Misunderstood Fat Loss Tools

What are some misunderstood fat loss tools that we tend to see online or hear from friends or even coaches? Well, check it out.

Are cheat meals important for boosting metabolism? Refeeds are that crucial? We know it is important sometimes to give yourself a break mentally from a challenging diet, but what does the science say about that? This is what Jeff Nippard decide to shine a light on.

Jeff Nippard is a natural professional bodybuilder who shares tips and training programs on his YouTube channel. He shared a video talking about the misunderstood fat loss tools that are going around on the internet.

Misunderstood Fat Loss Tools

To look at some misunderstood fat loss tools, first Nippard looked at three different eating plans:

Continuous diet = the same amount of calories every day (2000 calories), no carb cycling or cheat meals
Refeed diet = eats 1800 calories on weekdays, and refeeds with more carbs on weekends, reaching a weekly average of 2000 calories per day
Diet break = continuous diet for 4 weeks, followed by two weeks of maintenance calorie intake

If people with the same metabolism do different eating plans from above, which one would see more fat loss after a few months?

Although caloric balance matters when losing weight, Nippard explains that it isn’t the only variable in the equation. “How you apply a deficit over time can impact how well you lose fat and change your body composition.”

From that approach, the continuous diet does not look optimal. For refeeds, Nippard says that it may take at least 48 hours of overfeeding to see an increase in metabolic rate and to replenish glycogen to improve training performance.

In a recent study, a group of trained people that did a continuous diet and refeed diet lost the same amount of fat, however, the refeed group retained more muscle and preserved their metabolism better.

When it comes to diet breaks, a study from 2021 showed that people who did the continuous diet and the diet breaks saw the same exact results, losing the same amount of fat and metabolic differences, retaining the same amount of muscle.

Although this was shocking for many people, Nippard explains that at least there were psychological benefits for the group who did diet breaks such as lower hunger levels, lower desire to eat, and greater diet satisfaction.

And those are some misunderstood fat loss tools that we tend to see on the internet. If you want a more detailed explanation, check out Nippard’s argument by clicking on the video below.