Ep. #386: James Krieger on the Science of Diet Breaks and “Refeeds”

James: Break. It’s just a nice psychological break and what that can do, you get a break. And then, so when you’re ready to go in a deficit again, you’re remotivated, you’re feeling better. And you feel ready to tackle another deficit again.

Mike: Why? Hello, Mike Matthews here for most for life and Legion athletics and welcome to a new episode of the podcast. This time around, I have. Mr. James Krieger on to talk about diet breaks. What are diet breaks? The first few weeks of a cut are usually smooth sailing, or even the first month or so.

You’re not that hungry, your energy levels are generally good, and would And you are still enjoying your workouts and maybe even progressing as well. You might still be gaining strength for the first month or so. But somewhere around the four to six week mark, the other shoe begins to drop. You start to feel hungrier leading up to meals and less satisfied after them.

Your energy levels begin to sag, and especially as the day drags on, especially in the afternoons, that 3, 4, 5 p. m. kind of slump. And you are no longer progressing in your workouts, which are also feeling harder and harder. And there are two schools of thought here on what you should do next. Some people say you just need to grit your teeth and keep dieting, so you can move on to the fun stuff as soon as possible, like maintaining and lean gaining.

And other people say that you should take periodic diet breaks where you increase your calorie intake to maintenance for several days or several weeks and then continue dieting after your reprieve. Now, many diet break advocates say that taking a break here and there can speed up your metabolism, help you preserve more muscle as you get leaner, and even hack your hormones to supercharge your fat loss.

Other people, however, say that taking Say that diet breaks don’t offer any real physiological benefit beyond just feeling good. It’s nice to eat a bit more food after you’ve been dieting for several weeks. And that it’s only necessary to take a diet break if you are just too weak or undedicated to stay the course.

Who is right here? That’s what I ask James in this episode. And in case you are not familiar with him, he is an accomplished researcher and writer, as well as a Weightlifter who knows what it’s like to diet down to very low body fat levels. And in this episode, James is going to tell you everything you need to know about the real science behind diet breaks and refeeds.

Specifically, you’re going to learn why people incorporate diet breaks and refeeds into their cutting regimens, how taking diet breaks affects fat loss, muscle retention, and metabolic rate while dieting, when you should and shouldn’t take a diet break. The pros and cons of diet breaks versus just continuous calorie restriction, how to take an effective diet break, and more.

This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my fitness book for women, thinner, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 150, 000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1, 200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average.

So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean. Sexy strong and healthy bodies. They truly desire. And if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read thinner, leaner, stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google.

Now, speaking of audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100 percent free when you sign up for an audible account, which I highly recommend that you do. If you’re not currently listening to audio books, I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog and so forth into more valuable and productive activities.

So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to www.bitlybitly.com/free TLS book, and that will take you to Audible and then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account, and voila, you get to listen to Thinner, leaner, stronger for free.

All righty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let’s get to the show, James. Welcome back to my podcast. 

James: Oh, thanks for having me again. 

Mike: I’m glad you’re here. Yeah. Yeah. The last time, oh we spoke about rep ranges and people really like a lot of really good feedback on that. A good topic obviously to talk about, but you do a really good job.

Just laying out the research and also sharing very practical, simple advice that people could go cool. I’m now not only smarter, but I can go right to my programming now and make it a little bit better. So that was great. Yeah. So this time around talking about fat loss and diet breaks, really intermittent calorie deficits, right?

So for people listening, we’re going to be talking about, is it better to just maintain a set calorie deficit for a period of time? If you want to get lean or really lean, or is it going to be more effective to cycle the calories? So be in a deficit for a certain period of time and then come back somewhere close to maintenance for a period of time, just to give yourself a physical.

Psychological break. And so that’s going to be the topic. 

James: All right. 

Mike: I will pass the mic to you. 

James: All right. So yeah, people do diet breaks and the reason people tend to do them is I guess I’ll just summarize everything I’m going to talk about just right away. Diet breaks work, but they don’t necessarily work for the reasons people think that they do.

So I would say in the past two or three years, diet breaks and refeeds have become really popular in the realm of fat loss. Especially with, competitors, physique competitors and bodybuilders and things like that. And so what they’ll do, obviously, they’ll be dieting for a period of time.

