Do you take diet breaks?

Galapagosfit

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I'm curious about that. On this forum, they're a lot of peoples 100+ pounds overweight and will need to diet for more than a year. Some are still dieting for several months to be at their best physique. Do you take diet breaks? Is it a necessary thing ? is it more like a psychological tool? Do you think the metabolism will slow down at a critical point if you are starving yourself for months ?

I already ask those questions to Ai but i'm curious about your common knowledge on the subject and experiences with it. For me it's seems like the GLPs take out the need for a psychological effect of a break. And I think that going to the gym and taking care of your muscles will be more efficient to preserve metabolism than a diet break.
 
Galapagosfit said:
I'm curious about that. On this forum, they're a lot of peoples 100+ pounds overweight and will need to diet for more than a year. Some are still dieting for several months to be at their best physique. Do you take diet breaks? Is it a necessary thing ? is it more like a psychological tool? Do you think the metabolism will slow down at a critical point if you are starving yourself for months ?

I already ask those questions to Ai but i'm curious about your common knowledge on the subject and experiences with it. For me it's seems like the GLPs take out the need for a psychological effect of a break. And I think that going to the gym and taking care of your muscles will be more efficient to preserve metabolism than a diet break.
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Yes.

First of all diet fatigue is a thing (its part of your overall stress level).
Second. It's good to find your new maintenance weight so you can 'recalibrate'.
Just don't go on a frenzy.

Note of caution: You will notice a quick increase in weight in the first couple of days. This is mostly glycogen, water, etc. Don't freak out. You'll lose these as soon as you continue dieting.

To quote some wise words of an old Sith lord:
demanding do it GIF
 
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Galapagosfit said:
I'm curious about that. On this forum, they're a lot of peoples 100+ pounds overweight and will need to diet for more than a year. Some are still dieting for several months to be at their best physique. Do you take diet breaks? Is it a necessary thing ? is it more like a psychological tool? Do you think the metabolism will slow down at a critical point if you are starving yourself for months ?

I already ask those questions to Ai but i'm curious about your common knowledge on the subject and experiences with it. For me it's seems like the GLPs take out the need for a psychological effect of a break. And I think that going to the gym and taking care of your muscles will be more efficient to preserve metabolism than a diet break.
Click to expand...

Restrictive diets for caloric control have poor adherence for the general massive masses.

In general, I don’t “diet” now, I eat basically what I want in smaller portions. Smaller portions don’t require much effort. If anything most of the effort usually comes from trying to figure out not ordering too much… although if I get bored or don’t like it, am full, whatever, I have way less compunction stopping/throwing it away.

Example, sushi for lunch with my daughter, I used to order 6 spicy salmon rolls (3 rolls is a lunch special). She wanted spicy salmon also. I ordered her one, me three. That day three ended up being more than I wanted, so next time I ordered two for me.

Gluttony is much less of an issue these days, which is wonderful.
 
Galapagosfit said:
I'm curious about that. On this forum, they're a lot of peoples 100+ pounds overweight and will need to diet for more than a year. Some are still dieting for several months to be at their best physique. Do you take diet breaks? Is it a necessary thing ? is it more like a psychological tool? Do you think the metabolism will slow down at a critical point if you are starving yourself for months ?

I already ask those questions to Ai but i'm curious about your common knowledge on the subject and experiences with it. For me it's seems like the GLPs take out the need for a psychological effect of a break. And I think that going to the gym and taking care of your muscles will be more efficient to preserve metabolism than a diet break.
Click to expand...
It depends, while on Reta its hard to want to eat anything let alone something to cheat with. If I do cheat and eat something outside of my normal keto-esque diet, I still make sure to count the calories and make sure it isn't TOO TOO unhealthy. Things like sushi I will give myself an out for, but I won't eat things like mozzarella sticks if that makes sense. The feel good benefits for sticking to the diet and eating right outweigh the momentary taste gratification most of the time with most all non-diet foods. Its not worth it to feel sick because I ate something I knew I shouldn't like fast food.
 
