Cheat Days Are Dead

Maybe the best thing for your diet is...to not diet. This article breaks down why downing a huge burger and pint of ice cream may not be the best strategy for losing weight.

Ironically, the best thing for your diet may be…..to not diet. No, I do not mean that eating whatever the hell you want will magically please your body and the weight loss gods and it will let go of that stubborn fat. What I mean is taking a break from your diet (short or long term) could actually help your diet, if done correctly.

A diet break is exactly what it sounds like, a break from your diet. The caveat? This has to be intentional and programed properly to optimize its benefits. With prolonged dieting a phenomenon called “adaptive thermogenesis” takes place. This is the bodies attempt to return to homeostasis and combat the stress of weight loss.

"Ironically, the best thing for your diet may be…..to not diet."

So what do diet breaks and adaptive thermogenesis have to do with each other? Well, research supports that intentional breaks in your diet can help combat the negative effects of adaptive thermogenesis. It, essentially, is a short period programmed into your diet to allow your body to readjust and rebound from prolonged dieting.

So what constitutes a diet break? There are two ways to look at a diet break: short term and long term diet breaks. For the sake of this article we will refer to short term (<5 days) as a refeed (which is the most common language associated with this) and long term (>5 days) will be referred to as a diet break.

Let’s look at refeeds. The days of a triple cheesy bypass burger with a large fry and coke topped off with a pint of ice cream may be over. In the past, a “cheat meal” or “cheat day” was glorified and a staple of most diets. And all though it has practical application, it is not optimal. What I mean is, a cheat meal or day isn’t wrong, but it may not be the best strategy.

The idea of cheat meals was that it would “stoke” that metabolic fire and keep your metabolism up to allow you to continue to lose fat. The sciency version, it could help increase leptin levels and potentially keep adaptive thermogenesis at bay. Although it did this to a degree, it probably had more psychological benefits then physiological. Knowing you had a cheeseburger and fries wanting on you Saturday you could endure the suckiness of your diet during the week.

Plenty of research has shown that after excessive or prolonged dieting that short 24-48 hour refeeds do not combat the negative effect of adaptive thermogenesis, at least not in any significant manner (Peos et al. 2019). Other studies even show that increased in calories for extended period (>5-8 weeks) was not enough to bring hormone levels back to baseline.

So when it comes to a refeed, stuffing your face with as many calories as possible is probably not the avenue you want to take. Instead a return to maintenance calories for an extended period of time 3-5 days may be more beneficial. As stated in Intermittent Dieting: Theoretical Considerations for the Athlete (Peos et al. 2019), “the evidence suggests that not just the magnitude of energy intake but also the time spent within [maintenance calories] is important in achieving the reversal of some of the adaptive responses associated with energy restriction.”

"In the past, a “cheat meal” or “cheat day” was glorified and a staple of most diets. And all though it has practical application, it is not optimal"

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Next, diet breaks. These differ from refeeds in, mainly, duration. Although, due to the longer duration you may decide to do less calories than a shorter refeed. Similar to a refeed, a diet break just consists of an extended period of returning back to your maintenance calories. The research on this is pretty interesting. Take a look!

The most well-known study looking at extended diet breaks is the MATADOR study. Unfortunately, this study has nothing to do with bulls or men dressed in fancy clothes with swords. In this study MATADOR is an acronym for Minimizing Adaptive Thermogenesis And Deactivating Obesity Rebound.

Researchers had two groups (19 in the control and 17 in the intervention group) both undergo 16 weeks worth of dieting. This is considered a longer period of dieting, one associated with adaptive thermogenesis. What differentiated the intervention group was that it underwent “intermittent energy restriction”. Essentially, for every two weeks of dieting they had two weeks at maintenance calories. This came out to 8 x 2 week diets and 7 x 2 week “non diet” or 30 weeks total.

So I’m sure you’ve already realized the caveat. The intervention group didn’t achieve the weight loss for twice as long. Although no one wants to prolong their diet, one must understand they were only calorie restricted for 16 weeks, same as the control group. The results are pretty interesting.

Most importantly, BOTH groups lost weight, but the intervention with diet break lost 47% more weight. There was still greater fat loss 6 month post diet follow up! The study also showed that after the diet, once results were adjusted for weight loss, the intervention group had less of a decrease in resting energy expenditure. This means the diet was less harmful on their metabolism.

