Free Meal or Refeed?

Free Meals:
A single meal that breaks your diet. Main benefits are psychological. Keeps the sanity when dieting like this so long. It also makes the diet work better, in terms of hormone levels. I recommend a one hour dinner, personally. Eating your free meal for breakfast or lunch can make it very hard to go back on Kimkins for the rest of the day. Keeping it within one hour (like suggested in Carb Addicts book) keeps your insulin from shooting high, and prevents your free meal from a all day grazing fest. As far as what to eat, the healthier the food the better of course...but essentially eat what you want to. Period.When you do a free meal is up to you. Lyle MacDonald suggests 2 a week if you have a BF% of 25%or more. I do mine after every 3 whole days of Kimkins. You can do yours every 5 or every other day, whatever gets the best results for you.

Refeed:
Refeeds are exactly that, refeeding the body. You can do a refeed for 5 hours, a day, a week, or a month. They are the next level up from a free meal. You normally do a "structured refeed" after you come off of a diet to restore muscle glycogen. When we diet we cause "tissue breakdown", the refeed also helps with this. The refeed is basically a long diet break.

Educate Yourself about Ketogenic Diets

With Kimkins or any diet, be it low carb or not - it is important to educate oneself, and not be a sheep blindly following everyone else. I have seen some shall we say "curious" threads on the forum that I will steer clear of. It doesn't make any sense to take things to extremes. Look up "ketogenic diets" online and read some of the background behind these sort of diets - like Lyle McDonald & Rob Faigin. I researched Stillman's earlier today and was 'educated'. These diets have been around for years, even prior to Atkins. From what I have read I've drawn my own conclusions, I really think it is important to get as much information as you can.

In the research into ketogenic diets online that I've done, I've seen many recommendations to take electrolyte supplementation. Includng this one:
"[...] at a minor level, a person low in electrolytes can get muscle cramps, both daytime and severely at night. Lightheadness, fatigue, even nausea are considered minor effects of low electrolytes. Major effects include passing out, severe brain disfunction, heart problems and at the extreme end, death. Carbs awaiting use in the body are stored as glycogen in the short term (fat in the long term, but you knew that!). Water is attached to the glycogen grams at a ratio of 3 grams of water per gram of glycogen. When you deplete the glycogen stores via low carb eating, the water goes with it, explaining the quick 3-10+ pounds lost during the first few days of a low carb diet. When the water goes, it takes the electrolyte minerals with it. Whoosh - gone overnight. Dave and I both use a zero carb electrolyte powder made by SuperSpectrim and continue to drink a lot of water. I called the manufacturer, Super Spectrim, who confirmed that their electrolyte powder contains zero carbs." from http://www.davedraper.com/ketogenic-supplements.html

Tonight I ate at Outback Steakhouse, and finished up the entire portion of salmon served. I am absolutely STUFFED now, but I am not beating myself up about finishing it. For one I know salmon has some wonderful omega essential fatty acids that my body needs.