No. I'm on Tirz and anything I can think to "cheat" on I can actually just have, so there's no reward for cheating or declaring a day off. Also just don't have any desire to gorge on anything, the idea is repulsive now that Tirz makes even a small meal filling.

As for "diet fatigue" I quit thinking of this as a diet after about a month. It literally changed what I think of as a normal portion of food, about what fuel my body needs and wants. Dieting is HARD, it's white knuckle bullshit and this is just.....eating. What I want. Not too much. Like a normal person.
 
in my experience, 'cheat' days were used by people for several reasons. One is long-term diet adherence, to minimize cravings. But I think the more prevalent reason is to prevent our body from going into starvation mode, where the body's endocrine signaling would revert to preserving fats as much as possible.

I guess it would make the cheat aka break a way to 'trick' the body into allowing the fat loss to continue.

But now that we have GLP's, we are already disrupting the old metabolic corruption and using the hormone control GLP-1's enable. so I dont see why we need cheat days or breaks anymore.

1 exception I can think of is in bulking phases where we want to prevent protein conversion to glucose.
 
I used to do that before I started taking reta, I would take 2+ week breaks every time I would hit a plateau but it never worked. I would just end up gaining weight and then I would end up at the same place I was before. Maybe I just didn't do it for long enough or I just ate too many calories, idk.
 
I accidentally took one in February and most of March. It was definitely a diet break and not "I felt reasonably skinny and the desire to be thinner didn't outweigh the desire for pancakes."
 
Sasquatch said:
Like a "Cheat day" or a month off?
I don't need cheat days. I took a month off and still paying for it a month later. So. . . .. .
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I'm talking more about controlled break. Like going at maintenance calories for 2 weeks or a month.

But yeah i have the same experience of yours that in the past if i ''cheat'' it's hard to stop cheating and it's just putting on fat for several weeks and it's taking a long time to recover. Reta very help me with having normal behaviour about food. My parents taught me NEVER to waste food on my plate. It has been a learning process to 'stop when you're no longer hungry.'

I have this mentality now that just eat what you want but reasonably. I eat clean but if I want a ice cream blizzard at dairy queen, i will take a small size and eat a smaller plate for supper. That's it. I don't go ALL IN on cheat anymore. Not worth feeling like crap and messing with my sleep.

I know lot of people dont like the concept of calories but when I count calories and I have 200 calories left to my day, i'm happy to eat that chocolate bar and don'T feel guilty about it. I can enjoy a threat even if i'm on a ''diet'' .
 
DrPEPr said:
Yes.

First of all diet fatigue is a thing (its part of your overall stress level).
Second. It's good to find your new maintenance weight so you can 'recalibrate'.
Just don't go on a frenzy.
Click to expand...
I'm thinking about it these days, i'm pretty lean now, the leanest I have been all my life. I'm very close to my goal weight. is it better to recalibrate and find the new maintenance or direct try to achieve the goal weight? ( I have like 5 to 10 pounds to lose to be at 10% bf) At these level, reteining muscle is a bit harder and stress level are higher :/

5 to 10 pounds can still take 1 to 3 months to achieve.
 
With glps making me sick if i eat too much fried foods or fatty foods. Me never drinking. And reta making me caffiene sensitive. Even when i do a cheat day its just more of the healthier food im accustomed too. I think eating intuitively for fullness on those days are my best bet. But if you have bingeing tendencies id be careful by tracking a calorie and macro surplus versus a deficit.
 
Galapagosfit said:
I'm curious about that. On this forum, they're a lot of peoples 100+ pounds overweight and will need to diet for more than a year. Some are still dieting for several months to be at their best physique. Do you take diet breaks? Is it a necessary thing ? is it more like a psychological tool? Do you think the metabolism will slow down at a critical point if you are starving yourself for months ?

I already ask those questions to Ai but i'm curious about your common knowledge on the subject and experiences with it. For me it's seems like the GLPs take out the need for a psychological effect of a break. And I think that going to the gym and taking care of your muscles will be more efficient to preserve metabolism than a diet break.
Click to expand...
Every Sunday I eat dessert and that's either pie and ice cream or cobbler and ice cream. That's my cheat. Very rarely do I have a cheat meal. My stomach has become too sensitive for anything fried or spicy except gumbo. So I stay on the same meal plan so I don't get sick.

