How To Implement Diet Breaks To Get Shredded Lean

11/10/2018 How to Implement Diet Breaks to Get Shredded Lean
How to Implement Diet Breaks to Get

Shredded Lean
By Andy Morgan - Making Adjustments (https://rippedbody.com/nutrition/diet-adjustments/)
A diet break is a planned and purposeful break from dieting, anything from one day, up to two weeks. I
get all of my clients to take them, as they help prepare them psychologically and physiologically for the
next phase of dieting. Adherence is easier, results are better, skip implementing them to your own peril.
Everyone wants to be ripped, now. Nobody wants to wait. Our capacity for patience is being eroded every
day by our ‘Get it now, Pay later‘ culture. Let me be very clear: If you take this attitude towards your diet
then sooner or later you are destined to fail.
Though most don’t realize (or want to believe) it, at some point in the pursuit of your tness or physique
goals you will have to take one step backward to take two steps forward. Plan for those steps and you
won’t be frustrated. This is not about mental toughness – I don’t doubt your rock solid diet commitment
or that you can handle any training routine thrown at you. Taking planned breaks is one of the best moves
you can make for your long-term diet success. An unsexy topic for sure, but necessary and quite fun.
What follows is a sample chapter from my book on dietary adjustments

(https://rippedbody.com/adjustments-manual/). In this article, you’ll nd a quick rundown of the reasons
for taking a break, full guidelines, and my own FAQ I’ve developed from client questions that’ll probably
make you laugh.
https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/ 1/11
The Role Of The Diet Break

The goal is to stay eating as much as possible, for as long as possible, so that you can get leaner than you
ever have, in the most comfortable way you ever have. This will enable you to sustain it. Success in dieting
is not only about making diet adjustments at the right time but knowing when to take diet breaks also.
What is a diet break?
When I say ‘diet break’ I am usually referring to a period of 7-14 days where we purposefully increase
calorie intake and loosen the counting restrictions we place on ourselves. There are also times of the year
where I suggest you don’t try to count your calorie or macro intake, such as for important holidays during
the year (Christmas day, Thanksgiving, etc.), but for the purposes of this article, I’ll describe these as “days
off” rather than a break.
Why you shouldn’t fear one day of binge eating
You will gain a lot of weight but won’t gain much fat.
Over-eating is a better choice of wording here. I would never recommend that a client binge eat but I do
often recommend that clients eat to their hunger without worrying about counting their calories for this
day, knowing that this will lead to them overeating.
It takes a 3500 calorie surplus to gain 1lb of fat.

People don’t generally overeat as much as they think, it just feels like it because they have been
dieting.
I’d guess people overeat by approximately 1000 calories on average when eating freely (as long as they
aren’t actively trying to eat as much as possible).
This would lead to slightly less than 1/3 of a pound of fat gain if that calorie excess were stored as
purely fat, which is won’t be, as eating a large meal in a short period of time
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1951147) causes more of the calories to be released as heat
instead of stored in the body, compared to eating normal-sized meals spread out over time.
The weight gain you will experience the next day comes from an increase in gut content and water.
This happens because of the increased salt intake and the increased carb intake. (Carbs, when stored
as the sugar in glycogen, have water molecules attached to them. 1g of carb intake brings
approximately 3-4g of water with it.)
Most people will subconsciously eat less the next day.
Thus, you can wake up 5lbs heavier the next day and yet expect very little of that to be fat.
Reasons for taking a diet break
Physiological reasons: A short period of regular eating has the potential to reverse some of the metabolic
adaptations to a caloric de cit, giving the hormones time to recover to normal levels. This means that
you’ll be less hungry and pissed off all the time, have more energy, fewer cravings, and potentially you’ll be
able to eat more than you otherwise would have and still progress with your diet.
Psychological reasons: Physiological reasons aside, taking periodical diet breaks is a good idea for the
psychological bene ts also. However they are an underused tool in the dieter’s arsenal, aren’t sexy to talk
about, and the people that would likely bene t from them the most, the type A ‘stress heads’, are usually
the least willing to take them.
How to implement a diet break
There are two categories of diet break: a full diet break, and a more controlled version.
The Full Diet Break:
This is by far my most common recommendation – a break from counting food intake entirely. With the
exception of stage competitors within 8 weeks of their stage debut, this is what I have recommended to
everyone thus far. So, if that’s not you then this is the choice I recommend you make even if it freaks you
out to do so.
Eat to your hunger and don’t count macros.

