87. Are Diet Breaks a Helpful or Hurtful Fat Loss Strategy?

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Welcome to the Mind and My Wellness Podcast. Your podcast for all things macros, movement, mindset and everything in between. I'm your host, Dani Merenberg, an ex yo yo dieting cardio junkie turned sustainable nutrition coach who's helped over 1000 women feel confident in their skin by learning.

How to eat for their goals without.

Sacrificing a life well lived. I created the Mind and My Wellness Podcast to give you simple, effective and manageable tips you can take away from each episode and implement in your daily life to look and feel like the best version of you. Each week, my guests and I teach you the secrets to mastering your health and owning your power. Nutrition, mindset, movement and women's health are all topics you'll find here. Think of our time together as your productive little health break from the day. So grab your headphones, fill up your water, and let's dive into today's episode.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Mind and Mind Wellness Podcast. In the effort to help as many women as possible reduce body fat, January we talked all about body fat reduction and calorie deficits and today I want to share an idea and a tactic that I use with some clients and that is around diet breaks. And when I share the idea of a diet break with a client, oftentimes they're like, is this too good to be true? And how do I do it? A diet break in is an amazing tool that can really help with reducing overall body fat, but maybe not in the way that you might think. I have quite a few episodes on the fat loss phase itself and how to properly enter one, how long you can and can't be in one for, and so much more. And I'll link all of those episodes down for you in the show notes that are so helpful. But we haven't really talked in depth yet about diet breaks, so in today's episode I'll take you through what a diet break is, what the science says about using diet breaks and how to properly implement one in your own dieting phase the next time, should you enter one, or maybe you're in one right now. So first and foremost, what is a diet break? A diet break is just that it's kind of a break from your diet, but not completely. So a diet break is a planned period of time, usually one to two weeks, where you temporarily stop your deficit, you stop dieting and you increase your calories to maintenance calories. So you pull your calories up, you're still eating at maintenance, but you're not in your deficit, although it's during the time of your deficit. So here's an example for you. Imagine you've been in a calorie deficit now for six weeks and you're noticing that you are getting hungrier, you're seeing some signs of negative biofeedback, and instead of pushing through more weeks of that restricted eating, you take a one to two week break where you eat more, but just enough to maintain your current weight. And then after that break, you resume your fat loss phase. You can also implement a diet break when you've reached the end of one deficit period, which is 16 weeks max. And I'd outline this in all of my deficit episodes that I'll link below in the show notes. But if you have additional body fat that you are really wanting to lose at the end of that first 16 week deficit, you can implement another deficit after a diet break. So you could implement a diet break after the first deficit and then move into a second deficit. However, if you do take that approach where you implement a diet break at the end of your first round of a deficit, you want to make sure that you only use one dieting break between two deficit cycles. After that second deficit cycle after their diet break, you want to reverse diet. So in other words, after one dieting period, if you still have body fat you'd like to use and your body is responding well, you can implement another diet break before continuing on for a anywhere from 2 to 16 week deficit. At the end of that second deficit, that's when you'll want to introduce a reverse diet. And that's When a reverse diet should be entered, you don't want to just keep staying in this dieting phase deficit dieting phase deficit or dieting break deficit. Because this is ultimately going to lead to that yo yo dieting cycle that we want to get out of. But you can use it strategically. It's also important to note that a diet break is not a cheat week or a binge period. It is not a complete break from your diet. It is structured, there's intention with it, you're increasing your calories to a focused maintenance range. So it's not just a free for all. It's not just a permission slip to eat whatever you want. You definitely want to make sure you're still within your maintenance range. So why would one use a diet break? The problem with continuous long term dieting is that it can lead to a couple of things that we want to prevent in order to see sustained fat loss. Number one is metabolic adaptation. Over time, your metabolism slows down as your body adjusts to fewer calories. So the more fewer calories you eat, the slower your metabolism will go. Number two is muscle loss. Without the proper caloric intake and strategies in place, you risk losing lean muscle mass, which is so important not only for just longevity, but really for helping with reducing body fat. You need that lean muscle mass. Number three is hunger and fatigue. Constant restriction oftentimes increases cravings, mood swings, burnout. It can play a role in hormonal disharmony. So it's really important that you are moving out of a deficit phase now. There are also some science backed benefits to adding in a diet break into your deficit plan. Number one is going to be your psychological relief. So it reduces food obsession, diet fatigue like we talked about, and a risk of binge eating when you've been in a deficit for too long, which is very, very common. And it can also improve your adherence to your deficit. Now let's be honest, it's easier to stick to a diet when you know that there's a break coming, when you know that there's an end in sight. And maybe you plan to do a 16 week deficit, but 16 weeks feels like a really long time. Adding in a diet break there can be really beneficial to help break it up a little bit. Now let's dive in a bit to what the research says about diet breaks. There was a study that was conducted and it's one of the most compelling studies that there is around diet breaks. It looked at resistance trained women, which is a group that often gets overlooked in research and is usually the audience of my podcast, I'm guessing that you are a female listening in. And if you do incorporate resistance training or strength training, this is you. So this study found that in both parties, it looked at a group that had a deficit with no diet breaks and a deficit with a diet break, planned diet break in there. Both parties, both groups saw that they maintained muscle mass whether or not they added a diet break or not. In terms of their metabolism, there was really no significant drop in resting metabolic rate for either group. Meaning that the diet break itself didn't necessarily boost your metabolism, but it did help maintain your metabolism during that deficit period. Which is super important because if you remember, a key disadvantage to a long term deficit is that metabolic adaptation can happen where it's slows down your metabolism. So if you add in a diet break for some, it can really help to maintain their