What do you think of this article on cheat days

Steelheader102

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/2-week-diet-weight-loss-study-breaks-2017-9#ampshare=http://www.businessinsider.com/2-week-diet-weight-loss-study-breaks-2017-9


On one hand I think out can be a cop out but there are times such as dining out or celebrations that I will inevitably go over my goals.

What do you think? Is this something to consider of just more fake news?

In this case, all opinions are 100% correct.

jemhh

Diet breaks and cheat days are not the same thing. Diet breaks are a good idea. There's been a lot written about them. I think that more people should take them. Can't get to them now but I have a couple of good articles about diet breaks linked in my profile.

Jancandoit7

Steelheader- this might interest you- this makes sense to me and I plan on taking these breaks (I'm currently on week 7)- this guy is also funny....
http://physiqonomics.com/the-phase-diet/

bpetrosky

If it works, it's not a cop out.

A short diet break, i.e. eating at maintenance for a time, can help restore hormone levels and improve overall compliance with a diet plan. Using one to work around things like travel, family occasions, etc, is a good strategy as well.

Some restrictive diet plans have featured cheat days/meals for a long time because they improved compliance. I think an overall non-restrictive plan like flexible dieting is better and doesn't require the "cheat", but some people like having it for something to look forward to during the week.

Again, it's all good if it works. If it doesn't, do something else.

kshama2001

Well, first of all the people in the study slashed their calories by 33%, which is a sizable amount, so yes, compliance would be difficult but diet breaks would make it easier.

I think a better plan would be to create a more modest, and therefore sustainable, deficit.

ssbbg

The scientific study is freely available online. I found it by following a link in one of the popular press articles.

Basically they hypothesized that alternating between dieting and maintenance would prevent some of the metabolic slow down of dieting. It was not about the pyschological aspects of compliance.

They had one group diet for 8 weeks straight and another group diet for 2 weeks/2 weeks break ×4. So the same 8 weeks of total diet. The group with breaks lost more weight overall and appeared to have a higher metabolic rate than expected at the end. Still reduced compared to a non-dieter, but better than expected. The metabolic rate decreases when you diet both because you reduce mass AND because your body reduces NEAT as compensation. So the break group did have lower metabolic rate than the straight diet group because they lost more weight. The authors used a variety of models to get at the NEAT portion, and found that it decreased much less in the break group than the straight diet group. They propose that the NEAT portion somewhat normalized during the break at normal calorie levels.

Note that during the break the dieters were strictly in maintenance- they were counting calories and they were weighing themselves showing that they were weight stable. (I think they were actually provided food, but the point is they were still eating in a controlled way.)

CynthiasChoice

So I had to look it up: NEAT - Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. How is NEAT different than metabolism? I'm confused.

I don't understand how metabolism could decrease more in the break group, and NEAT could decrease less in the break group.

counting_kilojoules

All they're doing is reporting a study that's been done. How can it be "fake"? Whether or not it works for people in general is another matter. I've read other articles that say similar things so I'd say it'd work well enough as long as people only took the break they intended and didn't go back to eating what they we're before.

Personally, I like to take a break (where I eat to maintenance) if I'm feeling particularly run down, if I'm ill or if I'm injured. I don't schedule them but I do limit the duration.

amusedmonkey

CynthiasChoice wrote: »

So I had to look it up: NEAT - Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. How is NEAT different than metabolism? I'm confused.

I don't understand how metabolism could decrease more in the break group, and NEAT could decrease less in the break group.

Metabolism is the overall metabolic rate, which includes NEAT, BMR, TEF...etc. The NEAT portion is regular day to day activities that aren't deliberate exercise like walking to the car, doing tasks, fidgeting, typing, playing with your hair...etc.

Metabolism decreased more because the intermittent dieting group was lighter (smaller mass needs less energy), but their day to day activities did not decrease as much as the continuous dieting group, at least that's what I got from ssbbg's post.

I haven't read the whole study so I don't know how NEAT was discussed in the paper, but from what I skimmed, it appears REE (resting energy expenditure) decreased by as much as half in the intermittent dieting group compared to the continuous dieting group (4 ± 6% vs 9 ± 6% decrease), but what caught my attention most was that even though both groups regained weight after 6 months, the intermittent dieting group kept off more of the lost weight.

To OP: how is it a cop out to use a strategy that works? If it works, it's valid. I don't understand this mentality that unless you're suffering you're somehow cheating the process.

ETA: here is the paper for those who wish to take a look
https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo2017206.epdf?author_access_token=On5Pjvm-DCAjMJEJ7MEFJNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MHfdg9Xz5k8KbbxpojLdtDXUX65Dig9Jgbyn01JmUcGksLH7imLsxgGNceft99Fg8iwmoVQMPhnTq1t4xZzv04

ssbbg

CynthiasChoice wrote: »

So I had to look it up: NEAT - Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. How is NEAT different than metabolism? I'm confused.

I don't understand how metabolism could decrease more in the break group, and NEAT could decrease less in the break group.

Total metabolic burn comes from many things- bmr, neat, and exercise are how my fitness pal breaks them up, so that's why I used that term. That is not the term the author used and maybe somewhat broader than the part of the metabolism they are talking about.

The total metabolism went down more because the break group lost more weight than the other group. However, when the authors figured out the values of the different components/parts of metabolism, one part ended up being much different (higher) in the break group compared to the non break group at the end of the study.

