Flexible Eating
What is flexible eating? Many people refer to this as flexible “dieting” or IIFYM; however, I dislike the term dieting as it has a negative stigma attached to the word. If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) is a great idea as long as people understand that you must still keep your daily nutrition relatively nutrient dense. You will not maintain an ideal body composition eating kitkats and ice cream all day even if they do fit your macros. You will become “skinny fat”.
Sticking to a plan is the most difficult part of any nutrition plan. Flexible eating is the solution to sticking to a plan and maintaining it with realistic expectations. Flexible eating helps to avoid binging and allows for slow weight loss. Having as small caloric deficit that still elicits weight loss is the best plan to follow when looking to maintain your weight loss.
Refeed
Maintaining a caloric deficit day in and day out will lead to a decrease in leptin. What is leptin you ask? Leptin is the “satiety hormone”, the hormone that keeps you feeling full. As leptin levels decrease, you will begin to have intense cravings and your metabolism begins to slow.
Refeed days can replenish leptin levels and help to avoid catabolism. Refeed days include an increase in calories anywhere from 10-50%. The higher the increase in calories, the shorter the time the refeed should last. The increase in calories comes greatly from an increase in carbohydrates.
Refeed days heavy in carbohydrates replenishes muscle glycogen. The increase in glycogen causes muscles to swell and look fuller. The leaner you are, the more often you will need to refeed in order to avoid potential dreaded catabolism.
Refeed days should ideally be done the day before your heaviest lift day and the day after your weekly weight-in day. The increase in muscle glycogen will increase mental focus and strength. Due to the hormone aldosterone, weight gain may occur one to two days post-refeed. I suggest weighing in before your refeed due to the delayed weight gain.
Training
Helms, Argon, and Fitschen’s article, Evidence-based recommendations for natural bodybuilding contest preparation: nutrition and supplementation, had interesting research findings on training. According to their article, the following training protocols created the best…excuse my bro talk… “gainz”:
-Heavier weight for fewer reps with more sets elicit better muscle size increase compared to the old approach of very high reps with 3-5 set (see RP-21 Training System)
-The hypertrophy effect is greatest when low repetition, high intensity sets are followed by one set of high repetition, low intensity
-Endurance training decreases strength and/or hypertrophy when added to strength training
-Full-body exercises (i.e. kettle bell swings or barbell cleans) and cycling may reduce decreases in strength and hypertrophy compared to running when cardio is needed to reduce body fat
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