Brazilian BBQ Restaurants – My first choice when taking a diet break. Image: Houseinrio.com.br
Everyone wants to be ripped, now.
Nobody wants to wait. Our capacity for patience is being eroded every day by our ‘Get it now, Pay later‘ culture.
Let me be very clear: If you take this attitude towards your diet then sooner or later you are destined to fail.
Though most don’t realise (or want to believe) it, at some point in the pursuit of your fitness or physique goals you will* have to take one step backwards to take two steps forwards. Plan for those steps and you won’t be frustrated.
This is not about mental toughness – I don’t doubt your rock solid diet commitment or that you can handle any training routine thrown at you.
Taking planned breaks is one of the best moves you can make for your long term diet success. An unsexy topic for sure, but necessary and quite fun.
In this article you’ll find diet break guidelines, a quick run down of the reasons for, and my own FAQ I’ve developed from client questions that’ll probably make you laugh.
*Examples:
The skinny kid that wants to cut to reveal a six-pack Mike Chang promised him but he doesn’t have, cause he missed that he needs to build a muscular base first.
The wannabe MMA warrior, that decides they’re going to add HIIT, metabolic conditioning and strength training to their martial arts classes – missing simple point that all these things will improve dramatically if they dropped 50lbs with minimal training and diet efforts first.
Finishing a cut properly to set yourself up for a cleaner bulk.
A little fat gain when bulking.
Reasons For Taking A Diet Break
Both a physiological break and a psychological break.
Physiological Reasons
Recall from the article, Why You Need To Make Adjustments As You Diet that one unfortunate and unavoidable side effect of dieting is metabolic slowdown, meaning that as a diet progresses you gradually have to eat less and less to keep shifting the fat.
This is the adaptive component of your metabolism – your body’s defence mechanism against (what is perceived to be) the threat of starvation. Makes sense from a survival perspective but is annoying when you’re trying to look good for the beach.
Diet breaks help.
A short period of regular eating has the potential to reverse some of this metabolic adaptation giving the hormones time to recover to normal levels.
This means that you’ll be able to eat more than you otherwise would and still progress with your diet. So if your fat loss stalls one of the things you could try would be to have a diet break rather then dropping calories each time.
Psychological Reasons
Image: The Hangover
If you’ve ever dieted then you’ll probably be familiar with the mood swings and irritability that come with dieting. Some of this is physiological yes, but a lot is mental.
Though I don’t believe that you have to remove “naughty” foods from your diet (see the IIFYM principles) it can certainly make eating these foods to the point of satisfaction tough. I know that there are times I’d prefer avoid my Domino’s pizza speed dial (true story), and buffet dinners altogether then try and control myself. I guess there are a lot of people that feel the same, and this can lead to frustration when turning down social events. Stress can build also*.
So then here’s a little thought exercise. Which plan will be easier to stick to?
Plan 1: You’re told you’ll need 20 weeks to reach your physique. 90% diet adherence will be required, and the next time you’ll be able to eat freely without guilt for several days is going to be in 5 months.
Plan 2: You’re told you need 24 weeks to reach your physique. 24 weeks of that you’ll need to be fairly strict, the other 4 weeks will be strategic breaks from dieting where you can eat what you want. You can take a guilt free break with family/friends, attend your friends stag (bachelor) party in Vegas without worrying what happened between the memory blackouts (diet wise), and the all-you-can-eat brazilian meat restaurant is fair game again.
It should be clear why those that go with the latter approach find the stints of dieting easier – that’s what the data supports also.
*Mental stress can lead to physiological stress which will affect fat loss also.
Diet Break Practical Guidelines
Eat to your hunger and don’t count macros.
Keep your regular meal times.
Keep on training or take a break. Make a choice. If you choose to continue training then you may well make some strength gains. Enjoy it.
Expect rises in the scale weight due to water. Don’t stress it. 7-10lbs of gain in the first few days is not uncommon, and yes, it does come off rapidly again. More about this here.
Diet Break Length & Frequency
Though their recommendations differ slightly, both Alan Aragon and Lyle McDonald recommend taking breaks. Some hormones take longer to recover than others, unfortunately, so there is no cutting a diet break short. Alan suggests one week, Lyle a longer 10-14 days (which has to do with his theory on thyroid recovery which you can read more about here).
Body fat % (men)
Diet Break Frequency
<15%
every 4-6 weeks
15-25%
every 6-12 weeks
25%>
every 12-16 weeks
Women add ~7%.
Above are Lyle’s recommendations on diet break frequency. Clearly this is just a general guide and psychological factors will come into play as well. If a client is doing well mentally (mood, cravings, stress), as well as physically (energy, sleep, recovery) then I may suggest going for a longer time period before taking a break.
Now for the part that may make you laugh…
FAQ
1. Lyle McDonald recommends to eat above 100-150g of carbs a day. Does this mean I need to count? You said don’t count.
By not counting, you will almost certainly hit this number anyway. Don’t count.
2. In the article it also says to go to maintenance calories…should I follow that or just follow like you said by just eating to my hunger?
Following your hunger, generally speaking, will be somewhat around your natural maintenance.
3. I’m too scared to not count my macros, please can you give me some macro numbers?
No. Eat to your hunger. Two important reasons.
1. The diet break must be a psychological one as well for stress reduction and to help with further diet adherence. Worrying about numbers is counter productive.
2. Your current maintenance calories (where you won’t lose or gain any weight now) and your natural maintenance calories (what you would eat without metabolic slow-down) are different. It is very difficult to determine what your natural maintenance calories are, however, fortunately hunger is a good guide.
I was questioned about this by a client, to which I responded:
Yeah, the “eat to your hunger” suggestion does have flaws, but I’m highly reluctant to tell people to “eat at calculated TDEE maintenance minus 10%” (to allow for metabolic adaptation) because doing something like that will lead to counting, and that isn’t a break at all.
4. Do I need to cycle [insert macro name here]?
No. Count nothing.
5. Seriously?
Yes. Stop trying to complicate things. Sometimes it is just that simple.
6. Should I still make “healthy” food choices?
Eat whatever the hell you want. It’s unlikely to backfire, as you may have a couple of days where you feel like eating pizza and doughnuts (and you do so) but the next days you’ll naturally feel a little shit and move towards healthier choices. Basically, enjoy the time and the food options, make sure you’re not hungry (so that you’ll be at or above maintenance calories) and all will be fine.
7. Dude, I can pile in a huge amount of food? Are you telling me to binge here?
No, or you will put on fat. I’m not questioning that you can eat a hell of a lot bud. Don’t think of this as a two week cheat just a break from counting, a time to relax. Listen to your body. Take your time when eating and eat to your hunger, nothing more.
Thank you for reading.
Did that nail it? Remaining questions? Hit me up in the comments below.
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