Edited to add: this reduction in metabolism from dieting is usually called adaptive thermogenesis. You can Google that or look here in the forums if you want to know more. I know it has been discussed here in plain language.

ssbbg

amusedmonkey wrote: »

[snip] but what caught my attention most was that even though both groups regained weight after 6 months, the intermittent dieting group kept off more of the lost weight.

I saw that too. It is intriguing for sure. But, there were higher drop-outs by the 6 month review (in both groups I seem to remember, but more in the break group?)... I didn't really dig into the statistics (and this results was outside of the experimental design of the study, I believe), but for me I'd take that as a question mark conclusion until I re-read the paper. I read the paper quickly because I wanted to get the gist directly, rather than some summary provided by the popular press.

It could be as simple as the 8 weeks at maintenance taught the participants how to eat "normally" without regaining weight. They absolutely weren't having "cheat meals", so if the result is a consequence of learning how to eat properly to hold weight steady, then thinking about these results as having opportunities to "cheat" is likely to be counter-productive. Obviously, the 6 months results could be something more biochemical about hormone regulation in that group, in which case cheating doesn't necessarily matter.

To OP: how is it a cop out to use a strategy that works? If it works, it's valid. I don't understand this mentality that unless you're suffering you're somehow cheating the process.

It is possible to use this study as a "cop out" to allow one to eat to excess and call it a diet break. That isn't what happened in the study, but the summaries in the news could lead you to think that massive "cheating" was ok. At no point (per the study design) was anyone eating in an uncontrolled manner. (Yeah, people could have been diving face first into plates of nachos when they were outside of the researchers' labs- you can't really do a study where you lock people up for 8 or 16 weeks). I think it is unlikely this is happening because the weights were roughly as expected through the study, but it might be happening.

However, I completely agree that incorporating diet breaks is not a "cop out" and it might be a very useful strategy, especially closer to goal weight or if you are very light (lower cals to begin with). Losing a few hundred calories to metabolic slow down might not matter if you are easily handling a 1000 cal/ day deficit, but if you can only have a 250 cal/ day deficit then it becomes much more important.

ETA: here is the paper for those who wish to take a look
https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo2017206.epdf?author_access_token=On5Pjvm-DCAjMJEJ7MEFJNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MHfdg9Xz5k8KbbxpojLdtDXUX65Dig9Jgbyn01JmUcGksLH7imLsxgGNceft99Fg8iwmoVQMPhnTq1t4xZzv04

Thanks for providing the link. In general, I think it is worth taking a look at this study if you are interested, even if you think it might be too sciencey/technical/medical, and I think it is possible to understand more than you would expect. (You= any MFPer, not you=amusedmonkey) Take that with a large grain of salt, since I am a scientist, though in a completely unrelated field.

The popular press frequently writes these articles based on press releases put out by the university or journal- when you actually read the paper you often find out that critical details are missing from the "translation" from scientific journal to yahoo!news (or whatever... Not picking on Yahoo, most general audience publications are pretty bad at this. You can't do worse and likely can do better by looking yourself at the study.

What I'd recommend (in general for any scientific paper) is:
- focusing on the experimental design- what did they actually do (and what would you do if you wanted to try this?) Obviously, not the technical measurements part unless you secretly have access to a medical research lab, but the how/what people ate part (macros/calories/meal timing/etc.)

- I'd also pay attention to what the study was designed to prove. They may find other results over the course the study, but if it wasn't planned from the start, they may not have enough data to draw good conclusions. Results can be "significant"- there is a lot of data and the results are more likely to be correct and "non-significant"- there is less data and the results could be a result of chance (like flipping a coin). (So, if a study shows one group lost 5 lbs more than the other but it is non-significant... don't change your diet. The next study might find the opposite. ) Significant and non-significant have specific technical meanings and you should pay very close attention when those words are used. If a study is "underpowered" then that is also a sign to take everything with a large grain of salt. (adequately powered or having power is a good thing, and means the results are more likely to be reliable.)

- How similar are the participants to you? Are they all 20 year old elite male athletes and you are a 50 year old obese woman? Then maybe these results are specific to the group and you won't get the same results.

- did a lot of people drop out or get kicked out of the study? (and why did they leave?) Studies are usually designed to still be valid even with some dropouts (they should say this), but if enough people drop out, the results might not be valid. If 80% quit the study, especially in a diet study, then the diet is probably so awful that no one can adhere to it. (That 80% drop out would likely never get published, but if you see the authors say there is a "significant" difference in compliance or completion or adherence between the groups, then you should take that as a red flag that one treatment/procedure/diet is problematic)

- What is the length/time of the study? Do they have measurements at 3 weeks, 6 months, 5 years? Especially with diets it is easy to get people to "gut through" and lose a ton of weight in the short-term. But at 1 year, are they still slimmer? Or have they gained it all back plus an extra 20 lbs? (Then you probably don't want to do that diet!)

- What strengths and weaknesses do the author's highlight? What studies do they suggest as the next step? For example, in this paper, they picked 2 weeks on/off, but they point out that other intervals might be much better or worse (and studies should be done to test this). So you shouldn't conclude this is the absolute correct way to do this. You could try other patterns (8 weeks on/ 2 weeks off) if they work better than you. {Just a side note- you likely wouldn't get better results by going to a lower time period. Renormalizing hormones, which is likely the underlying cause of the results, isn't a fast process. It won't happen on a few hours (or even days) scale. But that is my speculation based on my knowledge and not anything proved in this study}