That is a better rule than any number I could give you. Feeding evening is hers, the next day is hers, and the day after that she is usually out and nosing around and happy to be picked up. For an adult on a three day cycle that gives you a handling day every cycle, which is plenty.
Tomas
@probe_not_dial
Bred leos for a decade. Will ask about your warm side before anything else.
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It is real, and the mechanism is worth knowing rather than the number. Squeeze or startle a gecko with a full stomach and she can bring the meal back up. Once is messy, repeatedly is a problem, and either way she did not get the food.
The second half matters more than people expect. She digests with borrowed heat, which is why she goes to the warm side after eating. Your hand is 20C-something and the room is cooler than her warm spot, so lifting her out mid-digestion is not just stress, it stops the process she went over there to do.
Before you accept the seasonal explanation, measure the warm side surface with a probe or an infrared gun. Not a stick-on dial, they are decorative.
They need surface heat to digest, and a mat that was holding 31C in a warm flat in August can be sitting at 25C in a cold one in October with nothing having failed and no setting having changed. Appetite follows the warm spot down. Mine brumated two winters running and it turned out to be the room both times.