Maintenance Breaks

veghead9

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone knew whether its preferred to take eating-at-maintenance diet breaks for 1 week every 6 weeks or so or 1 day per week every week? I know EM2WL touts 1 week every so often, but would 1 day per week accomplish the same thing? Truthfully, I'd prefer the latter but not if it means stalling my metabolism.

heybales

No, 1 day a week can help, but not the same.

In fact, for some of the hormones it takes longer than a week to really get reset back to normal levels, that's why it's usually good to proceed a diet break with with an exercise break week, which also massively unstresses the body.

So after 6 weeks of exercise and diet, take an exercise break for a week, only walk when you would have worked out. Adjust your TDEE correctly and still eat at a deficit.
Your muscles and body will recovery so well, they will be stronger and ready to go.
So now the next week you get back to the exercise, and probably find you can lift more, go faster, ect, and you take a diet break eating at the now correct TDEE.
Your body working even harder with exercise will really be able to put the extra food to great use making improvements from the exercise.

Then go another 6 weeks.

Now, if exercise is only low level like walking up to an hr a day, that's not needed as there isn't much to recovery from. Diet break is enough.

veghead9

I had a feeling some of the hormones needed a longer "reassurance" period. Thank you for confirming. I do hit the weights pretty hard and know that after I take a week off, my workouts are awesome, so that part of your advice totally makes sense. But are you saying that first week back to exercise eat at TDEE? So the schedule would be:

(now) normal exercise routine, eating at cut, about 2100 kcal (I'm trying to drop a bit of body fat so I can do a bulk)

rest week from intense exercise, walking only, eat at cut 1900 kcal
normal exercise routine, eat at TDEE about 2500

normal exercise, eat at cut 2100 - go for 6 weeks, rinse, repeat

Another question if you wouldn't mind, just because I respect your opinion. I am repeating NROLFW and was toying with the idea of cutting during phases where reps are 10+ but eating at maintenance for the cycles where reps are 4-6. As long as no more than 6 weeks goes by without a diet recovery, do you think its worth it to do this? Will I maybe get a little bit more of the program strength wise by aligning my eating with the heavier lifting?

(In case its relevant, I am new to heavy lifting. I did NROLFW in May and then recently completed Cathe STS. Also, for the calorie calculations, I am using your spreadsheet, which is awesome. I love how it gives me TDEG based on my ratio of cardio and lifting.)

heybales

As you have observed, after a good rest week, you usually end up truly recovered, really ready to go harder than you had on last workouts done. What a great time to be eating at maintenance TDEE. Or tad more if you dare!

Obviously in 1 week you can't put on any serious levels of muscle, but I can't think of anyone that followed that advice that said they did not increase weight on something by the end of that week, like finally added 5 lbs to OHP say. And then if you can maintain that going back to the cut, you had a good increase.
Many that comment on that first cut week, really notice the effect of the diet too, perhaps not in loss of weight on bar, but realization the body can only do so much anyway, and when in a deficit, even less.
It's usually a great eye opener if you've been in a diet for a while.

Your plan for diet matching the strength rep range is right on good method.
In fact, if you've been lifting 6-9 months and pretty sure you aren't making increases at any discernable pace in a deficit anyway, might as well not even pretend the deficit time is anything but maintenance on the bar.
So those higher rep times, keep the weight (don't want to lose strength or muscle mass because it's unused) but back off sets and frequency in the week (keep at least 1/3 of what got you there), do those higher rep ranges, and take a really decent deficit for the fat/weight loss. If following TDEG recommendation, that's as steep as you want it.

Then your TDEE eating weeks at strength reps is your body recomp time, still losing some fat and gaining muscle even if slowly. And increasing strength the whole time. Which makes the next cut time easier or faster you might say.

And in fact, your recovery is better eating at TDEE, that you could likely go 8 weeks before exercise break is needed. But may just really try to get a feel for your body, like right before this current break really feel how the workouts are going. They may feel just fine and good, but until you come back rested and do them, you don't realize how much better they could be. Then you know when it gets to that point again, 5, 6, 8, 9 weeks out, time for another exercise break.

veghead9

Great, thanks. I'll lift as heavy as I can for the 10-12 rep cycles and eat at TDEG, then I'll switch to TDEE for the 4-6 rep cycles. Each cycle lasts about 3 weeks, so this will also give me the opportunity to test my maintenance a bit.... My cut progress has been slooowww - I have only lost about 5 lbs since September with 3-3.5 of that being fat (depending on which bf % calc is used). But, measurements are a little lower and clothes fit a little better, so I supposed achingly slow progress is still progress. And who knows, maybe the scale is being so stubborn because of the physiology of newb lifting gains going on? I would just hate to find out my TDEE is lower than I thought - I'm HUNGRY on this cut, wouldn't want to go lower. (If I was metabolically suppressed, I wouldn't be hungry I would think? This cut level is sure more than my old "I'm stuffed" level, so I have to think I'm doing better there.)

Anyway, thanks again. I truly appreciate your time. I'll report back.

heybales

Still being hungry probably means your body would like to make more improvements from the exercise, but you are going for more weight/fat loss right now.