Keep your regular meal times.
Keep on training – you may well make some strength gains. Enjoy it.
If these instructions seem too easy, you’re probably just overthinking the diet break. Don’t worry though,
that’s very common and you’ll see a detailed FAQ below.
The Controlled Diet Break:
There are certain populations that can bene t from a more structured diet break – competitors who are
close to their stage condition, and so close to the ragged edge that if they are instructed to eat ad-lib then
things could really go pear-shaped (excuse the pun).
Of the people I’ve coached (high hundreds), I’ve only had the full diet break go badly twice – by this, I
mean that they gained a signi cant amount of fat during that time. (I should add the caveat that I decline
to work with those that display, or I suspect of, disordered eating behaviour as it’s far outside my area of
expertise and I feel it to be unethical to do so.) However, I’ve had plenty of non-clients claim that they can’t
do an ad-lib diet break in the comments on the site, which I suspect this is simply people confusing water
or glycogen gain with fat gain.
I asked Eric Helms his thoughts on this topic, as he has more experience than I taking people from
‘shredded’ (~7-8% body fat) to ‘stage-shredded’ (~4-5% body fat) condition. More care can be needed at
these times as that’s where the suffering tends to really start.
“When I run a diet break, I try to get a feel for how bad they are hurting psychologically, and often if they
really need a mental break as well, I’ll revert to just counting calories vs macros.
For someone who has been hitting protein carbs and fat within 5 g for months, with low macro targets,
giving them an extra 500 kcals, cutting cardio in half, and saying just hit your calories + or – 100 can be
very liberating, comparatively, but it can also prevent folks going off the rails. Again, only a concern for the
speci c population I’m dealing with, but simply having a value to track can prevent the descent into
binging.”
So to summarise then:
Raise calories by 500 each day (or, to calculated maintenance levels).

