The following is the second installment in a series of posts revolving around what makes a diet sustainable enough to be the primary driver for a successful fat loss phase. No matter the goal body weight or body fat percentage, you’ll never find yourself arriving there if you can’t adhere to long-term diet modifications that coincide with that goal. Though there are several different ways to manipulate the variables necessary to create a caloric deficit that burns fat and spares muscle, I believe that the methodology laid out in this series is helpful in creating a logical progression for a diet that is effective without causing you to be miserable and quit soon after starting.
Disclaimer: The following dietary recommendations are not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for any kind of medical treatment or an alternative to medical advice. Use of the following dietary recommendations is herein at the sole choice and risk of the reader.
Diet Fatigue
Normally when I’m discussing fatigue in the context of training, it’s in reference to the cumulative amount of physiological stress that is accrued over a training session, week, mesocycle, etc. Following a diet that prompts a linear decrease in body weight can eventually begin to pour into this fatigue and increase its donation the longer the diet lasts and the lower the calories go.
Eventually, most will be faced with the reality of having to alter their training in order to accommodate this diminished capacity for recovery. This is true for anyone on the training spectrum. An underfed high school football player will not be able to train and perform as well as if he was adequately fed. Likewise, the heaviest and hardest training that a pro bodybuilder will ever do is in the offseason when he is in a sizable caloric surplus, not when he is dieting down to extremely low body fat levels for a contest.
Of course this also brings up the issue of injury risk, which I won’t get into here, not to mention the waste of time on straight-up inefficient training (talking to you, bros doing every high-intensity technique with absurdly high volumes while “on a cut”).
Another effected facet, however, is that of the mind. A lapse in self-discipline has and always will be the number one reason for failing to adhere to a diet. Some dieting strategies are much more flexible or restrictive than others, but they all work via the same underlying mechanisms of caloric deficits and decision-making. The thing is, that decision-making component becomes a lot more erratic the longer the caloric deficit phase churns along. In other words, you’re a lot more likely to eat a box of donuts after dieting for 12 weeks versus dieting for 12 days.
Unfortunately for most people, they’ll see this kind of binge as an act of irreconcilable damage, and never return to their newly adapted eating habits, even if they were giving them great progress on the scale. Although, there is a way to structure a diet over time that allows for some of these breaks, leading to less fatigue, more flexibility, and better adherence.
Breaks Are Needed, Not Just Wanted
In a perfectly controlled world, we’d be able to program ourselves to follow a diet to a complete mathematical T, like computers carrying out operations to the exact specifications of their input. Yet, we are not robots, so we must add a bit more natural wisdom to our decisions. As much as some of us like to prop ourselves up as these perfect machines when it comes to following nutritional specifics, we can all likely admit that that reality is a pipe dream here on Earth. For the sake of our own sanity, I think that is usually a good thing.
A degree of flexibility is usually beneficial for a diet, given that the person dieting still exhibits self-control and doesn’t take a mile when they were allowed a few feet. Being able to give yourself enough rope to live somewhat “normally” and not as a social pariah just because you’re on a diet should not be a debatable issue… i.e. being that person who brings their own tupperware meal to family Thanksgiving because you’re “all in on your goal.” If you injected some rational thought and a smidgen of self-control into what you were doing, you could afford to eat some turkey and gravy, not be miserable at dinner, and not exude a holier-than-thou attitude toward your family members.
As a matter of fact, chances are you probably could binge a little on that Thanksgiving meal and still be fine in terms of staying on track because no single meal has that much of an effect long-term net results.
Just think of a hypothetical fat-loss scenario over the course of a week and the math involved. Say you do really well all week and hit a daily average 700-calorie deficit Sunday through Friday, which has afforded you about 1 pound of fat loss thus far. Then you get to Saturday and decide to treat yourself to that family dinner and end up eating 1,500 calories over your calorie goal, which now puts you around a 700-calorie surplus. Even if every single one of those 700 surplus calories are stored as fat (not likely), that’s only 1/5 of a pound of fat gained (given the ~3,500 kcal per pound of fat figure), which you can burn off the next day with your normally scheduled deficit and be right back on track the day after.
It’s also plausible to come to grips with the reality that you’ll probably overeat at dinner before you even get to Saturday, and make allowance for it by eating much lighter throughout the day on Saturday to clear up room for all the calories later, not at all unlike being frugal all week if you know a large expense is going to give your bank account a hit at the end of the week.
When you think about this stuff mathematically, it’s easy to see how unnecessary it is for people to sabotage themselves for taking a break once in a while. Have a plan, have enough control to keep things reasonable, and remember that significant changes happen over time.
Cheat Meal or Refeed?
