2872: Why Going Off Your Diet Can Actually Help You Lose More Fat

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0:13Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about diet breaks, the science, how they work, and why everybody should do these if they're on a fat loss plan. Also, we have coaches here that can organize this for you. They can put it all together, set you up with your macros, your calories, which includes reverse dieting, which includes diet breaks. It's 50 % off. Right now, go to mindpumpnutrition.com. Use the code POD50, POD50, for the discount. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Seed. This is literally the world's best probiotic.

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1:45Adam Schafer:diet breaks this is the process by which you increase your calories your food intake to take a short break and then get back to your normal diet are they beneficial do they help with fat loss do they help preserve muscle should you have diet breaks or should you just stay consistent on your diet we're going to break down the science and the reasons why we think it's probably a good

2:04Sal Di Stefano:idea let's get to it this is a really good uh topic we um i mean we i think we get this pretty frequent we just had this uh recently um on one of our questions and one of our quads about uh you know should is is three months on a diet too long yeah and um obviously uh context matters and it's a bit nuanced and i think we will talk about all the nuance but generally speaking i think we all agree that uh we wouldn't keep most people on a straight three-month diet yeah yeah so just just

2:37Adam Schafer:kind of break it down a little bit. So a diet break, just to explain it, is not when you go off your diet in the sense that I'm trying to eat in a particular way to lose weight. So that's what we're referring to with a diet. And I just go off and then do whatever and then come back to it. That's not what a diet break is. A diet break is a planned, scheduled, either meal or day or week or weeks where you intentionally get off the diet that you were on, increase your energy intake, so increase your calories and fats, carbs, proteins, whatever, in order to have a better result. Like the idea is to have a better result through this process.

3:20Adam Schafer:And this is a popular strategy with coaches, trainers, especially stage presentation athletes like bodybuilders and physique competitors and bikini competitors they use this uh quite often uh sometimes referred to

3:34Sal Di Stefano:as cheat meals it's been a bit i'm glad you went that way because it's been a bit bastardized into cheat weeks cheat days cheat meals on indulgence and i and i don't i think that what we're trying to communicate and articulate here looks different than that and that's why i like the term diet break over cheat meal or cheat day because i think uh that insinuates that you're going off the rails. We could have whatever you want. And when we would do, you know, strategic diet breaks with clients, it wasn't that it wasn't. I told my client like, oh, here's a diet break. Go eat whatever the hell you wanted.

4:09Sal Di Stefano:It was very strategic. It was very methodical. It was like, okay, for these days, I want you to increase these calories or add this to your diet.

4:18Adam Schafer:Yeah, no. And there's a few benefits to doing this. And by the way, these are backed by studies. There's actual studies on diet breaks versus continual dieting. And does it actually make a difference? Okay. Does it help with more fat loss? Does it help with any of the parameters that we try to measure with these studies? So we'll start one first with what's called metabolic adaptation. So metabolic adaptation is just your, for lack of a better term, it's very complex. It's a term that describes how your metabolism adapts to the new energy intake. Okay, so if my body is burning 3 ,000 calories a day through both exercise activity and just my resting metabolic rate, the amount of calories that I need and energy I need just to maintain myself.

5:04Adam Schafer:If it's 3 ,000 calories a day and I intake 2 ,000 calories a day, so I'm not eating as many calories as my body is burning. Obviously, the goal here is to lose body fat. So my body would find and make up the difference by burning body fat. But what ends up happening over time, and not a long period of time, by the way, is that my body learns how to survive off of 2 ,000 calories. This is called metabolic adaptation. This is a good thing, by the way. We need this. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. Humans wouldn't have survived if our metabolic rates didn't adapt. Now, it's quite complex how this happens, but one of the ways it does this is by paring muscle down.

5:43Adam Schafer:There's also just improving energy efficiency. maybe encouraging less movement. You know, they see this in studies as well. And so metabolic adaptation sucks. You know, you've experienced this. If you've ever been on a diet to lose a certain amount of weight, typically over 10 pounds, you'll see this. So you want to lose 20 pounds, 30 pounds or more. You've probably experienced this where you went on a diet, you increased your activity, you saw some initial weight loss, and then suddenly what you're doing stops working. Now it's like, okay, I want to lose 30 pounds. I've lost 15. I've got 15 more to go.

6:19Adam Schafer:I haven't changed my diet. I'm eating the same amount that I ate to lose the first 15 pounds. But now it's stopped working. What happened? Your metabolism adapted. Here's what the studies show on diet breaks for metabolic adaptation. It seems to reduce this effect. So if I'm on a continual caloric deficit, I have more of a metabolic adaptation where it's going downwards than if I interrupted that period of time, let's say it was two months or three months, with the occasional week of increased calories. And we see this in the data, that the metabolic rate stays higher because your body gets more energy intake at planned periods of time.