And then they’ll do what’s called a refeed, which is basically just a temporary diet break. Sometimes it might just last over a weekend. Sometimes it might last for a week or two weeks. Sometimes it may last longer. And so the idea that a lot of people had behind that was That would have a hormonal benefit in terms of fat loss.

So when you’re actively trying to lose fat and you’re in an energy deficit, you got one primary hormone that is involved as a hormone called leptin and leptin is produced by your fat cells. And so what happens is the leptin kind of acts like a lipostat, like a, how a thermostat works in your home to keep your home, at a certain temperature leptin works in a way to try to keep you at a certain body weight.

And so fat cells produce a leptin and they feed back on your brain and tell your brain to adjust its energy expenditure and appetite. What happens is as you lose fat. Your leptin levels go down. So what happens is you’re not getting the feedback signal to your brain that you’re full and things like that.

So you feel hungrier. Your energy expenditure goes down, your body’s trying to conserve energy. And obviously if you’re trying to lose fat, that’s not something that you want. So a lot of people think Hey, if you do a refeed or if you have a diet break, it’ll help bring your leptin levels back up.

Maybe it’ll help boost your energy expenditure, may have a benefit on your appetite. 

Mike: And then there’s just the psychological aspect, right? At least it feels good if you’ve been in a deficit for some period of time, just to eat a bunch of carbs. 

James: Yeah. And what I’m going to argue here is that really the benefit is psychological and not physiological.

So a lot of people think the benefit is physiological based on what happens with leptin, because when you do start to feed again, your leptin levels go up. Yeah. But if you look at the research, the leptin levels really don’t go up enough to where it’s really going to make any difference. Your leptin levels actually aren’t really restored until you basically gain the fat back that you lost, and obviously nobody wants to do that.

So really, the actual benefit of diet breaks is psychological, right? You’ve been dieting for a period of time, and dieting is hard, especially if you’ve been doing it for a long time. And I don’t care whether you’re a competitor or if you’re just a person who just is looking to lose weight for health reasons.

When you’ve been dieting for awhile, it’s, it takes a psychological toll on you. And so a diet break, it’s just a nice psychological break. And what that can do help you get a break. And then, so when you’re ready to go in a deficit again, you’re remotivated, you’re feeling better and you feel ready to tackle another deficit again.

So I would say, I would argue that’s really the primary benefit of diet breaks. I don’t think there’s convincing evidence to me, at least that there’s a physiological benefit to it. 

Mike: Interesting. And for anybody listening, I guess the reason why. You’d have to gain the fat back to get your leptin back to the previous level is because it’s produced by body fat, right?

So if you have less body fat, you’re just going to have less leptin circulating in your body. 

James: There’s a number of studies that have shown that like you just, you’re not going to restore leptin levels to a point where it’s make a big difference. 

Mike: And anybody who has gotten really lean and stayed that way for a bit can probably attest to that.

I know I’ve experienced that a couple of times when I’ve died it down to not super lean, but, maybe around 7%, like where you want to be for a photo shoot, basically, and tried to maintain it. And I found that because I’m not. In the gym, 10 plus hours a week. I’m exercising maybe four to six hours a week.

And that just is what it is. I can only eat so many calories if I want to stay that lean, but it never felt like enough, even though that’s, that was it. As far as if I wanted to stay that way, but I felt energy starved. I felt like I was still in a deficit, even though I wasn’t. 

James: Yeah, and that’s it.

That’s it’s just your body trying to restore back its body fat levels that it lost. That’s what it’s trying to do 

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Do you want to jump into the details of this? There’s a study that was, you had, I think you had covered it in your research review, right? So it was alternating two weeks of, 33 percent calorie restriction with two weeks of maintenance versus continuous restriction for 16 straight weeks.

And then, I would like to hear just your breakdown of that research and then a bit more about why you’re saying that you think it’s more psychological than physiological. And then we could probably wrap up with, okay, so what are the practical takeaways then? How do we put this into use to make our fitness journeys more?

Enjoyable and more effective. 

James: Yeah. So the study you’re talking about so I’m trying to go off memory. It actually had a name. I’m trying to remember the name of the trial but yeah, I did review it in my research review. And so just as you said, they had two groups and one group basically did two weeks in a deficit followed by two weeks of maintenance and that was a 33 percent deficit.

So being that they were alternating every two weeks, their total time was. It ended up being 32 weeks long. So they had 16 weeks of dieting, basically, if you combine it and 16 weeks of maintenance. 