Remove the macro target, just hit your new calorie target to an accuracy of + or – 100 each day.
Cut cardio work in half (if performed).
Keep your regular meal times and keep training.
Length and Frequency
10-14 days, two weeks recommended. Unfortunately, some hormones simply take longer to recover
to normal levels than others, so there is no cutting a diet break short.
Frequency depends primarily on our level of leanness. – The leaner we get, the more our bodies
hate us (the harsher the metabolic adaptations become), so the more frequently they should be
taken.
Body fat % (men) Diet Break Frequency
<10% every 4-6 weeks
10-15% every 6-8 weeks
15-25% every 10-12 weeks
25%> every 12-16 weeks
Women add ~7%.
Above are my own recommendations on diet break frequency, adapted from Lyle McDonald’s original
recommendations after gaining experience. This is just a general guide and psychological factors will
come into play as well. I base frequency of diet breaks on how a client is doing mentally (mood, cravings,
stress), as well as physically (energy, sleep, recovery). With slower rates of fat loss, diet breaks can be less
frequent. In my coaching experience, I’ve personally found that I’ve only had to recommend diet breaks as
frequent as every 8 weeks, even with those taking it to what I’d consider ‘shredded‘.
Expectations
You can expect a rise in the scale weight due to the increase in carb intake.
You may feel fatter, but you’ll note that the weight that you gain here (7-10 lbs isn’t uncommon)
doesn’t correlate with the same level of increase in stomach measurements that you saw yourself lose
over the last few weeks when you lost that same amount of weight. This is because most of the gain in
weight will be your muscles lling with water and glycogen – so you’ll feel bigger and fuller, and for
the leaner folks, more vascular.
Some water will be gained under the skin, and there will be a little fat gain, but nothing extreme
(unless you purposefully binge eat the entire diet break – which is a very rare exception if everything
else has been set up well thus far).
FOR COACHES: Talk to your prospective client about the subject of diet breaks before taking the client
on. You don’t have to go into exceptional detail, but just mentioning it will give you less resistance
down the line when you make the decision that it would be best to take one. Also, before taking a
client on, remember to check their diet history – they may need to take a diet break before you begin
working together.
FAQ
1. Why is there weight gain when taking a break from dieting?
1g of glycogen holds 3g of water. Our muscles are made up of ~70-80% water which is stored from
muscle glycogen. Glycogen comes from the carbs we eat. So if you eat more carbs than normal, which
you will when you take a diet break, your body (the muscles mainly) will hold more water giving you
the false impression that you’ve gained fat if you rely solely* on scale weight to gauge progress. It’s
actually just water weight. [*Do not. Track your progress this way. (https://rippedbody.com/diet-
progress-tracking/)]
2. Lyle McDonald recommends to eat above 100-150g of carbs a day. Does this mean I need to count?
You said don’t count.
By not counting, you will almost certainly hit this number anyway. Don’t count.
3. In Lyle’s article it also says to go to maintenance calories…should I follow that or just follow like you
said by just eating to my hunger?
Following your hunger, generally speaking, will be somewhat around your natural maintenance. If you
skip breakfast, feel free to keep doing so. If you don’t, then keep as you are. If you fancy having
breakfast then feel free to do so on a few days – not a big deal.
4. I’m too scared to not count my macros/calories.
Do the controlled version of the diet break then.
5. Should I still make “healthy” food choices?
For the most part, though if there are certain foods that you have been avoiding then now is a time
you can indulge.
6. I can pile in a huge amount of food, if I do the full break, are you telling me to binge eat?
No, or you will put on fat. I’m not questioning that you can eat a hell of a lot. Don’t think of this as a two
week cheat just a break from counting, a time to relax. Listen to your body. Take your time when
eating and eat to your hunger, nothing more.
1lb of fat ~= 3200kCal of stored energy. If your maintenance calorie intake is 2500kCal, even if we
assume that any excess over regular calorie maintenance is stored perfectly as body fat, then that’s
more than 5700kCal you’d have to consume on a single day to gain a pound of body fat. Doable, yes,
but not likely if you are eating sensibly.
7. Should I have a diet break when bulking? If I do, will there be fat gain?
While not technically necessary, a break can be bene cial mentally.
The human body works hard to maintain the status quo – homoeostasis. This is true when in a calorie
de cit as it is bulking – gaining or losing weight isn’t what our bodies want to do. When bulking we
have to consciously eat beyond what hunger signals would usually dictate that we eat. A diet break will
naturally bring your intake down to maintenance or slightly above, and there won’t be any signi cant
fat gain.
*******
Thanks for reading.
Browse the other diet adjustment guides using the menu at the top, or get access to my full book on the
topic of how I adjust the diets of my clients to take them to shreds and how you can do that too, here
(https://rippedbody.com/adjustments-manual/).
Questions welcomed in the comments as always. – Andy.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com)

Hi, I'm Andy, co-author of the highly-acclaimed 'Muscle and Strength Pyramid' books and founder of
RippedBody.com. This site is my sincere effort to build the best nutrition and training guides on the
internet. Some readers hire me to coach them, which I've been doing full-time, online, for the last seven
years. If you're interested in individualized, one-on-one coaching to help you crush your physique goals,
let's start the conversation (https://rippedbody.com/coaching/). (You can read more about Andy here
(https://rippedbody.com/about/).)
318 Comments
1. Ali says:
September 8, 2018 at 00:36 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-68019)
If you come off an extreme de cit and want to do a controlled diet break, so you slowly increase your calories for a
week, can you still execrise and maintain a “de cit” overall, to ensure no fat regain and partial weight loss
throughout the week, or should you just at out be conversing as much energy as possible?
Reply
Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

