Refeed Day
A planned day of higher calorie and carbohydrate intake during a diet.
Updated
A refeed is a temporary, controlled increase in calories (primarily from carbs) during a fat loss phase. Refeeds can help restore leptin levels, replenish glycogen, boost performance, and provide psychological relief. Unlike cheat meals, refeeds are structured and tracked. Weekly or bi-weekly refeeds are common.
What a refeed day is
A refeed day is a planned day during a diet when you raise calories to roughly maintenance, mostly by adding carbohydrate, then return to your normal deficit the next day. It is a tool for people already several weeks into a fat-loss phase, not a reward for a hard week. The aim is to support training, top up the carbohydrate stored in your muscles, and make the diet easier to stick with.
Refeed, cheat day or diet break?
They are often treated as the same thing and they are not. A cheat day has no limit: you eat whatever you like, usually well above maintenance and heavy in fat, and a big one can undo most of a week's deficit. A refeed is measured: calories rise to about maintenance, protein stays the same, fat stays low and the extra comes from carbohydrate. A diet break is longer, typically one to two weeks eating at maintenance across all foods, used after a long stretch of dieting. Refeeds are the short, frequent version; diet breaks the occasional, longer one.
How to run one
Take someone dieting on 2,000 calories with a maintenance of about 2,500. On a refeed day they keep protein where it is, keep fat at or slightly below normal, and add around 125 g of carbohydrate, roughly 500 calories, from rice, potatoes, oats, bread or fruit. Placing it the day before, or the day of, the hardest session of the week makes the most of it. Leaner lifters deep into a diet often use one a week; early in a diet, every one or two weeks or none at all is fine. Expect the scale to rise half a kilogram or more the next morning. That is water stored alongside carbohydrate, not fat, and it fades within days.
What the evidence does and does not show
The hormonal claims are oversold. Any effect of a single higher-carbohydrate day on leptin or metabolic rate appears small and short-lived, so a refeed is not a metabolic reset. Direct trials in lifters are few and small. One seven-week study of 27 resistance-trained adults compared weekly two-day carbohydrate refeeds with a continuous deficit; on reanalysis, only dry fat-free mass differed between groups, while total fat-free mass and resting metabolic rate did not. Treat refeeds as useful for training quality and sticking to the plan. If refeeds keep turning into eating you cannot stop, or dieting feels out of control, speak to your GP.
Examples
- Increasing carbs to maintenance for one day
- Helps restore leptin and glycogen
- Structured, not a free-for-all
Related Terms
Common questions
What is Refeed Day?
A planned day of higher calorie and carbohydrate intake during a diet. A refeed is a temporary, controlled increase in calories (primarily from carbs) during a fat loss phase.
What are examples of Refeed Day?
Increasing carbs to maintenance for one day; Helps restore leptin and glycogen; Structured, not a free-for-all.
Put it into practice
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