Jerking your metabolism around page 2

[sbhikes]

There's a lot on the forum at the moment about the effect of long-term low carbing on metabolism versus re-feeding days which are supposed to kickstart your metabolism again. I was wondering if anyone has links to scientific findings on all this? The yo-yoing makes sense to me on one level, but is it really good to keep 'shocking' the system?

A lot of that stuff is from the body-building community. I consider it kind of useless for an average Jane like myself. I will have sweet potatoes for lunch after sprinting in the hopes that maybe I won't get the jimmy legs or whatever, but I don't specifically try to do anything in particular with food and "jerking my metabolism around". I just eat real food. I happen to like meat and fish so I eat a lot of that, but I also like sweet potatoes and eat a lot of those.

[DeeDub]

Imo most of the time, the best question to ask oneself when in doubt is "What would our hunter-gatherer ancestors have done?"

They would have invented farming and stopped hunting & gathering.

[YogaBare]

A lot of that stuff is from the body-building community. I consider it kind of useless for an average Jane like myself.

Good point.

[ivelosttheweight]

Having lost alot of weight (175 pounds) on low carb without refeeds or cheating, they may not really be needed until you get down to a leaner body weight. What helped me lose the weight and keep it off is routine and knowing what I can eat and cannot eat to stick at it, not cause cravings or cycles of cheating/binging/getting back on the diet, and knowing what I can eat and stay content (high fat, variety of veggies, etc.).

As I've gotten under 30% body fat here, I've started seeing the signs (plateau, fatigue, less energy for work outs, sleep problems) that I need to tweak what I'm doing to keep losing weight, such as IF, carb cycling and refeeds, and it's likely because I have less leptin-generating fat and it's gonna take some convincing to tell my body that it's okay to get rid of the remaining hard-to-lose fat. Only now have I started considering these things as the fat-loss mostly chugged along okay until recently. And I'm taking it slow trying these changes to see how I do with them.

As long as you're losing weight and your eating is good, keep doing what you're doing. If you hit a wall, you'll know it and that may be a sign to try different things such as the refeed.

And read Mark's post about it and some of the comments in reply to it, it sums it up quite nicely.

[jsa23]

I'd think it's more in line with human history to not eat the exact same amount of calories day in and day out- nature has short, medium and long term cycles of food availability.

I agree with this. If there were serious detrimental effects to short-term fluctuations in food type and quantity, the human race would not be around today. The body is well-adapted to handle short-term variations in food quantity and quality; it's long-term issues(starvation, severe overfeeding, food quality/nutritional deficiencies) that really have the potential to wreak havoc on the body, not daily fluctuations.

[healthy11]

I think it's good to mix it up every so often. I don't plan it, but tend to eat more before my period. So maybe once a month I change it up and eat a little more. In fact last night I had two glasses of wine, popcorn, and almost a pint of ice cream with cacao nibs and walnuts. I was stuffed and this morning I feel pretty lean. I think it's important not to be too strick. I have lost weight slowly because I like to enjoy life, too, and don't want to restrict myself too much. I lost 25 lbs. in a year and a half and still have about 15-20 more to lose. When I do eat more it's stuff like nuts, cheese, dried fruit, or popcorn that I normally don't eat or at least try to limit. I don't cheat on stuff that's non-primal (except pop-corn, but I don't have a problem with it). I love this way of eating and it's a lifestyle so if I have days where I eat more than other days and it's fine ... that's how life works. Some days more carbs and other days less carbs - unplanned... just depends on how I feel. I love sweet potatoes, too, and eat them whenever I feel like it.