Diet Breaks: How To Lose Weight And Keep It Off
A diet break is a break from dieting.
(Wow, wasn’t that a surprise?)
But there is a lot more to this than the simple fact that you aren’t eating in a calorie deficit.
It also brings up a whole new set of questions from how long should a diet break be to how often you should consider taking one.
In this article, I hope to help you answer some of the most common questions about diet breaks which can allow you (or your clients) to lose weight and keep it off.
There is nothing worse than working hard to lose weight just to end up gaining it all back.
If long term sustainable weight loss is the goal, diet breaks are certainly an invaluable tool to have in your arsenal.
Here’s what we’ll discuss in this article:
What Is A Diet Break?
Is There Any Evidence To Support The Use Of Diet Breaks?
What Are The Benefits Of Diet Breaks?
What Is The Drawback Of Diet Breaks?
What Is The Problem Coaches Face With Implementing Diet Breaks?
How To Take A Diet Break?
How Long Should A Diet Break Be?
What Not To Do While Taking A Diet Break?
How Frequent Should A Diet Break Be?
Will I Gain Weight During A Diet Break?
Let’s get started!
What Is A Diet Break?
A diet break is a period of time where you eat at your maintenance calories.
The biggest mistake people make is considering the diet break as a period of ‘I can get back to my old habits before I start starving again’.
Instead, the diet break is actually a planned and controlled break which gives you both a physiological and psychological break from dieting and helps you get back to losing fat with a little more enthusiasm.
Let’s look at this with the help of an example;
Imagine planning a road trip across the country.
1. You could drive across the country with no stops along the way.
2. You could halt after a certain distance is covered to get yourself some rest and appreciate where you have come.
Neither of the options is inherently ‘wrong’, but in most cases, taking breaks along the way makes for a more enjoyable experience.
What we should also keep in mind is that the longer the journey, the more helpful taking breaks along the way could be.
I hope you see where I’m going with this.
While there is always a scenario where going all out could be the preferred option, taking diet breaks for most people in most cases ends up being a better approach.
This is even more true when you have a lot more weight to lose.
But do we have anything to back this up in the first place?
Is There Any Evidence To Support The Use Of Diet Breaks?
Yes there is!
The MATADOR study from 2017 concludes that intermittent energy restriction (i.e. diet breaks; don’t confuse this with intermittent fasting) leads to greater weight loss and more importantly, greater fat loss!
MATADOR stands for Minimising Adaptive Thermogenesis And Deactivating Obesity Rebound.
The whole reason this of conducting this study was to find out whether or not diet breaks reduce the effect of metabolic adaptations which occur during longer periods of dieting and if they are useful are reducing the rebound that occurs after a fat loss phase.
In short, here’s how it went.
There were two groups put on a weight loss diet.
Group 1 was made to eat 67% of their maintenance calories for a period of 16 weeks straight.
For those of you who are new to this, 67% of maintenance calories means that these people were in a 33% caloric deficit.
For example, a person who maintains weight at 3000 calories would have to eat 2000 calories (3000 x 67%) a day.
But to make this a lot more accurate, maintenance calories were recalibrated over time and the calorie intake was set accordingly.
This just means that the study have to account for the fact that a person who started dieting with a maintenance of 3000 calories won’t end the diet with a maintenance of 3000 calories, not only because of being a lighter person, but also because of metabolic adaptations.
Group 2 had to follow the same deficit but with incorporating diet breaks along the way.
For every 2 weeks of dieting at 67% of maintenance, group 2 had to spend 2 weeks at 100% of maintenance.
This means that group two had to spend double the time to achieve the same 16 weeks in a deficit (because of the fact that they took a 2 week break every 2 weeks of dieting).
At the end of the study, the period spent in a deficit was theoretically equal between the two groups.
But the results were different!
Group 2 lost more fat by the end and had lesser metabolic adaptation at the same time.
If you want to see the graph of the difference in weight loss, click here.
While making a conclusion that 2-weeks-on-2 -weeks-off is the best approach shouldn’t be the key takeaway of this study, especially since the subjects were obese and sedentary, it does show us that utilizing diet breaks can be beneficial.
To actually understand why diet breaks are gaining popularity, you have to know the benefits of using them.
What Are The Benefits Of Diet Breaks?
1. Psychological break from dieting
No matter who you are and how much experience you have with dieting, you cannot deny the fact that at some point, eating in a calorie deficit becomes irritating.
While you can always manipulate meal frequency and macro-splits to find an approach that makes it easier for you to adhere to a deficit, there will always be that element of dieting which makes it ‘uncomfortable’.
This becomes even more true when you want to diet down to a body fat percentage you have not previously dieted down to.
