Last month, I had a carb cheat weekend. It was epic. I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Papa John's Pan Pizza, chocolate chip cookies, In-N-Out fries, chocolate truffles, cake, burgers, and doughnuts before bed.

I officially went overboard — in just 38 hours, I gained 12 lbs, LOL.

With all that cheating, it took me well over a week to get my weight back on track.

I'm back down to my lowest weight since my high school football years, but even then, I've hit a plateau and I've been feeling rather weak at the gym for the past couple weeks. I figure that's my body is telling me that I need to try something different.

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to try doing the carb refeed. The basic idea is I'll do the standard low-carb, high-fat keto diet for most days, but once in a while, I'll eat carbs to replenish my muscles and give me a little boost of energy at the gym for the next several days.

In the keto community, it's a very new, very controversial concept. I've been doing research on it but I can't quite find any consistent advice on it.

Conflicting Advice

Here's a summary of the different things I've been finding:

• "Don't do it! Carb refeeds are stupid and you'll just end up craving carbs even more."
• "Carb refeeds are okay but only eat clean carbs in a reasonable amount."
• "Eat sugary and high glycemic carbs early in the morning and eat clean carbs throughout the rest of the day."
• "Only do a carb refeed for dinner, after a workout."

So Many Questions

It's pretty clear that keto is still an ongoing study. With so much conflicting advice by different people (who have all seen great results), I'm left with so many questions:

• is carb refeeding only for heavy weight lifters?
• is carb refeeding only for people who are close to their body fat goals?
• how often and how many days should I do a refeed?
• is it better to refeed before or after a workout?
• what kind of carbs should I eat on card refeed day? How much?

Fuck It, Time to Experiment

I'm just gonna go for it for a month and see how it goes. I think I'll start off with only one carb refeed day per week, keep my carb intake around 300 grams and keep my fat intake low. I'll carb refeed all day Friday, work out hard at the gym that night, and then do Zumba again first thing on Saturday morning.

In the past, whenever I had a cheat day (mostly at weddings), I'd gain about 5 lbs. Most of that was just water weight which I would easily lose in just a couple days.

Worst case scenario, I'll gain some weight back this month. But really, let's put it in perspective:

If I was able to undo 16 years of mistreatment to my body with strict keto, undoing one month of weight gain will not be a problem at all.

Here we go!