Help with my skipload?

[AutoKal47]

Hi guys,
my turn to ask for a lil help with my refeed/skipload

I wanna take the chance to thank Ken for the incredible info
he put out on this board and on the DVD first, I got
great results following and applying his protocol,
and of course thank to everyone who will chime in here too.

A lil background since I'm new on the forum:
34yo, more than 10 years training,
I'm 154lbs, 5'9, BF 4/5%, I workout 6 days a week,
I do warrior diet, I'm a low carber, calorie intake
for the 6 days is 2400 (30gr of carbs max).

I do my refeed on Thursday, starting right after
workout, full body depletion workout.
The refeed is between two heavy workout days,
Wed is legs and Fri is back.

I've been doing 1 refeed a week for about 12 weeks now,
but started the skipload protocol only 3 weeks ago.

The question is pretty simple, actually is more a confirmation
since Skip already gave all the directions on how to adjust the refeed,
but better be safe than sorry

My eating window was 6 hours for my first skipload,
I stretched to 8 yesterday and the week before.

My first attempt had as result absolute no increase in body weight
the next morning.
The second time it went this way:

weight before refeed: 154lbs, weight after refeed: 162lbs, weight the next morning: 156lbs
At the end of the day I was back to baseline again.
By Wed (day before then next refeed) I was 150lbs

Yesterday I stuffed myself to oblivion (i have really hard time downing large amount of food),
I definitely eat more than last week, I swear 90% of my total cal intake was carb,
I cut everything in order to pack as many carbs as I could (and yet that last pancake won the battle and is still sitting on the counter lol),
but this morning I was even less than last week's "next morning" with my 155lbs.

My goal: I'm not after getting bigger/putting mass on, my goal is - at best - some lean gains.
I want to keep my BF as is but you know is not easy, when you're this low metabolism
slows down, calories go too low, hormones go berzerk etc.. hence the skipload.

The nice thing is that in the past 3 weeks my condition got better, I look drier and most important much much fuller, so, it works! no doubt
But I would like to tweak it to try to get some lean gains so here's (finally lol) the questions:

should I stretch the eating window? Going from 8 to 10 or 12 hours instead?
Problem is, I start the refeed (due to my schedule) around 6pm, so my 8 hours
end at 2am which is late already,
would be ok to add another meal the next morning? or would it be too far apart?

Sorry for the long a## post and thank you in advance!

[Doberman]

I'm not the one to ask, but I seem to remember that during a gaining phase, you actually increase your weekly calories. The Skip load only increases as a reaction to the lower weekly calories as you get leaner. So offseason you would actually eat less during refeeds.

[AutoKal47]

I'm not the one to ask, but I seem to remember that during a gaining phase, you actually increase your weekly calories. The Skip load only increases as a reaction to the lower weekly calories as you get leaner. So offseason you would actually eat less during refeeds.

Thanks Dobe,
lemme say something, there's no offseason for me, I don't compete and I keep
my body as is all year round. I do understand that mine is somehow a lost cause,
well the so called "lean gains" are pretty much as there's no gain without a calorie
surplus, and that would most likely increase my BF

Oddly enough, in the past 10 months I've been able to add some size (I'm a small guy
so, for me even a couple of lbs is something) without increasing my BF,
now doing the skipload I notice that I am able to eat more, both during the week and
in my refeed, I was wondering if increasing the amount of food for the skipload
could translate in lean gains for me, keeping the cals the same during the week,
only as I mentioned I should stretch the eating window because I'm just not
able to eat more than that in 8 hours, but I was worried that adding another meal the next
morning would be too far apart..
I'm not sure I'm making sense here

[RageBlanket]

How long can you Skipload the day following your first refeed meal? I know in the series that Skip states he has people eat one meal the night before, then refeed the entire next day. Is that an option?

[grammo13]

Are you able to load on a non training day and just load the entire day?

Sent from my R800x using Tapatalk

[AutoKal47]

How long can you Skipload the day following your first refeed meal? I know in the series that Skip states he has people eat one meal the night before, then refeed the entire next day. Is that an option?

Are you able to load on a non training day and just load the entire day?

Thing is, I am psychologically unable to refeed on a non training day, or have it not
preceded and followed by a "balls to the wall" workouts, it just makes me feel miserable..

So my options are A) have another meal the next morning, or B) have a meal the night before
but this one would be something like 20 hours far from the refeed, and - granted that it would come after legs day, so heavy day - but it would also be before the full body depletion workout

Adding a meal the next morning would instead be something like 8/10 hours apart
from the last one..

I'm probably overthinking it, I should probably just kick my own a## and wake up 3-4 hours earlier on refeed day so to have few more hours at night and try to eat more :/

It just impresses me how my body sucks up all the stuff that I eat on the skipload and
just after 20 hours I'm back to baseline, and actually lost a bit of weight this past week.

Part of it is due to my training, I won't go into details but my training sessions are very
stressing and they're also very long (3+ hours), I'm well aware that's too much and it's not
the best way to pack muscles etc.. but I'm not after that, I simply enjoy lifting, I'm weird, I know..

[Imprezivr6]

I prefer it on an off day honestly. When you are that depleted(in your case with no carbs for 6 days and ridiculous training sessions), you are going to suck everything right up anyway. I know you have your issues as we have talked a bit on another forum but you will be better off.IMO

If it were me I'd do that depletion workout as normal, and hit that refeed the next morning all damn day.

