away with.
On the contrary, a person that i work with did not get along with 3/1 plan. When i put him on 5/1 approach he started loosing body fat. To advance further, we tweaked to 6 low carb days, 1 moderate refeed, 1 zero carb day, 1 high refeed and all over.