Anyone with social media has probably seen someone post a picture of a “cheat meal,” usually a large portion of whatever calorically-dense foods that person pleases. Burgers and fries, entire pizzas, ice cream sundaes with everything on them but the kitchen sink, towers of pancakes, buckets of fried chicken, and burritos the size of your head are all commonplace in these posts. Now, as I just explained, these meals can occasionally have their place so long as they fit reasonably within your numbers. They very well may help you stay sane at points. Nonetheless, you may also see people use the term “refeed” in reference to one of these meals, which invariably sounds more positive, scientific, and in a sense, mandatory.
I routinely get asked about this difference in nomenclature, and honestly, I don’t think it matters much either way. I’ll attest that years ago when folks in the fitness industry first started discussing these ideas, it always seemed to me that the term “cheat meal” was more in reference to traditional junk food while “refeed” referred more to strategically-placed high-carbohydrate meals that coincided with training demands.
Although now, it seems as though most people just use both these terms for either category, and I honestly can’t say I think it makes much difference anyway. There is some research that shows scheduling these meals every so often may have a positive effect on hormone regulation and preserving muscle mass when you’re deep into a diet, but in my opinion their most valuable purpose is preventing folks from burning out psychologically. I think the main take-away is to make sure they are earned, scheduled, accounted for, and occur relatively infrequently.
Inevitably when you begin to schedule in things like diet breaks and cheat meals/refeeds, you end up with at least somewhat of a cyclical eating pattern to follow. As compelling as that might sound, it’s really very simple and can likely be written out on a post-it note.
Cyclical Doesn’t Mean Complex
If you are familiar with DUP training or just the general principle of undulation in training, you could really just plug that in here and think of a diet in the same way. Just as you might rotate training sessions between high/low/medium stress or difficulty, you would essentially do the same thing using calories as the key metric.
An important thing to note here though is the fact that you you’ll need to make sure that over time, you’re spending more days in a deficit than you are at or over maintenance. It is perfectly fine to have a day here and there where you’re not hitting your goal deficit, but you need to be certain that you’re achieving a net deficit overall.
I’ve seen others set this pattern up in a variety of ways, all of which will work over time as long as they make sense mathematically. Though the logical assumption to make is that the less low-calorie days you have over the course of a week, the longer it will take you to lose your goal amount of body fat. For example, 4 low-calorie days likely won’t afford you the amount of fat loss each week than 5 or 6 low-calorie days will, even though both setups will allow you to lose fat over time. The 6 low-calorie days option may be more difficult to adhere to, but it will undeniably get you to your goal faster.
I used this kind of cyclical approach during my last 12-week fat loss phase with great results; below is how I scheduled my days with approximate calorie goals for each day. The figures listed were my starting points – some of these numbers shifted over the course of the diet as I dropped weight.
| Sunday | Low Day: 600-800 calorie deficit (~2,200-2,400 calories) |
| Monday | Low Day: 600-800 calorie deficit (~2,200-2,400 calories) |
| Tuesday | Low Day: 600-800 calorie deficit (~2,200-2,400 calories) |
| Wednesday | Moderate Day: closer to maintenance (~2,800-3,000 calories) |
| Thursday | Low Day: 600-800 calorie deficit (~2,200-2,400 calories) |
| Friday | Low Day: 600-800 calorie deficit (~2,200-2,400 calories) |
| Saturday | High Day: eat whatever I want so long as I don’t exceed a surplus of ~600 calories (~3,600 calories) |
In addition to some conditioning workouts here and there and daily walking, I used this strategy to cut about 22 lbs in 12 weeks, all while hanging on to my muscle mass and keeping my strength levels pretty consistent. I never felt that burnt out because I knew I had two opportunities through the week where I could still realistically plan to go out to eat or enjoy a dessert or an additional snack without it having any significant effect on my numbers over the course of the week.
There is a myriad of alternate ways you could set this up. Another way would be to make sure all days put you in a deficit, but just cycle the magnitude of the deficit each day (Example: -200/-500/-800, rinse & repeat). A lot of people like this approach because they still get a little wiggle room but they also have the peace of mind that they’ll be losing no matter what as long as their numbers are kept in check.
Nevertheless, there is no real gold standard as to how to approach this strategy and there is no inherent magic in the process. I just find that this cyclical methodology seems to help most folks stick to their diet a little better and thus see more sustainable results.
Recap
- It’s perfectly acceptable to take breaks from dieting if it’s causing undue physical and psychological fatigue, especially if you’ve been at it for a while and have already seen consistent results.
- It doesn’t matter if you call it a cheat meal or a refeed – just make sure it’s earned, planned, and reasonable.
- Scheduling routine higher-calorie days after days of being in a calorie deficit can have a positive effect on adherence.
- Using a diet approach where a net calorie deficit is achieved by cycling days of mostly lower-calorie and occasional higher-calorie consumption provides a sustainable way to lose body fat without psychological burnout. There is some evidence that this method may also aid in recovery from training and the preservation of muscle mass.
Strength Scrolls 