Noob gains really just mean your body will be willing to burn more fat while making muscle, but weight loss would still match expected.

Since you comment already hungry, you may or may not want to see these figures from calculation below.

But if you have the newer spreadsheet where the Progress tab has a TDEE calc based on actual weight loss on the far right, you might run your averages through there. Now the space given is for only a month, but you have better stats than that. So may have to use it for each month you want to use since September, and note the averages, then get average of the averages.
Besides the fact longer time for stats will mask any bad stats in there, like missed meal logging or such. But you really don't want 0 days or lots of 0 meals, bad rough estimate is better than 0.

Because with that extended time, even if you started a new workout in there, the effects of that have been overshadowed by time, so it doesn't matter. But no new workouts in the last week at least. Or the last week you use as a weigh in.

So if you can get your total eaten over good valid weigh-ins with some number of weeks, and get your avg eaten daily figure, and how much lost over that time, it'll tell you what to adjust in the Activity Calculator to make your TDEE match what your body has been doing.

This should only be done when you are clearly starting on the high side, no need chasing a suppressed metabolism in to the ground.
So as long as you are sure you weren't skipping standing work time or something.
And if it feels like the energy outside the workouts is fine, not lethargic or such. Perhaps wait until your rest week to decide, but use your weigh-in before that starts.

Now, if it had been a lot more than 5 lbs, you'd want to take just 1 month chunks at a time, but since 5 lbs isn't enough to make drastic changes, extended time is already evening that out enough.

And yes, it sounds like you have been much closer to TDEE than you think. That activity calculator is still just an estimator, I tried to use the best research I could find for getting the calorie levels, to get you close.

But real results still trump an estimate.

And then you decide how much deficit to have.

One question, if it really has been a low deficit from a full potential TDEE as it might appear, you should have great progress from the exercise being done, especially since you are doing it so well.
If not good progress and you are lethargic, then the TDEE estimate may have been too small compared to reality, and it should be higher.
Because little workout improvement would imply body didn't have enough calories to do so, especially if lethargic compared to what you could feel like.
Hence my comment waiting until the exercise break to decide if you feel normal or not.

Just something to keep in mind and think about.

veghead9

My energy inboth my workouts and just living life is great. I do sleep like a baby most nights and get a solid 7-8 during the week, maybe more on the weekends. (This is in sharp contrast when I was overcardioing and undereating - I was up at 2 in the morning every night, like clockwork.) I do feel like I'm eating enough to fuel my workouts. Maybe if I was eating more I could be making more gains, but I certainly don't feel like I'm dragging.

One thing I discovered recently (and this is a lesson to everyone reading!) is that you need to weigh everything on a digital scale. If I was making something like quinoa, or measuring out PB, I was using .25 c or 1 T. However, .25 c quinoa in grams was more than 1 serving size, same with 1 level T PB. So while I was weighing produce, where I had the option to use measuring cups and spoons, I think I was undercounting my calories. Therefore in fairness, my deficit really probably was much closer to TDEE up until 2 weeks ago, when I started weighing absolutely everything.

Also, to answer your question, I feel I have made really good strength gains since starting. Certain things like bench press, always my nemesis, not as much. But others, like bicep curls, squats, deadlifts, yes. Definite progress is being made.

So I will re-evaulate the calculation, using the adjustment calc on the Progress tab, after I've had a little bit more valid calorie counting time. It sounds like my TDEE calc is maybe a little off and I'm not in as big of a deficit as I thought. That would make sense, as I feel like I'm more recomping.

This leads to a follow up question - how do I increase my TDEE over time? I would think a bulk cycle would help, eating more than TDEE and adding muscle? And then this makes me wonder if I should continue my cut efforts or go into a small bulk (like 100 cal). I'm about 24.5 - 25% bf and was hoping to get closer to 20% to leave me some room, as I know that with a bulk fat gain is inevitable. Decisions.

heybales

Well, glad you thought of the other reason I didn't mention for actually eating closer to TDEE. That's probably it.

I guess last 2 weeks and 2 more, perhaps putting off the rest week until it's over, will give a good month of stats.

Glad to hear none of the other reasons applied.

You increase TDEE by either gaining more muscle (but a lb extra only burns about 6 cal a day in BMR unless you use it), so really the biggest gain is usually from NEAT, just being more active all day long, walk farther stairs more sitting less.
Or if really short and just want to eat more, lots of cardio needed. But you aren't down at that point at least.

100 cal bulk won't be much of a bulk really, you'd need more than that for it not to be painfully slow.

I'd say just get the BF where you'd like it and then do a serious bulk, at least 250 more daily, which is about 10% more.
You can do that until total weight gain hits a preset point outside water weight (so some weeks at maintenance first), like perhaps 5 lb gain (should take 10 weeks), and then get BF and decide how much needs to be lost in diet.
At that point, probably could lose 2 lbs of fat in 2 weeks no problem with full burning metabolism.
So 3 month cycle in that case. 10 week bulk, 2 cut. Or whatever weeks to cut however much fat you want.