At this point, there isn't much wiggle room in my diet. I am now 4 weeks out from my first show (yeah, I was wrong last week, that was 5 weeks out!) and in general, my meals are super consistent, low carb and high protein. Most days, I have a caloric deficit between 800 and 1200. That's a lot and not remotely a level I would recommend for any real length of time.
So yesterday, I had a re-feed. If you haven't heard about re-feeds, here is the quick and dirty on them. After being on a caloric restricted diet for a long time, your hormones can be a bit of whack, your energy levels can be low and your body can be rundown. By eating at least a maintenance level of calories for a day, you give your body the chance to rest, recover and kick start your metabolism again. For some people, a weekly cheat meal or cheat day takes care of this. That's too risky for me at this point in my contest prep but what I did do was eat the same healthy foods I would be eating anyway but ate more of them, especially the carb heavy ones. I ate a maintenance level of calories. And I rested.
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