Why You Need a Diet Break
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast with your host and the future leader of The Republic Of Wales, Sveldfjer. Now this might be the only podcast in the world where you actually have to reduce the speed instead of increasing it. However, what I wanna get over to you is that the past is gone. The future doesn't exist. So if you wanna make the most of your life, you've gotta make the most of these moments every single day.
Speaker 1:And this podcast is gonna help you live a healthier, more fulfilled life, hopefully, giving you some wisdom to take away every single day. So I'm going to shut up now so you can get on with listening to the next episode good morning you animals welcome back to another voice note hopefully you're going to learn something today because we've got a very very important topic actually it is the topic of diet breaks. Diet breaks were first introduced kind of by Lyle MacDonald, who we've done a lot of work with in his book, A Guide to Flexible Dieting. So a diet break is basically a short period such as like ten to fourteen days while you go to maintenance but here's the here's the important information you go to maintenance by increasing your carbohydrate carbohydrate carbohydrate intake to up regulate hormones like leptin okay other things we do by going to maintenance is we increase metabolism and energy expenditure to go more carbs, go more energy, we regain some lost strength and muscle and we probably even lose more water weight Okay, that's the purpose of the diet break. Now we're gonna look at a study that was on diet breaks, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 1:But before we get into that, let's talk a bit more about what happens. So research does show, right, the periods of calorie restrictions followed by small diet breaks at maintenance, not just, is not an equal, but better fat loss and more muscle mass actually retained as well, which is the golden egg. We have lost more fat and maintain more muscle. That is the perfect outcome. That is what body recomposition is.
Speaker 1:When people talk about torn in a word I absolutely dislike is what they really want is they wanna reduce body fat, increase muscle mass and this gives a completely different physique, right? Of course it does, like you're dropping fat in your muscle, that's the best thing you can do. But diet breaks are obviously something that people need to start thinking about and implementing, especially this time of year as well when people have been trying to diet for a while for summer. But what happens is leptin is a satiety hormone, so leptin signals to the brain to stop eating and then you've got ghrelin, I'm I'm I'm probably saying that wrong. This is the hunger hormone, ghrelin signals the brain to eat, right?
Speaker 1:So you've got leptin and ghrelin, okay? Short periods at eating and maintenance calories has the potential to reverse some of the negative metabolic adaptions that do occur when you've been in a deficit right. Basically in plain English, it allows your hunger hormones to be restored back to their normal function. So when you keep going in a deficit, what happens is leptin drops right so we don't get that signal to stop eating and ghrelin actually goes up and it's like seeing the body to eat. And obviously as we're in a deficit this is really mentally draining for us And sometimes we just need to like restore the powers of these two hormones back to balance.
Speaker 1:And then obviously it makes dieting a lot easier, right? So the purpose of the study really was to look at a diet, no breaks versus a diet with breaks. The interesting way they did this, right, they did the diet that one diet had no breaks for sixteen weeks and the same total deficit. The other diet was two weeks on the deficit, two weeks of maintenance. So obviously that took double the amount of time, it was thirty weeks.
Speaker 1:So you had sixteen weeks diet every day, every week. Then you had thirty weeks, which was dieting for two weeks, maintenance for two weeks. Same total deficit on both, but one was double the length, right. So that's what they did, and they used people aged 25 to 54 with a BMI classified as obese, weight stable for six months with sedentary activity level. Okay, so less than sixty minutes of structured moderate to vigorous exercise per week.
Speaker 1:So those are the two groups we got, okay. So think about it now the total deficit is the same in both groups so theoretically they should both lose the same amount of fat okay that's what should happen here They're matching, so they had their protein prepared, their meals and everything was prepared by a dietitian and delivered to the participants home so it was controlled very good. The planned macronutrient distribution as well, You know, again, we come back to this all the time. People are scared to eat carbs, but in this study 50 to 60% of their calories came from carbs, 15 to 20% from protein, and 20 to 30% came from fat. Okay.
Speaker 1:Don't be scared of carbs like I said yesterday, don't not be scared of carbs carbs are important right. So here's the results of the study. So despite both groups having the same energy deficit and the same total time spent in an energy deficit, so sixteen weeks flat out versus sixteen weeks but with two week breaks but it took thirty weeks, the group taking two week diet breaks after every two weeks of dieting lost 50% more fat mass compared to the group dieting continuously for sixteen weeks okay the only side, the only pullback is it took thirty weeks to obtain this versus 16 so weight loss was greater intermittent group two weeks on two weeks off they lost 14 kgs of fat the continuous group lost nine kgs okay and the intermittent group had an average to maintain more muscle mass as well. Right, so massively two wins there. Now think about this for a second.
Speaker 1:The slower we go, the better our results. The slower we go, the more permanent our results. The slower we go, the more we get like the rewards for it. The universe rewards us for taking things slow and steady, vistina, lenti, one day at a time. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Speaker 1:Right? Now, what's the you know, is the answer to do two weeks on, two weeks off? Maybe, maybe not there are some pullbacks that I'm going to speak about in a minute, to this but the end result and the conclusion from this study is like you know intermittent diet breaks at maintenance, so your diet then goes to maintenance it just increases the length of time okay. We get better results as well by doing it. The problem is really the mental side of things you get into a diet for two weeks then you go to maintenance.
