Tuesday Tip: Do diet breaks work? 🤔
Diet breaks are quite a common thing for people to encourage and are often purported to ‘reset’ your metabolism and therefore increase fat loss long term. But do they work?
A diet break is a strategy in which you take planned breaks from a calorie-restricted diet, during which you consume calories roughly equivalent to your maintenance level (so it’s not a free for all to eat as much as possible).
This temporary pause from the calorie deficit provides a psychological and potentially physiological relief, allowing individuals to experience a break from the rigors of continuous energy restriction.
Studies have looked at the impact of diet breaks on both body composition and metabolic adaptation. The findings show that although the diet breaks did result in an increase in resting metabolic rate it was less than 100 calories a day and temporary. So in real terms they have very little impact on your metabolism and very little impact on fat loss. That doesn’t negate the fact that they may provide psychological relief of course.
So what does this mean? Diet breaks are fine if they help you and make it easier for you to stick to your diet long term. However they won’t have a significant impact on your metabolism or boost fat loss. In addition you have to ensure you are still tracking calories and only going up to maintenance calories on such a break otherwise you will actually end up putting fat back on.
Happy Tuesday 🤗xx
Every Step Fitness 