Thus, taking diet breaks in this situation can be very beneficial from a psychological point of view, even more so when you have a lot more weight to lose.
There is a difference in the approach needed to help someone lose 5 pounds of fat versus someone that has another 100 pounds to go.
While the underlying principles of energy balance remain the same, the length of the fat loss phase alone is a good enough reason to implement diet breaks.
For example, losing 5 pounds at a rate of 1 pound per week will take you 5 weeks.
At the same time, losing 100 pounds at a rate of 2 pounds a week (the higher amount of fat to lose allows us to be a little more aggressive with our approach) will still take you a whopping 50 weeks!
That’s a year of dieting!!
In fact, the main reason overweight people don’t even start or feel demotivated to lose weight slowly is the fact that they can’t even see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
This is exactly why people prefer ’30 day of trying to starve myself by eating as little as possible challenges’ where they can lose 20 pounds in a month instead. (Please don’t do this)
The point is that, telling someone that they have to eat at a calorie deficit for the next one year isn’t the most fun and sustainable thing.
The thought itself builds up a significant amount of stress, especially if you don’t know how to diet flexibly.
In this case, telling the person that they can take a break from the deficit every 4 weeks makes the process a lot more sustainable, at least mentally.
2. Physiological benefits of taking a break
Let’s say that you have the ‘mental toughness’ to diet for a long period of time.
Even if you don’t care about the psychological benefits, diet breaks could still be beneficial in the big picture of your fat loss phase.
To understand why, you first have to know the implications of being in a calorie deficit for a long period of time.
Firstly, your metabolic rate slows down;
Not because of ‘starvation mode’, but because of you being lighter, being lazier (lesser energy expended in the form of NEAT) and the influence of metabolic adaptations that take place while dieting.
Not only this, but hormones like leptin, cortisol, thyroid and testosterone also end up getting affected by dieting.
While this is inevitable while dieting, throwing in diet breaks could reverse the damage to a certain extent.
Thus, this alone is a pretty compelling reason to utilize diet breaks.
3. Experience the ‘whoosh’ effect
While this isn’t nearly as important as the previous two benefits and it doesn’t have enough evidence to back it up, it still is something that should be considered.
People often end up looking better when they enter a diet break.
This is primarily because their body lets go of the water it was retaining while dieting for a long period of time.
Again, this shouldn’t be your primary reason for entering a diet break but it can be considered as an added bonus.
4. Better Training Performance
Having more food can positively impact your training and this is a big plus, especially if you are a natural athlete.
While entering a short diet break will not be sufficient to pack on a lot of lean mass, it can still allow you to perform better and recover some of the strength you lose while dieting.
5. Learn To Stay At Maintenance
This is something I have struggled with which is why I think this deserves to be on the list.
If you have only been hopping between cycles of constantly under-eating and over-eating, learning to eat at maintenance can be an invaluable lesson.
While there is not much evidence backing the fact that eating at maintenance for a short period can allow the body to ‘settle at your new weight’, the fact that you’ll be able to learn to maintain your progress every few weeks is a big win, especially from a behavioral point of view.
What Is The Drawback Of Diet Breaks?
There is always a trade-off to make while making these decisions.
The biggest drawback of diet breaks is the increase in time taken to reach your goal weight.
For someone who needs 12 weeks to lose weight, is adding a diet break like the one seen in the MATADOR study a good idea?
That will double the length of his fat loss phase to a period of 24 weeks and some could argue that this individual could have dieted down and entered a gaining phase by then if a conventional approach was followed.
The counter-argument is that you can reduce the frequency of diet breaks so that you’re taking one every 4-6 weeks.
In any case, the length of your fat loss phase will be extended and this might not be suitable for individuals with time constraints.
What Is The Problem Coaches Face With Implementing Diet Breaks?
This is related to the drawback of the diet break mentioned above; making your client agree to slower results.
The majority of the general population who has no interest in learning about nutrition really don’t care about the science behind this stuff.
They just want the results and they want them as soon as possible.
As a coach, it can be difficult to make a client understand the potential benefit of incorporating the diet break.
Whether you are you coaching yourself or your clients, a good question to ask is whether or not a REAL time constraint is present.
Differentiating between a real time constraint and just wanting to ‘get ripped fast’ depends on the overall context and situation and this is where you as a coach should try to talk to, and educate your clients on shifting focus to long-term adherence instead of short-term results.
In most cases, if you are coaching overweight individuals who just want to lose weight in a sustainable manner to be healthy look good, incorporating diet breaks can be beneficial, but the frequency will depend on various factors which prevents us from making very generalized recommendations.