Mike: Let me just share it for just for to jog your memory. And also for me listening, I pulled it up, James, it’s intermittent energy restriction improves weight loss, efficiency in obese men.

The matador study, 

James: the matador is the way I was trying to think the matador study. Yeah, so they had then the other group just did 16 straight weeks of continuous dieting. The intermittent group did way better than in terms of weight loss and fat loss than the continuous restriction group.

And so a lot of people took this study and they ran, I would say too far with it and started saying, Oh, maybe there’s these hormonal benefits to diet breaks and maybe there’s some benefits to energy expenditure. And they did test resting energy expenditure in the study and they. By the end of the study, they saw a benefit to resting energy expenditure in the intermittent group.

But, in my research review, I went into a lot of detail. I dove into the details of the study and the resting energy expenditure data was just not as convincing as it might seem at first glance. In fact, the resting energy expenditure was actually better in the continuous group early on in the study.

So the resting energy expenditure just wasn’t very convincing, especially there’s no way that the differences that they saw in resting energy expenditure would actually contribute to the large differences in weight loss that they saw. It was just, resting energy expenditure really doesn’t play a real strong role in weight in body weight regulation anyway.

It’s really more your total daily energy expenditure and your needs and things like that, but they didn’t actually test those things in the study. 

Mike: In most people though, isn’t the, really the bulk of their TDE, really their RMR? Unless they’re very active. 

James: Yeah, it is. But the thing is that the RMR doesn’t change a whole lot with dieting.

Mike: Ah, okay. Yeah. The whole metabolic damage thing. Yeah. Is more myth than anything else. 

James: Yeah, your resting metabolic rate might decrease, but it might decrease by maybe a hundred, 150 calories. That’s certainly not enough to stop you from losing weight. 

And that’s also certainly not enough.

To make a big difference, the difference that they saw in the matador study. And when I looked at the methodology of that study, it was a very well done study. They 1 thing. I thought it was really great about it is they provided food to the subjects, but something that needs to be kept in mind is.

Yeah, they provided the food to the subjects, but these are still free living people living on their own. So that doesn’t mean that they’re actually consuming exactly the diet that they’ve been prescribed. And so my opinion on the Matador study, the reason that they saw the differences they did is likely just dietary adherence.

I would say the dietary adherence was likely much better. In the intermittent group than the continuous group. And if you just think about that, just think about it in terms of if I’m going to ask you to diet for 16 weeks continuously at 33 percent restriction, that’s a pretty large deficit, you’re going to have a hell of a time sticking with it.

Even if I’m providing the food for you, you’re going to be hungry. You’re going to be hungry. And you’re going to be eating food that I didn’t ask you to eat. 

Mike: Yeah. It was a say, cause I don’t know if I’ve ever really gone above 25 percent and that was about as far as I wanted to go. Yeah. 

James: And if I’m going to ask you to do that for 16 weeks, there’s just no way you’re going to be able to adhere to that.

Now, if I asked you to only do that two weeks at a time, it’s much more doable and you’re just going to adhere better. And so I would argue the reason they got the results they did in the matador study, the intermittent group just, I think, did it had a better dietary adherence just because again, 33 percent restriction.

It’s a hell of a lot easier to do that for 2 weeks at a time than 16 weeks straight. Do you 

Mike: remember approximately how much more fat the intermittent group lost? Because they were also dieting for twice as long. That would need to be considered for anybody who was going into it. Even if they were like wanting to try to quote unquote, replicate what they see right there in the research, let’s not forget that you had mentioned, there was 32 weeks for the intermittent group. 

James: Yeah, but they weren’t only dieting 16 out of that 32 weeks. So to the actual time, of course, they 

Mike: were still quote unquote dieting for that period though. They still had to follow the plan. They couldn’t just do whatever for two weeks and then go back to it for two weeks.

James: Yeah. They were still dieting in the sense that they had to eat what researchers were asking them to eat. But. You’re still eating a lot more calories, so you’re not going to feel as hungry. So it’s still going to be easier to adhere. So the cumulative weight loss. It was 14. 1 kilograms in the intermittent group and 9.

2 kilos in the continuous group. So you’re looking at about a five kilogram difference there. That’s about 10 pounds, pretty 

Mike: significant, 

James: pretty large difference there. 

Mike: It should be considered though, that it did take twice as long to get there. And even if it’s for some people, they may go. An extra 16 weeks.

