Should we take a break from eating at deficit?

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Replies

  • momar23
    momar23 Posts: 292 Member
    jemhh wrote: »
    When losing, I take maintenance breaks when I start to feel super hungry all the time. I believe that they are good for me, both psychologically and physiologically. I still exercise as usual and log. I just eat at maintenance. Here are a couple of articles about them:

    Diet breaks
    * http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-full-diet-break.html/
    * http://strengthunbound.com/when-to-take-a-diet-break/

    Good articles I had seen one not the other. Based on these I am not really in diet break territory.
    I had seen some ppl saying that you should take them every three months and lots of comments about boosting metabolism. My metabolism seems to be fine.
    I still have 27lbs to go to healthy bmi so I will save the break until I need it or maybe take it over the Christmas holidays. I guess my occasional maintenance days are acting as the psychological breaks I need. I feel pretty motivated right now so I kind of feel like I should just go with that.
    Lots of great info that will come in handy later!
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    momar23 wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    When losing, I take maintenance breaks when I start to feel super hungry all the time. I believe that they are good for me, both psychologically and physiologically. I still exercise as usual and log. I just eat at maintenance. Here are a couple of articles about them:

    Diet breaks
    * http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-full-diet-break.html/
    * http://strengthunbound.com/when-to-take-a-diet-break/

    Good articles I had seen one not the other. Based on these I am not really in diet break territory.
    I had seen some ppl saying that you should take them every three months and lots of comments about boosting metabolism. My metabolism seems to be fine.
    I still have 27lbs to go to healthy bmi so I will save the break until I need it or maybe take it over the Christmas holidays. I guess my occasional maintenance days are acting as the psychological breaks I need. I feel pretty motivated right now so I kind of feel like I should just go with that.
    Lots of great info that will come in handy later!

    I generally do not plan my breaks ahead of time. I'm cutting from now until November 21 and I'm assuming that I'll need a week break at some point but I'll decide to do it when I feel I need it rather than planning it for a specific week. If you feel good right now, I think you're fine. Your maintenance days are a good thing--I eat at maintenance once a week and find that it helps me keep on track the rest of the week. Good work so far!
  • peterjens
    peterjens Posts: 235 Member
    I started to wonder about the difference between what many MFPers call a "cheat" day and diet break as prescribed by vismal above. I used 1700 calories/day for cutting and 2200 calories/day for cheating (maintaining).

    If I cheat 1 day out of 7, that is 1/7 or 14.3% of the time (a window of 7 days) I am maintaining.

    Now if I cut for 56 days (8 weeks) and maintain for 14 days (2 weeks), as per vismal, (a window of 70 days), I end up maintaining (cheating) 20% of the time - 14/70.

    And if my math is correct, I have to enlarge my window to 98 days to be able to maintain for 2 weeks 14/98=14.3%

    So my knee jerk conclusion is - if I want to cheat (maintain) one day a week, I am actually cheating less than if I took a diet break of 2 weeks after 8 weeks of cutting.

    Lastly, just in case my math is wrong, I'll need to find out the calories in a slice of humble pie.
  • XavierNusum
    XavierNusum Posts: 720 Member
    msf74 wrote: »
    I'm a fan of diet breaks as a concept myself.

    It seems weird that many people would accept the concept of periodisation in training but not in dieting for some reason.

    All dieting, no matter how mild, imposes stress on the body. Stress accumulates and builds over time. A diet break is like a valve which releases the pressure (both mentally and physically), allows accumulated stress to disperse, and generally leaves a person more focused to deal with the next block of dieting.

    This is the strategy I use as well. Which is pretty common amoung all kinds of athletes and many other fitness sports. They will cycle through bulking, maintenance and cutting phases.
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