Often not included in many studies investigating weight loss strategies is what happens after the diet. Both groups regained weight after the study, but after a 6-month follow up the weight loss was over 16 pounds more in the interventions group. The underlying reason for this is most likely due to the higher resting metabolic rate after the diet. Once both group returned to eating more “regular”, I am sure they consumed more than the 33% calorie reduction from the diet. But since the intervention group had a smaller drop in resting metabolic rate they did not have as great of a rebound. Diet breaks are still a relatively new strategy and one that warrants more research, but the current research is promising.

"Most importantly, BOTH groups lost weight, but the intervention with diet break lost 47% more weight."

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So, how do we implement these refeeds and diet breaks into our diet? That’s a question varies and may require answering of a few other question to get the answer.

Why are you implementing this?

- Remember, a refeeds isn’t implemented so you can stuff your face. It needs a purpose

How much weight do you have to lose?

- Whether you are lean or obese will factor in your frequency of diet breaks or refeeds

How long have you been dieting?

- The body can handle 4 weeks of dieting better than 20 weeks.

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We’ll start with some “rule of thumb” consideration then go over some other case to case considerations.

REFEEDS

Frequency: Every 10-14 days

Duration: 2-3 days

Application:

Refeeds should mostly come from a manipulation of your macronutrients. Meaning you don’t need to raise your calories more than 10% but instead, decrease your fats and protein and increase your carbs. The belief is that carbohydrates have a greater effect on leptin levels.

Example:

After dieting for 12 days at 2,000 calories (about 70g fat, 190g carbs, and 150g protein) you start feeling sluggish, your gym performance is suffering, you feel drained, and all around beat up. You would simply increase calorie intake to 2,200 calories but your macros would look more along the lines of 40g fat, 360g carb and 150g protein. Implementing these calories for 3 days will allow help combat any adaptive thermogenesis. During these three days it would be best to increase training volume.

Considerations:

- If you are implementing diet breaks often enough, refeeds may not be needed.

- The more fat mass you have the less often you will need to have a refeed. Vice versa, when you become leaner (bodybuilding prep) you may find you need refeeds more often.

- Similar to the amount of fat you have to lose, you may not need frequent refeeds at the beginning of a diet.

- If you are trying to get very lean, your latter refeeds may not need to increase calories but just manipulate macros to increase carbs.

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DIET BREAKS

Frequency: Every 2-3 weeks

Duration: 1-2 weeks

Application:

A diet break is just that, a break from your diet. You will simply spend the duration of the diet break back at your maintenance calories. Please understand, after fat loss has been achieved your maintenance calories will not be the same. In the MATADOR study, they reassessed resting energy expenditure every four weeks to be able to adjust the diet accordingly. Essentially, your last diet break will not be at the same calorie intake as your first diet break.

Example:

After dieting for 3 weeks at 2,000 calories (about 70g fat, 190g carbs, and 150g protein) you start feeling sluggish, your gym performance is suffering, you feel drained, and all around beat up. You want to implement a diet break to help combat adaptive thermogenesis. You increase your calories back to maintenance intake: 2,800 calories (90g fat, 400g carbs, and 150g protein). You follow this for 1 week then go back to your 2,000 calorie diet.

Consideration:

- As you read about in the MATADOR study, diet breaks are the tortoise way of dieting (I don’t mean this negatively). Slow and steady wins the race.

- If you are implementing refeeds often enough you don’t need diet breaks

- Your refeeds may turn into diet breaks. As your duration of dieting and weight loss increases, you may extend your refeeds from 3-5 days into 7-10 days.

- Since diet breaks are longer term you need to make sure you adjust your maintenance calories accordingly. I.e. if you’ve you lost 35lbs your diet break should not be at the same calorie intake as when you had lost 10 pounds. Decrease body mass means decrease resting energy expenditure means decrease maintenance calories.

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Refeeds and diet breaks are tools for your arsenal that must be used properly. After weeks of intensive exercise, a deload week is a very effective tool to increasing performance and recovering allowing someone to continue to train hard and continue to improve. This deload week is not a pass to sit on the couch and do nothing for a week. It’s an intentional decrease in training to allow your body to recover.

Similarly, refeeds and diet breaks are not meant to pig out and eat whatever you want. They are strategic decisions to increase your calories slightly to allow your body to recover so you can continue to improve and lose more weight.

The most optimal strategy of dieting is a marathon and not a sprint. Implementing short periods of increased calories can help keep your body healthy and effective at losing weight during a long diet.