My coveted southern meals would damn near kill me.
 
Evidently my stomach must be between one and two measuring cups capacity. Because I don't care how high the calories, I really can't eat anything bigger than a cup full.
Mash a cup full of glazed donuts. What you spose the calories? But I can't hack anything greezy anyway. Maybe a few potato chips? They don't even sound good.
 
Galapagosfit said:
I'm curious about that. On this forum, they're a lot of peoples 100+ pounds overweight and will need to diet for more than a year. Some are still dieting for several months to be at their best physique. Do you take diet breaks? Is it a necessary thing ? is it more like a psychological tool? Do you think the metabolism will slow down at a critical point if you are starving yourself for months ?
Click to expand...

Over the past 17 months, I've lost 118 pounds and have about 12 more to go. After that kind of sustained effort, I'll admit I'm starting to feel the fatigue, so I understand exactly what you're getting at.

I have taken diet breaks along the way, though nothing extended, so no weeks or months off. My breaks are more informal: weekends where I loosen the reins a bit, sometimes perhaps more than I should. I actually think there's value in that. Periodically increasing calories seems to signal to the body that it isn't in a prolonged deficit, and beyond the physiological benefit, the mental reset matters just as much.

The one thing I've never done is pause the tirzepatide. Even during vacations or work travel, when my diet is less than ideal, I stay on the medication consistently. Stopping it, even temporarily, would be a serious setback.
 
Galapagosfit said:
I'm thinking about it these days, i'm pretty lean now, the leanest I have been all my life. I'm very close to my goal weight. is it better to recalibrate and find the new maintenance or direct try to achieve the goal weight? ( I have like 5 to 10 pounds to lose to be at 10% bf) At these level, reteining muscle is a bit harder and stress level are higher :/

5 to 10 pounds can still take 1 to 3 months to achieve.
Click to expand...
I'd say just do it man.
You'll feel a lot better.
 
Before taking reta, I lost right around 90 pounds. I found myself taking breaks mainly during a plateau for 1-2 weeks. It felt more like a recalibration of sorts, I wasn't stressing so much about not seeing the scale go down for a week or two. I looked at it as a means to prep for an even bigger grind to cut.
 
I no longer "diet" anything. I just eat really good foods, mainly whole foods. If I want some steak and potato, fine, I don't even skimp on the butter (never margarine)...the only thing I really pay attention to when I eat like this is to prioritize protein.

Occasionally I go out to eat and maybe I eat something I normally don't, I don't call it a "cheat" day because I don't diet...
 
I think that unless you are stopping the GLP drugs for the break period then you are using them wrong. If it continues to take conscious effort to restrict and control calorie intake while on GLP drugs, then as far as I see it, then you are just on a normal low calorie diet, with a bit of help from an inadequate dose of GLP drug.

The reason it matters is that what is needed is weight loss with long term maintenance of that loss, and relying on conscious effort to control food intake is not really a strategy that works long term, it does work short term, but in the longer term cognitive fatigue or real life gets in the way and people then tend to regain the weight. Assuming the weight is lost without requiring constant cognitive effort, the weight loss should be sustainable long term, assuming you stay on the GLP drug at the dose that works. Mental effort to restrict the types of food you eat rather than quantity might be a more sustainable approach.

I think it is inadequately studied, but my guess is that metabolic adaptation to long term calorie input is primarily determined by amount of weight lost and time, and most likely operates over long time scales, like 3 to 6 or even more months, so that brief days to 4 week periods of increased calorie input are probably not enough to reset to any substantial degree the the lowered energy expenditure from long term low calorie input. In my experience dramatic drops in energy expenditure or rates of weight loss took about 6 to 9 months to become measurable, losing 6kg per month in that time, then it slowed down on the same calorie input.

And stopping and restarting GLP drugs especially if weight is regained in that time might be a bad idea, given a recent study on mice doing exactly that, where total weight loss was much lower in the stop start group.
 
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