The Diet Break: How to Eat More Food & Lose More Weight
In this week's issue, I'm going to break down one of the most successful & unique methods we use in our program, to keep our clients getting great results.
If you've tried to lose weight before, then I’m sure you went on a diet. Maybe keto, or fasting, or a cleanse.
Whatever the case, more likely than not; the diet was relatively restrictive. And the longer you did it, the more weight you lost.
Until the weight just stopped. You hit a wall. Weight loss stalled, energy was depleted & you didn’t look how you’d expected to look after losing all that weight.
Today, I’m going to break down why this happened, and why understanding what a diet break is & how to use it, will get you in the best shape ever.
Let's dive in.
So here’s what happens when you’re on a fairly restrictive diet for 2+ months (or an extremely restrictive diet for 2+ weeks. )
Metabolic Adaptation:
This is the process of your body trying to regulate it’s energy due to match the low amount of food you’re giving it. It will do this FIRST, by shedding the most energy consuming tissue from your body: muscle.
This is why after a long time on a diet, you feel sluggish & “skinny fat”. Yeah, you lost 30lbs in 50 days, but maybe 15lbs of it was muscle, 10 of it was water, and only 5 of it was body fat.
Restrictive diets & diets that are drastically underneath your bodies caloric needs, will throttle your metabolism.
This means that now, you can eat SMALL amounts of food, and still not lose any weight, because your body has decided not to expend any more energy than is necessary. And to hold onto all excess body fat you have for survival.
This is where you start to feel hopeless. You eat once a day, go walking, drink only water, and you STILL can’t lose weight.
My client Charity had this same struggle, but once we started implementing diet breaks, she lost 30lbs over a 4 month time frame:
This is exactly where you SHOULD implement a diet break.
The Diet Break:
A diet break is a period of time where instead of eating a lower amount of calories to lose weight, you eat just enough to maintain your CURRENT bodyweight.
This helps you do 3 things:
get more carbs in so you can increase energy levels & metabolism
bring metabolism back up to normal levels
psychological boost due to being able to eat a little more food
keep your hunger hormones operating (after a long time on restrictive diets, your body will just stop telling you to eat, because you don’t listen
Here’s an EASY way to implement a diet break so you can get your metabolism up & start hitting your goals:
Eat to your hunger and don’t count (or worry about) your macro & calorie targets, but don’t purposefully binge eat.
Keep your regular meal times.
Keep on training. You may make some strength gains, given the higher calorie intake. Enjoy it.
You will gain some weight this way, but the majority of it will not be fat.
WHY THE MAJORITY OF THE WEIGHT GAIN WILL NOT BE FAT
It takes a 3500 calorie surplus to gain 1 lb of fat.
If you are losing 1 lb of fat loss per week, you have a 500 kcal daily deficit.
Even if we assume you eat a whopping 1500 kcal more each day (1000 calories in excess of maintenance), this will lead to a 7000 kcal surplus for a week, which is 2 lbs of fat gain (if it were all stored as fat).
This is unlikely because you will subconsciously eat less after the first few days.
The majority of the weight you gain, if any, will be due to just having more food in the gut, and more glycogen in the muscles & liver.
RECOMMENDATIONS ON DIET-BREAK LENGTH AND FREQUENCY
You should take a break from your diet, every 4-6 weeks.
Your break should last anywhere from 7-14 days. The goal is to regain some energy, keep hormones balanced & make sure your body doesn’t throttle your metabolism.
After the 1-2 weeks, you’ll go back into your diet & continue to lose weight!
The truth is, so many of us want instant gratification when it comes to weight loss. Which is why the detoxes & teas & crazy diets are so popular. We get addicted to losing 2lbs a day. And if it moves slower than that we get upset.
You have to ditch that mindset if you want to lose weight long term and KEEP IT OFF (The most important thing)
Adding this diet break tool to your arsenal will help you stay in it for the long run, and actually enjoy the process of getting healthy.
My client Dean lost 100lbs over 14 months, and we took 5 diet breaks over that time frame.
When you’re ready, here’s how we can help you:
The Lean Body 8 Week Challenge for Men: This program is designed to help men sculpt their chest, shoulders, back & abs, while shedding 8-16lbs of unwanted body fat.
The Toned & Tight 8 Week Challenge for Women: This program is designed to help women melt 8-16lbs of stubborn fat, tone up their glutes, arms, back & midsection, all while improving energy & strength.
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