Intermittent dieting

Personally this wouldn't work for me as I like to be either completely healthy, or not healthy at all there is no point in this for me, as it would be two steps forward & one step back. It's all in the mentality. Saying that everyone is different.. right?

Other than it being hard to keep track of, why not? The tendency to eat more than maintenance during the 100% weeks might be strong and the 67% weeks might be miserable. You'd have to try it to find out if it would work for you. I wouldn't try alternating 67% weeks with non-logging weeks without first making sure you aren't just eating back any deficit with 133% weeks!

As to the health issues, unless you are very sensitive to blood sugar swings, etc., and watch your vitamin/nutrient intake, it shouldn't hurt you. That means you can't do this if your 67% weeks would be too low calorie to get the nutrients you need.

Let's do a little arithmetic.

Let's say your TDEE is 1500 calories/day. Using your plan, you'd eat 1500 calories/day in your high weeks and 1000 calories/day in your low weeks for an average of 1250 calories/day which is pretty low but not dangerously so.

If your TDEE is 1200 calories/day and you are contemplating eating only 800 calories/day in your low weeks for an averyage of 1000 calories, well, then you are getting to where it would be hard to get sufficient nutrients to stay healthy.

Instead, let's say your TDEE is a generous 2400 calories/day and you are planning to eat only 1600 calories/day during the low weeks for an average of 2000 calories a day. Doable but it might be hard to maintain without feeling awfully deprived on the lower weeks.

Note that the projected speed of weight loss varies a good deal based on your initial TDEE. In the first example, the average daily deficit is 250 calories or a speed of half-a-pound/week. In the second example, the average deficit is 200 calories or less than half-a-pound per week. In the third example, the average deficit is 400 calorie/day or about 1 pound every 8 or 9 days.

HelenWater wrote: »

I have a TDEE of about 2,500 Calories, but I need to lose a lot of weight. The idea of having diet breaks appeals to me as I would otherwise need to restrict my diet for over a year if I lost two pound (1kg) per week.

If it appeals to you ... do it. After you've done it for one cycle (4 weeks) you can then decide if it's something you want to repeat for the next 4-weeks ,,, and just go month by month with it.

I think it makes sense for a lot of reasons:

1) You get to practice eating at maintenance throughout the process.

2) Your maintenance weeks will allow you to enjoy foods you like and fit them in more easily.

3) By nature it will take longer than if you restricted for weeks at a time at that low rate. I see that a lot here and it seldom sticks long term.

4) You seem well informed about the plan and appear to have realistic expectations. Your attitude and sensibility about it suggests it's doable.

5) You can always switch up your plan anytime it stops working or you just aren't enjoying it anymore.

Sounds like a solid plan. I say go for it and see what happens. Check back in and let us know how it's going.

I'm interested in this approach. I lost weight cutting consistently then moved countries and it was easy to eat too much in the new place. So now that has happened to me again and I have tried harder to only eat at maintenance for the last four weeks - so at least I haven't put on weight back on as last time. I think this approach will allow me less lost progress in those weeks where I am stressed as my workload changes a lot week to week. As one commenter says, practising eating at maintenance is also an interesting idea as it's very easy to say, I'm not dieting anymore and then eat way above maintenance and sabotage all your hard work!! This way it's not just dieting time that makes you cautious of what goes in; it's all the time, in preparation for after the weight is lost. I think it seems sensible (and directly searched intermittent dieting) so I will try this too, I think.