Another common issue is clients being ‘scared’ of increasing calories.
This is more true for the leaner individuals who fear fat gain and increase in scale weight.
Convincing someone that increasing calories and gaining 3-4 pounds of scale weight overnight is absolutely fine can be a difficult task.
Again, as a coach, it just comes down to assessing the situation, sitting down and talking to your client about the potential benefits this can have on their results in the long term.
How To Take A Diet Break?
If you are convinced that a diet break could be appropriate for you, it only makes sense to want to know how to execute one properly.
We know that we need to up our calories to maintenance, but this maintenance will not be the same maintenance we started our diet at.
Since we discussed the decrease in metabolic rate above, our new maintenance will be lower than the one we started out at.
Thus, you have to calculate your new maintenance.
The best way to do this would be to reverse calculate it from your weekly average calories and rate of fat loss per week.
If you haven’t been recording that data, your best bet would be to use a calculator online to approximate it based on your new body weight.
A simple formula to use would be to multiply your bodyweight in pounds by 14.
Again, this will not be accurate but it will work as a decent substitute for having a more precise estimate.
Once you have this number, the increase from your current calories should be predominantly from carbs.
Reducing cardio is also recommended.
If you were performing cardio daily, dropping it down to 3 days a week could work.
Again, there is no ‘right’ answer to this.
Adjust it to a point where you find it is giving you a mental break and at the same time it is allowing you to have a slightly higher TDEE (allowing you to eat more).
How Long Should A Diet Break Be?
To achieve the physiological benefits of diet breaks, most experts in the field recommend taking at least 10-14 days off the deficit.
This is simply because certain hormones take longer to recover than others.
Taking shorter diet breaks can still be helpful from the adherence point of view, but to reap the full benefits of the diet break, 2 weeks seems to be a good place to be at.
If you aren’t in a hurry, I am a fan of longer breaks at maintenance as well.
What Not To Do While Taking A Diet Break?
1. Do not let go of the habits you developed
If you are approaching this as a period of binging on whatever you see, you are setting yourself up for failure.
It is recommended you still follow the same meal structure and training protocol as you were on your diet, and just adjust for the increase in calories in your meals.
If you completely let go of your meal structure, not only will it become easier for you to fall off track, but it will also make it harder for you to get back to the diet once you end the break since you will have to re-cultivate those habits.
2. Control the break instead of letting the break control you
This is similar to the previous point but it deserves to be stated separately.
If you don’t execute the diet break in a controlled and planned manner, it will do more harm than good to your overall progress.
There is no point in taking a diet break if you are going to end up gaining 2kgs of fat.
Those who say diet breaks have no use at all generally tend to overeat and erase progress they’ve made so make sure you have everything under control.
How Frequent Should A Diet Break Be?
To be completely honest with you, this depends on so many factors that making a generalized statement feels impossible.
If you have no idea of when to throw in a diet break, then every 4-6 weeks could be a good starting point, but as I said, it really depends on the situation and a lot more context is needed to make this decision.
If you are someone who does not have a set deadline to meet, and if you feel like the diet is becoming so hard that it could result in a period of uncontrolled eating, taking a diet break could be a good idea.
In the same way, if your strength is falling at a rapid pace, taking a diet break could be a good idea.
Also, if you know that you are going to face a period where dieting will be hard, instead of struggling to diet and facing the risk of potential over-eating (which will lead to you feeling guilty), throwing in a diet break could be a good idea.
For example, if you know you cannot diet in the last week of December, schedule a diet break around that period instead of trying to diet and ending up binging, only to feel guilty and ashamed of yourself.
Will I Gain Weight During A Diet Break?
Yes, you will.
Scale weight will go up when you enter a diet break, primarily because of the higher carbs.
This means your body will end up holding more glycogen and water which will push your scale weight upwards.
This is why it is important to understand the difference between weight loss and fat loss, and why tracking progress solely based on the scale isn’t the best idea.
There won’t be excess fat gain as long as you eat at your maintenance so the increase in scale weight shouldn’t be something you have to worry about.
Conclusion
Now that you know about diet breaks, what are your thoughts on it?
I agree that they aren’t for everyone and that the frequency and length of diet breaks depend on the situation.
That said, they could be beneficial for most individuals trying to lose weight in a sustainable manner and can help them keep it off.
The simplest way to summarize diet breaks would be to bump up your calories to maintenance with the increase coming predominantly from carbs for a period of 2 weeks for both physiological and psychological benefits.
Once you delay gratification and focus on long-term adherence, you will be able to make the best progress ever.
As cliche as it sounds, it all comes down to being patient and consistent.
If you have any experience with diet breaks, share it down below!
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