The diet break would be less effective this way, I’d just do it as I have written, one change, a bump of your daily
calories, not slowly increasing.
The way you’ll calculate this is to take your average weight loss per week in pounds, then multiply that by 500 and
add that back in each day. So, if you’ve been losing 1.5 lbs per week, add in 750 kcal daily.
Reply
2. Katy says:
August 28, 2018 at 23:54 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-67576)
Hi Andy,
Loved this article—really answered my questions.
I do have one last question, though. Am I still allowed to eat clean and do HIIT while I’m diet breaking?
Reply

The purpose of the diet break is physiological and psychological.
For the former, you need to be eating at maintenance, at the minimum. Increasing your caloric intake or
decreasing activity can achieve that. In your case, I’d recommend you do that via a mix of both and cut down the
HIIT as well. Probably worth your while reading my article on cardio (https://rippedbody.com/cardio/) in general
when cutting, as it’s generally a last resort, and generally not HIIT, due to the higher recovery demands.
For the latter, it’s ne to ‘eat clean’ if you don’t nd it a mental burden. But it has to be a psychological break also,
so I’d relax a bit. This article may be interesting to you: Clean Eating Is Nonsense – Here’s a Better Way to Think
About Food (https://rippedbody.com/clean-eating-vs-iifym-scam/).
Reply
3. Ben says:
Hi Andi!
I‘m since 6 months close to my target condition about 9%. After 3-4 weeks i always feel tired, hungry and my bench
press goes massive down (about 20%-30%). I implement 7-10 days diet breaks an deloads then everything is ok. My
question is why only my bench press is so bad, it seems like an indicator for a break or deload (all other exercises
are progressing)
Reply

That’s right. Take the deload as you said. Note also that when cutting, the bench is the most heavily affected lift.
You lose fat on the back and the chest so the distance the bar has to travel is greater, and thus the mechanical
ef ciency worse.
Reply
4. Elizabeth says:
June 29, 2018 at 13:45 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-64687)
should a person reverse diet into a diet break if they don’t know their maintenance. I’ve been in a 500 cal caloric
de cit using the tdee calculator on the tdee website. However, I’m pretty sure my de cit was kower. I lost weight
pretty quickly without changing too much other than nutrition. I’ve lost about 12 in a matter of 6+/- weeks. I started
working out (mostly weight training) 3-5 days a week and currently work out 5-6 days a week with 1-2 days of them
being cardio/HIIT.
I’m feeling hungrier, moodier, and more food obsessed/less satis ed with meals. So, it’s time for a diet break.
However, because I don’t want to put on weight and am unsure of my maintainrnce—would it be wise to reverse
diet into my break?
Also, I’m 5’3″ female- went from 145 ish to 130ish. I’m relatively muscular. I don’t see a lot of veins but I’m relatively
toned. I’m sure a good portion of initial weight loss was water weight because I wasn’t tracking anything for about
a year.
Reply

July 2, 2018 at 12:11 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-64754)
Hi Elizabeth. It takes a 500 calorie daily de cit to lose 1 lb of fat. So, calculate the average weekly rate of fat loss
over the last four weeks, then add that calorie amount back in. You will gain some weight, but that will be water
and gut content, the same kind of weight that you lost in the rst week or two you started dieting.
Reply
5. Melissa Flint (http://rippedbody.com) says:

I am a female competing in 8 weeks. I am trying to build a little more muscle in glutes and legs. Should I wait closer
to competition time, like 4 weeks out to start trying to lean down so I don’t lose muscle I am trying to build?
Reply

