Refeed or Cheat?

[Riley]

Hey everyone, I am new here. I am 20yrs old, 5'4, 134lbs and I have been training & dieting since Jan 5/04. I am training with a friend (Alisha) and so far things are going great! Lately I am finding it really hard to stay on track. I am still training hard and not missing any days in the gym but the diet part is just sooo hard these days. My diet is super clean and I target my carbs around weights but last night I ended up eating jube-jubes all night. Now tonight I am CRAVING ice cream & chocolate and I want it sooooooooooo bad. I wish I just went all out lastnight and had a "re-feed" because now I am freaking out and I want ice cream RIGHT NOW.

I am doing the same training/eating plan as Alisha (1250 cal/day) low carb/mod fat/high pro. When I first started I didn't even want to cheat but now every 5 days or so I get crazy and all I want to do is eat! It's really annoying. Is this really bad? I was planning on competing in May but thats out. I am getting leaner and have already had a few cheat days and honestly I feel like they have helped. I just feel like I do it too much. Any advice?

Thanks.

[MS]

REFEED. Do it every 5-7 days, increasing the frequency as you get leaner. Also I think 1250 cals is prolly too low, and you may be lsoing weight at this calorie level, but I worry about rebound fat gain after you stop your diet. If you diet too hard for too long, you'll screw up your body for a long time. I don't recommend anyone drops more than 500cals below their basal calorie needs. Better to increase acivity instead of dropping calories. Calorie cycling is also pretty succesful for a lot of women. But refeeds will effectively act like calorie cycling if you do them often enough. However I understand both you and Alisha have employed a trainer who put you on this program. It might be a good idea to ask him why he's set your calories so low, and see if maybe he has a game plan to increase your calories soon?? Since I don't know his master plan, I am hesitant to interfere too much. But the more you learn, the better the questions you can ask of your trainer.

[lil k]

riley....WELCOME! make sure to post often, it looks like this was your first post so congrats!

ms pretty much nailed it all with her response, so i will leave it at that! oh and for ice cream, there is a lot of sugar free fat free ice cream out there, or no sugar added i should say...and they are all sweetend with splenda....yummy! you can have your ice cream on your refeed days now! :)

[sassy69]

Just a thought - if its at or near "that time of month" I get some evil sugar cravings. If that happens to you, I would plan ahead, possibly to hit your higher carb / training days on "those" major crave days or have some low carb / low sugar ice pops or chocolate things on a stick ready to go! But then be sure to STOP when you've hit your calculated allowance and not let it run rampant.