Or if you psychologically need that fast, fast until noon that day and hit it hard the remainder of the day..

I thought you were like in the mid 170lb range AK?

[AutoKal47]

I prefer it on an off day honestly. When you are that depleted(in your case with no carbs for 6 days and ridiculous training sessions), you are going to suck everything right up anyway. I know you have your issues as we have talked a bit on another forum but you will be better off.IMO

If it were me I'd do that depletion workout as normal, and hit that refeed the next morning all damn day.

Or if you psychologically need that fast, fast until noon that day and hit it hard the remainder of the day..

I thought you were like in the mid 170lb range AK?

Hey bro
I know you know hahah

Lemme clarify, skipload saved my life and I'm very happy with the results I got
using this protocol (thank to you too), it has been a big improvement for me
I'm just trying to tweak it a bit more here

Eh.. I know I can't do it no a non training day, I would end up eating much less
As for the weight, nope I messed up the Kg/lbs conversion lol I'm 71Kg right now 156lbs
I'm small

[Imprezivr6]

Hey bro
I know you know hahah

Lemme clarify, skipload saved my life and I'm very happy with the results I got
using this protocol (thank to you too), it has been a big improvement for me
I'm just trying to tweak it a bit more here

Eh.. I know I can't do it no a non training day, I would end up eating much less
As for the weight, nope I messed up the Kg/lbs conversion lol I'm 71Kg right now 156lbs
I'm small

Lol... you are shredded to all hell, all year, you have done a fine job. If you did a show you would have a 1wk prep..lol

Its going to come down to you packing in more carbs one way or another.

Have you thought about a second refeed a few days apart ? Like 2 x 6-8 hrs/wk?

[AutoKal47]

Lol... you are shredded to all hell, all year, you have done a fine job. If you did a show you would have a 1wk prep..lol

Its going to come down to you packing in more carbs one way or another.

Have you thought about a second refeed a few days apart ? Like 2 x 6-8 hrs/wk?

Thanks bro
lol 1wk prep that made me laugh big time

Yes you're right, packing more carbs is gonna be the way
I mean, the scale is being pretty clear, my body sucks up
anything I eat in no time.

Have I *thought* about a second refeed? Hell yes!
I finally found a way not only to eat carbs without
feeling sick for the next two days, but actually looking forward to it
for the whole week
Did I do that? nope as you can imagine lol, altho'
this advice has been given to me before it seemed too much
you know?
But I'll keep it as a possibility, before trying that tho'
I'll try to stretch the eating window next week and pack more carbs,
if my bw will go down again I'll add that morning meal or start the night before
and see how it goes. If it doesn't work I'll say f#ck it and try a second refeed,
in the end, if I don't try/experiment I will never know

[CJ Hartley]

eat more during the week. I dont care how much you shove in your face in one day it wont make a difference if your below maintainance level the rest of the week. IMO.

[AutoKal47]

eat more during the week. I dont care how much you shove in your face in one day it wont make a difference if your below maintainance level the rest of the week. IMO.

That was what I was wondering really..
Because on the DVD Skip says (if I didn't get that wrong)
it would be better a bigger refeed than boosting cals the other
6 days, and to me kinda makes sense, especially when trying to stay lean
a bigger refeed should be better for leptin, hormones, metabolism boost, etc..

But probably I am still underestimating my calorie expenditure due to my workouts, and my cal deficit might be bigger than I think.
I mean, think about this, for the past 2 month, due to a miscalculation,
I've been eating 400 calories (a day!) more than I thought and I was and still
am below maintainance (obviously..)

[CJ Hartley]

I would add another 500 cal a day and see where that takes you in a few weeks

[AutoKal47]

Back form my last skipload.
In order to try to pack some more food I went back to my old habit/routine,
woke up very early, workout first thing in the morning so I could start eating right away.

Skipload window this time has been 11 hours, I've been able in this time
to eat all the food I made, same amount that I couldn't down last week.

Now I don't count calories for the skipload but
since I cook all my meals I do have to weight most of the stuff, plus I eat the same
things all the time so i do have an idea of cals and even more of the amount of carbs
I eat.
I say this because I'm not a big eater, I mean seriously I feel full with such small meals
you don't even know, so despite my efforts, in order to pack as much carbs as possible
I always end up cutting most of the protein and all the fats pretty much,
and while the overall calories are higher than my other 6 days, well, they're not THAT much
higher, probably 1.5k more or something like that.. Is more like a calorie swap between my macros..

Question:
Usually how much heavier are you guys the morning after the skipload?
And what's the cals difference (roughly) compared to the other 6 days?



Today (morning after) I'm +1kg (+2.2lbs), post bathroom (sorry if it's too much info lol)
which is pretty much the same as last week.

Note: in my first post I said I was surprised how I lost those 4lbs overnight, but
stupidly enough I didn't think about the fact that I was comparing morning weight
with night weight, I'm - like everyone else - usually 3/4lbs heavier at night..
*facepalm* I know, sometimes I'm bright like that -_-

[RageBlanket]

I've been Skiploading for 7 weeks, and I'm always 4-5# heavier the next morning, returning to baseline typically by Thursday A.M. (Skipload on Sunday).

We fatties retain water.