7:06Adam Schafer:And this is a good thing. This was, for me, not the number one reason why I did diet breaks. We'll get to my number one reason, but this was probably my number two reason. This was one of the top reasons why I did this with clients is because it helped prevent those plateaus.

7:20Sal Di Stefano:Now, aren't there studies to support too that one of the most beneficial ways too is to actually undulate them throughout even the week, right? Where it's like one day you might have a maintenance or surplus day. Another day you have a stronger deficit. So we've seen studies on that also, right? But your weekly average is always on the deficit.

7:39Adam Schafer:There's not a ton of studies on that. More studies are done on people being on 16 weeks, and every few weeks, they'll have like a week at maintenance. So let's say somebody's eating 1 ,500 calories, which has them lose weight, and they do that for four, five, six weeks. Then they'll do a week of bringing up to what would be called maintenance, let's say 2 ,000 calories. That's typically what the studies look like. And in those studies, now I agree with you, Adam, because that's how I did it with my clients. I did it where I would have more diet breaks or undulating calories throughout the week.

8:11Adam Schafer:but in the studies where they're doing it the way I just described, you have less metabolic adaptation. In other words, to put it plainly, your metabolism doesn't slow down as much. That's a big thing because metabolic adaptation is a really difficult thing to contend with when you're trying to lose especially a substantial amount of weight because it really sucks. It sucks to be in a position to eat so low calories, move a lot, and still have 20 pounds to go, and then you're left with this, like, where do I go from here? Do I double down from here? Do I intensify the amount of calories I burn?

8:43Yeah, it's a pretty tough place to be.

8:44Sal Di Stefano:Well, anybody who's watched a full season of Biggest Loser has seen multiple examples of this. Many times. Follow the studies afterwards. I follow them. Many times you would see some of these competitors show up to their weigh-in and have lost no weight, sometimes even a little bit of a fluctuation up. you know yet they're in a very strict calorie deficit and exercise routine tons of activity and so you know when we think about like well wait a second i thought we just need to be in this calorie deficit to lose weight there's more to it than just that and i think this is an example of that is like where their body is adapting to all the stress that's how that they're putting them through it's like you're training me so hard you're only giving me 1500 calories maybe the first week or two, I saw great results from that.

9:33Sal Di Stefano:But sooner or later, the body starts to stall out and go like, okay, this is too much. I'm going to hold on to everything I can, which is that metabolic adaptation happening. And again, if you've watched the show, you've seen this happen to people. And anybody who's trained enough clients long enough has also seen this firsthand when you're training a client.

9:51Adam Schafer:You will always lose weight in a deficit. But here's the problem. your body closes that deficit by slowing its metabolism down. Okay. So that's what metabolic adaptation is. And the studies support our experience as coaches, which is when you introduce diet breaks, you get less of that metabolic adaptation. Another reason why diet breaks are beneficial is because they contribute to better workout recovery and energy. Here's what sucks when you're in a calorie deficit, your workouts, you're not as strong, you don't have as much energy and you have less. Less nutrients, both macro and micro, but mostly macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, to recover from your workouts.

10:33Adam Schafer:So a workout that might be appropriate suddenly becomes one that over trains you because your calories are so low. And it sucks. It doesn't feel good. So this was, for me, another reason why I like diet breaks is I would see my clients in a deficit four or five weeks in. Their energy isn't great when we're working out. I'm like, all right, here's what we're going to do. For the next two weeks, I'm going to bump your calories. and like clockwork within days their strength goes up they feel better workouts are fun again and everything's moving uh in a better direction from that standpoint well i think this point and

11:02Sal Di Stefano:another one you have to come to come are the reasons that led us to doing the undulating the calories even within the week totally it's because we found that like if i could get a high calorie day for that client like it would not only sustain them for that day but 10 even the next day for their workout it'd be the next two or three days that we went low that they might have it. So at least every week we get a couple of really good workouts versus if I was in a deficit with a client for five weeks, we were just dragging ass. We felt weak. We felt tired. We felt unmotivated to come to the gym. Really tough to like power through that.

11:32Adam Schafer:A hundred percent. And, uh, and here's the other side of it, um, is that when your energy is up, your recovery is better. You actually work out harder and you actually burn more calories. and again, combined with less of the metabolic adaptation, this is a wonderful place to be in comparison to where you could be if you were just in this continual calorie deficit without a break. Third, you keep more muscle. So here's what the data shows, okay? Diet breaks don't necessarily cause more weight loss, but they cause less muscle loss. That's a great thing. Like if you could lose more pure body fat and keep more muscle, that's a big win.

12:15Adam Schafer:Losing muscle is metabolic suicide. Like losing muscle is a great way to get your metabolism to move in a direction that you're not gonna want or like. So, okay. So this is like the big struggle. This is one of the big struggles, right? One of the big challenges with going on a diet is can I do this and lose just fat? Or probably more accurately, can I lose as little muscle as possible? Because it's very difficult not to lose muscle and a calorie deficit. But can I lose almost no muscle or as little muscle as possible. Now, in my experience, if you do this right, you'll lose no muscle. If you're a beginner or new, sometimes we build a little muscle, which is kind of interesting.