Speaker 1:Maintenance is known for being one of the toughest parts of the journey. Because you're eating more, you're not seeing progress in those two weeks, you're more susceptible to being like well I'm at maintenance, so I'll just eat a bit more, whatever. You're more likely to slip into other kind of habits and going in and out of different zones. So going into fat loss for two weeks, which isn't a long time, then into maintenance fat loss. Doing that back and forth can for some people be detrimental because they just can't do it.
Speaker 1:They'd rather just do something continuous, get into the rhythm, build the habits. And as we know, it can take between twenty one days to sixty days to build a habit. Whilst it's easy, the habits can be similar to fat loss maintenance tracking and stuff like that. I'm not saying this is for everyone, but what I will say is that if you have been trying to lose weight continuously, now some people go into an automatic maintenance mode and what happens is the body forces you to do so. You either plan it or the body will do it for you.
Speaker 1:Now some members, like I saw a post yesterday, one of our members Crystal, who posted to be like look, she thinks she failed a bit, haven't failed Crystal if you're listening, you definitely haven't failed. You know, she got really lean and then put a bit of weight on now, but still lean, right? What's happening there is that Crystal has been on a phenomenal weight loss journey since last March, lost a hell of a lot of weight. There was bound to be a time the body needed a break, right? Maybe Crystal did do a break a few times, but the case is that the body essentially decides one time or another that it needs a break and it will essentially force you and you will eat more.
Speaker 1:You will not be able to handle the hunger. You will not be satisfied with anything you eat. Your leptin is too low. Your ghrelin is too high. Okay.
Speaker 1:These forces are so powerful within us. And when our chimp mind comes out, it's really hard, And we tend to just give in and then time passes and then our leptin and ghrelin levels restore and then we start feeling some sense of control again and then we go again. So if any of you listening to this and you've been trying to lose weight for a long period of time, please consider a ten day, fourteen day diet break. You must go to maintenance from carbohydrates, okay. So if you're on fat loss now, go to maintenance, you want to increase your carbs, you don't want to increase your protein, you don't want increase your fat, you want to increase your carbs.
Speaker 1:So if you're in the deficit of 500, right, you want to be adding, when you're working some nugs, am I doing a voice or doing math at same time, I used to be a wizard of maths. So you want to be adding 125 grams of carbs to your day to go maintenance, Okay, that's what you need to be doing. And I think the lesson really is, you know, if we do have the time to take this journey slower, which we all do, let's do it, I think we all benefit from so, And the results are going be better as well. So, you know, our methodology turtle is always slow and steady one day at a time. This is just even more proof that it is 100% the best way to go about it.
Speaker 1:If you need help with going to maintenance for two weeks and stuff like that, then we can do it. We will be implementing this system into the app soon as well. So happy days with that. But everyone, thank you for listening. I hope it was helpful.
Speaker 1:I hope it's helpful, I hope it's given you a bit more of an understanding what tends to happen when we do try and diet for too long. It is kind of near impossible to keep dieting flat out, it is really, really hard to fight against those hormones when they do change against us and especially when you add stress in as well, it makes us hungrier. A lot of stuff goes against us, adaptions the body goes to is quite strong so it doesn't mean you're weak, it doesn't mean you're not going to have willpower, just means listen the body needs some time off but that time off doesn't have to be a time of goad, gym food, gaining kilos, it can be a time of maintenance, enjoying more carbs, going for a few walks, getting a few training sessions in and happy days. But everyone go and enjoy your day, but please make the most of It's Friday, it's back holiday weekend coming up. Obviously go and enjoy your heads off, of course.
Speaker 1:Like I always say, no point getting wrecked, but do it. If you're gonna go for drinks, happy days enjoy it. Look, if you're using the app and it's the first week, I've done it, I've been using the app now for like ten or eleven weeks, you forget sometimes what you've eaten on the weekend. But if you've already accounted for the fact that you've got more macros for the weekend because you've lowered it in the week, you've already done the job of giving yourself more leeway in the weekend. So even if you didn't track and you did eat a bit too much in your opinion or whatever, you've already given yourself a bigger buffer regardless.
Speaker 1:You're giving yourself a really good chance now of going through the weekend where, yeah, you can eat a bit more, but it won't be detrimental at all to your progress. But do enjoy yourself, you know, bank holiday weekend is we've got no restrictions. We have another bank holiday weekend with no restrictions since COVID started, think. So make the most of it, go and see your friends, go and have drinks, like enjoy it, enjoy the sun, it's going be out. And don't be too harsh on yourself if you do end up, you know, eating a bit too much or having fewer drinks and not really counting your macros, that's absolutely fine.
Speaker 1:There's sometimes more important things. Mental health is more important than sometimes we need to have that break, that mental health break by just letting go and having no kind of expectations on ourselves. But that's me done guys for this week. Thank you for the kind of speak. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 1:I will see you next week. And that is it for today's episode. So hopefully you took something away from it. If you didn't, here's what you need to take away. Stop wasting time on social media.
Speaker 1:Stop wasting time gossiping. You've only got a day to live. Today's the only day you ever have. So if there's anything to take away from this podcast, even if you can't understand the word I say, even if you didn't resonate with the wisdom I try to deliver, this is a reminder of you daily to live one day at a time. Give your moments meaning today and don't be fooled by thinking you've got unlimited amount of days, but if you can make the most of today, I'm telling you, you'll have a fulfilled life.
Speaker 1:So enjoy your day and hopefully I'll see you back tomorrow. Give your moments meaning today and don't be fooled by thinking you've got unlimited amount of days. But if you can make the most of today, I'm telling you, you'll have a fulfilled life. So enjoy your day and hopefully I'll see you back tomorrow.