Now rather than so close to the competition (where you just focus on getting your condition dialed in), assuming
you have left yourself enough time to do so. Meaning, it’s better for muscle mass retention to diet slowly than take
a diet break and then have to rush it.
Reply
Reply
6. Rachel says:
May 16, 2018 at 01:24 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-61999)
I’m forced out of the gym for a week due to injury – should I coordinate this with a diet break or alternate a diet
break week with a gym reset week? (For reference, in week 11 of a cut)
Reply

May 17, 2018 at 15:32 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-62094)
If it’s just a week you’ll be ne to keep your calorie intake as is.
Reply
7. Luke says:
April 1, 2018 at 03:29 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-60081)
Great information, about to start a diet break and this was perfect, simple guidance. Kudos.
Reply

April 1, 2018 at 10:03 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-60091)
Thank you, Luke. Most welcome!
Reply
8. Cody says:
February 3, 2018 at 05:20 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-58966)
Regarding a diet break, let’s say you go to maintence for 4-6 weeks instead of traditional 2 weeks, should you return
to original calories you were cutting with or adjust it.
Reply

February 3, 2018 at 17:45 (https://rippedbody.com/diet-break/comment-page-1/#comment-58968)
Return to where you were, then adjust if things are too fast or slow.
Reply
9. Matt says:
Hey Andy,
This was an awesome article; exactly what I needed to read! I’m planning on taking a break to maintenance calories
pretty soon and I was just wondering when I go back to dieting, should I stay at the level I’m at now, or should I
lower my intake? I’m at 11x body weight now, and was wondering if I should stay at that, or if I should go down to
10x after the break. Thanks a bunch.
Reply
Reply

Hi Matt, glad you liked the article. You’ll nd my answer in recent previous comments.
Reply
10. Devon says:

Hey Andy,
We hear a lot about purposeful and strategic diet breaks. Their importance and necessity when you have been
running a de cit for some time. However, we hear very little about the implementation of resuming your diet/cut
there after. My question is with the understanding that the break help offset metabolic adaptation when dieting
what caloric value/de cit should you resume there after? If you were at 1800kcal before you took the break should
you naturally start much higher when you resume dieting? If so, how much higher?
Reply

Hi Devon, thanks for the question. The diet break will only cause a temporary bump to metabolic rate so you won’t
be able to increase calories and lose weight at the same rate you were previously for any signi cant period of time.
PS: Sorry for the delay in replying. I had been unable to do so while the website went through a big update over
August.
Reply
More Comments
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Write clearly, concisely, and click reply when responding,
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11/10/2018 How to Implement Diet Breaks to Get Shredded Lean

How to Implement Diet Breaks to Get

What follows is a sample chapter from my book on dietary adjustments

The Role Of The Diet Break

What is a diet break?

Why you shouldn’t fear one day of binge eating

You will gain a lot of weight but won’t gain much fat.

It takes a 3500 calorie surplus to gain 1lb of fat.

Reasons for taking a diet break

How to implement a diet break

The Full Diet Break:

Eat to your hunger and don’t count macros.

The Controlled Diet Break:

Raise calories by 500 each day (or, to calculated maintenance levels).

Length and Frequency

Body fat % (men) Diet Break Frequency

<10% every 4-6 weeks

10-15% every 6-8 weeks

15-25% every 10-12 weeks

25%> every 12-16 weeks

Women add ~7%.

4. I’m too scared to not count my macros/calories.

Do the controlled version of the diet break then.

5. Should I still make “healthy” food choices?

While not technically necessary, a break can be bene cial mentally.

Thanks for reading.

Questions welcomed in the comments as always. – Andy.

Share this on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com)

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

5. Melissa Flint (http://rippedbody.com) says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

10. Devon says:

Andy Morgan (https://rippedbody.com) says:

Questions welcomed. (Over 16,000 answered)

For the sake of other readers, please:

COPYRIGHT © 2018 RIPPED BODY JAPAN LLC

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