12:52Adam Schafer:We had a gentleman that we had on the show recently who was actually a listener who lost a ton of weight, lost very little muscle because he was smart with this and his strength training. We had another gentleman who called in once who used the GLP to lose weight and lost very little muscle. And the data will show a GLP, which really kills your appetite, oftentimes 35 to 40 percent of the weight lost his muscle and i don't know if you guys remember

13:17Sal Di Stefano:that guy i do but he lost no muscle how could i forget his before and after pictures were crazy

13:23Adam Schafer:yes yeah he looked phenomenal so diet breaks in the data um helped quite a bit with muscle

13:29Sal Di Stefano:preservation you have to explain that a little bit deeper too so what's going on when we are in a sustained deficit over time because the the old theory uh or myth that we believed was oh your your body's eating muscle it's burning muscle yeah for energy yeah for energy and it's like that wasn't the case what's happening is what's happening is your body's actually paring it down because it needs to be more efficient and that's a really expensive tissue that's right so so it's

13:55Adam Schafer:not that actually to actually burn muscle for energy really takes you to starve a long time so what's really happening is your body's this is through the the first point which is metabolic adaptation an effective way your body slows its own metabolic rate down is by reducing your muscle mass. It's expensive tissue. It burns a lot of calories at movement. It requires more nutrients than body fat does. So, hey, let's pare this down so that we can become more efficient. We can become a more efficient calorie storing machine, and so you end up losing muscle. Diet breaks. Tell your body, hey, I know we were in a deficit for a little while, but here's some more calories.

14:31Adam Schafer:And you pair that with greater workout recovery and better workouts because now you feel better, and you see better muscle. It's almost like it gives the body

14:40Sal Di Stefano:an excuse to keep that muscle for a little bit longer okay we're gonna be okay like it's necessary yeah yeah here's some here's some extra calories we're not gonna stay in this crazy deficit forever

14:48Adam Schafer:okay i don't have to worry totally now now the fourth point which is my this is the number one reason why i used it because when you're looking at a long-term diet for weight loss the the the definitely fat loss is the challenge like okay we're doing this to lose body fat but the big challenge is consistency can we maintain this afterwards because that's where everybody fails So losing weight's hard. Keeping it off is way harder. And you can see this in the data. So a certain percentage of people lose weight. Almost everybody gains it back afterwards. So what's going on here? Well, what's going on is that people have a tough time staying consistent for a lot of different reasons.

15:24Adam Schafer:And one of the reasons why I like diet breaks is it helps with the mental fatigue of being in a deficit. Being in a deficit means necessarily you're hungrier. Like your body's going to send you a hunger signal. By the way, when people say, oh, don't have any increase in hunger when you go on a diet, like they're lying. Part of being in a deficit is going to be that your appetite's probably going to go up a little bit because your body's sensing it needs more calories, so it's trying to get you motivated to eat more. Diet breaks are great mental fatigue. I mean, if you've been on a calorie deficit for two weeks and then you know, oh, I got a couple days coming up or I can bump my calories by 800, it feels good.

16:04It lifts your spirit. Yeah, because, I mean, otherwise you're walking around cranky all the time. And it's frustrating, too, because, like, it changes the way that you're motivated to get up and move and do things, especially your workout suffer for sure.

16:16Sal Di Stefano:The hardest part about talking about this one, because I agree, too, this is probably the number one reason why I would do it, is how individualized this is. this is where coaching becomes so unique and special to the client is because every client I ever had would determine a different timeframe. Because I'm sure the listener right now is like, okay, cool, diet break. Well, so at what week do you do that? Do you do that week, three weeks in a diet and then you do this or do you do on their tolerance? Yeah. When is it? And it really determines the client and how they feel, the feedback that I'm getting the results that we're seeing.

16:52Sal Di Stefano:I mean, most clients, when they're seeing a difference in the mirror or the scale or strength in the gym, they're very motivated to stay the course of what you're doing. But a lot of times we have weeks where we have this kind of stalled progress where - And then the mental fatigue really, like, why am I doing this? Exactly. Then the mental fatigue will kick in. And even if you know, because like there's times where like, I want to stay in the deficit and I know we just had a rough week, either not the best of sleep or the body kind of stalled a little bit. And it's like, I'd like to push another week of staying in this deficit, but I can feel from my client that they're fatigued from doing this and they're frustrated.

17:27Sal Di Stefano:I'll pull them out, even though I wanted to keep going for another week. And so the opposite is true also in a reverse diet. I'm reverse dieting somebody right now. I want to keep going. Come on, let's keep pushing the calories. If I get this, oh, I feel stuffed and bloated and I don't feel good all the time. It's like, ah, there's a part of it.

17:44Adam Schafer:You can give them a diet break in the