metabolism. The other thing that was looked at in the study was hunger control. And the diet break participants had a lower disinhibition, which means that they had less of a tendency to overeat when they were stressed and reported that they had reduced cravings as compared to those that did not diet break. And last but not least, when it came to weight fluctuations, some participants in the group that did add a diet break, they did see weight gain very, very, very small amounts. And it was mostly due to water and glycogen, but it did not sabotage long term fat loss. In fact, it actually helped them because they were able to maintain their deficit longer than if they were to strictly just try to hang on to the deficit. So the biggest takeaway from this study was that diet breaks actually didn't magically melt off more fat, which some people will say a diet break can do. But it did help them with adherence and hunger management and mental wellbeing, which are critical factors for long term fat loss and long term fat loss success. So this leads me to if all of this is sounding super great to you and you're in a diet, how can you implement a diet break effectively? So first thing, when can you use them? I would recommend that you give your deficit six to eight weeks first before entering a diet break. Anytime you're experiencing increased hunger, fatigue or poor recovery, either try increasing Your calories by 50 to 100 or you can pull up into that diet break. I recommend implementing one before a plateau hits as a proactive strategy. If you feel like you are kind of like things are holding steady and you need a little break, enter a diet break. And then the other one that we mentioned already is at the end of any deficit period, if it's that 16 week mark and you still have more to lose and you don't necessarily want to enter a reverse diet yet you have more in the tank, then you can enter a diet break for one to two weeks and then re enter your deficit. So how should you structure a diet break? Like we talked about, you want to increase your calories to your maintenance levels and this is going to primarily be from carbs and fat. Your protein will remain relatively consistent and you want to keep that protein high to preserve your overall muscle mass. And then you want to maintain your workout routine that you were on previously in your deficit. But maybe consider reducing training volume a little bit if it's feeling overwhelming. You can also pull back a little bit there during your diet break. But really make sure everything is pretty status quo. The only thing that's changing are your calories to maintenance. So there are two examples that I'll give you. You can take a 2:1 approach, meaning that you diet for two weeks and then you take a one week break. Or there's a 6:2 approach where you diet for six weeks and you take a two week break. I usually recommend the 6, 2 approach where you're dieting for six to eight weeks and then you take a one to two week break, giving you enough time in that deficit. But this is no one size fits all. Listen to your body and get a coach to guide you if you need one on when to pause and enter a diet break and then re exit that diet break to enter your deficit. Next, I want to address some common concerns that come up when I bring up diet diet breaks. The biggest one is, well, won't I gain weight? And the truth is there's a big difference between the number on the scale and body fat. You might see a little bit of a bump on the scale. This is due to water and glycogen, not body fat. This stabilizes really quickly once you resume your deficit. And again, this goal here is really to maintain your weight during the deficit period so that you can push harder when you revisit, sorry in the diet break period. So then you can re push harder in the deficit period. The other question is, doesn't this slow down my progress? And yes, it might add a little bit of time, but at the end of the day it might improve your adherence and reduces the risk of burnout, which honestly is going to lead to better results long term and maybe get you to the body and health that you want quicker than if you were to try to just force it in a deficit, which you may have noticed trying to do before. The other thing is, well, okay, why can't I just power through this deficit? I'd rather just keep my head down and like work through this deficit. And you also can do this. But if you are suffering, implement a diet break because it's all about sustainability and this is what is going to help you with that long term transformation. So here is my coaching advice to you. Use diet breaks proactively, not reactively. Focus on consistency over perfection and a well timed break can really prevent the derailment of your deficit and of your fat loss plan. So if you implement a diet break, know that it's not setting you back. In fact, it might actually be helping you with adherence and seeing those long term results. Now you do not need a diet break. And for many women inside my coaching programs, we will never use a diet break. But they can be a really great strategy to implement if and when you need to continue to see progress. If and when you are up against really feeling burnout, but still wanting to continue with your diet and not quite ready for a reverse diet yet. Remember, dieting, it's not about suffering. We want to get in and out. It's a finite period of time. It's about sustainability. Diet breaks aren't a sign of failure. They are a very smart science backed strategy to help you stay consistent, to help you preserve muscle and really feel your best while aiming to reduce your overall body fat. So I hope this episode was super helpful on diet breaks. I get so many questions all the time about diet breaks and really how to implement them. So I hope this episode really put that into perspective for you. But if you are curious about how to implement diet breaks into your own fat loss journey, or maybe you're looking for a little bit of support navigating one on your own and you want this once and for all to be the last time you really focus on body fat reduction and you want to maintain that for life. We do currently have some spots available inside my one on one coaching program, the Macro Accelerator. And this is the program that has helped hundreds of women just like you not only change their body for life, but we teach you how, and we teach you how to do it in a fun and sustainable way so that you understand by the end of the program how to do this all on your own. So I'll post a link down in the show notes, you can go down there, check it out, apply there. And outside of that, if you have any additional questions or any topics you'd love me to cover on this podcast, I am all ears over on my Instagram @mindedmymacros. And until next time, keep minding your wellness.

If you listened to today's episode and you're thinking this is what I need, well, you are in luck. I now have applications open for the Macro Accelerator program. This is my one on one coaching program designed to not only guide you and provide accountability, but also teach you and educate you so that you you can sustain results for a lifetime. Spots are limited, so for more information and how to apply, head ON over to mindandmymacros.com TMA for more information. Or you can head on over to my Show Notes to find the link. As always, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Mind in My Wellness podcast. Until next week, keep mindin your wellness.