Refeed Day Calorie Calculator

About this calculator

A refeed day is a planned, short-term return to eating above maintenance calories — typically maintenance plus a chosen surplus percentage — with most of the extra calories deliberately consumed as carbohydrates, used periodically during an extended calorie-restricted diet or cut. The physiological rationale is that sustained caloric restriction lowers leptin (a hormone that regulates hunger and energy expenditure) and depletes muscle glycogen stores, and a short high-carbohydrate surplus can partially and temporarily restore both.

Bodybuilders, physique competitors, and endurance athletes in a prolonged deficit use refeed days to blunt some of the metabolic adaptation and training-performance decline that comes with extended dieting, and to provide psychological relief from restrictive eating — distinct from a full 'diet break', which resets to maintenance for several days or weeks rather than a single elevated day.

This calculator takes your maintenance calories and desired refeed surplus percentage and returns your refeed-day calorie target, along with the extra calories converted into grams of carbohydrate.