It may, it’s just something that should be noted. 

James: There’s no way any adaptations and energy expenditure or anything can explain that large of a difference between the groups. Only dietary adherence can really explain that big of a difference. I can’t think of any other explanation for it.

Mike: In your opinion, just based on all of your research and also just experience working with people. How do you think it might go if it were a more moderate deficit, let’s say something closer to 20 percent and I’m assuming I didn’t ask about macronutrients in, in, in this matador study, but let’s say it’s also a kind of standard, higher protein, higher carbohydrate, more filling diet, right?

How do you think that would fare versus the same protocol, but intermittent calorie deficits? 

James: I think with a smaller deficit, I don’t think you’d see as much of a difference between the groups, just because a smaller deficit is easier to adhere to. I think the big thing was that it’s just, it was such a large deficit that yeah, it’s just easier to adhere to a large deficit if you’re just doing it little bits at a time rather than continuously.

Mike: Yeah, that makes sense. I guess one key takeaway for anybody listening is if you have heard about this research, if I don’t know if this made it made the rounds on social media and so forth, probably did don’t necessarily think that Intermittent calorie deficits is just better period, but there’s no reason to be in a continuous calorie deficit.

And I guess that’d be a good segue right into some more practical takeaways, how to use diet breaks effectively and how to not just go about it. Rotely because, Oh, look at this. I should just don’t assume that, Oh, you should just always should be two weeks on two weeks off period. That’s how you do it. 

James: Yeah, I think there are some good practical takeaways.

First, I think diet breaks are a really good thing. I think that can be really helpful to people for periods of time. And not only just because as a break from the psychological aspect of dieting, but also even just for, let’s say someone who’s overweight or obese, a diet break can be beneficial because it’s, you can almost think of it in terms of as practice for weight maintenance.

If you’re overweight or obese and you’re trying to lose fat and you lose a bunch of fat and now you want to maintain, all the research shows that most people are successful at losing weight. It’s just keeping it off. That’s the hard thing. And so those diet breaks can actually act as a practice for maintenance, really, if you think about it.

So I don’t think there’s any set time. I don’t think there’s any magical formula for oh you should go two weeks on, two weeks off, or four weeks on, two weeks off, or whatever. I think it totally depends on your goals, the size of your deficit, how long you’re thinking about dieting for.

What 

Mike: you’re doing in the gym, right? 

James: Yeah, what you’re doing in the gym. I think all those things will play a role in How frequently you should do diet breaks and things like that. And also just personal preferences too. There’s so many factors I would say that would play a role in a decision on, when you should do diet breaks and how often, I don’t think there’s any set answer for that.

Now, I will say that when you do a diet break, I am a proponent of returning immediately to maintenance. Or I would say at least your estimated maintenance for whatever new body weight you’re at. I don’t think there’s a benefit to that. So and so called reverse dieting. Cause you’re just, all you’re doing is prolonging the deficit when you do that.

Mike: Just interject. So idea of going and just eating by feel eating, whatever you want to eat, that’s probably a bad idea because it’s probably going to lead to overeating, right? Which might feel good. And, but it’s just going to Prolong the whole process. 

James: Yeah. That’s the thing. If you’re tracking, I would say, still keep tracking, tracking your calories and stuff like that.

Yeah. Don’t just eat however much you feel like eating because your body’s going to want to go back to its original weight that you were losing at. So if you just eat how much you feel like eating, you’re going to end up overeating. So you still got to keep things under control and have some restraint.

Mike: What I like to do just as a simple tip is I usually I’ll take, I like to follow a meal plan when I’m cutting. I just eat the same things every day. I’ll make little changes here and there, but it’s the easiest way to go about it. And I don’t mind it because I can eat stuff I like and what’s the big deal.

But when I’m going to take a break, which I’ll just throw it out there for me, this is my body, but I’ve found it pretty workable with Lisa. A lot of people I’ve worked with is somewhere around the. Six to eight week mark of being in a deficit. It definitely feels good to just take a little break.

And sometimes it’s not a full week, even for me. Sometimes it’s just several days and I feel good again. Maybe that’s just my physiology or whatever. I’m just throwing it out there. What I like to do is take my meal plan and really I’ll usually just add one or either add one or two meals in, or just take meals that are there and just increase the portions of usually I’m increasing carbs is how I do it.

For what it’s worth. That’s something simple and practical. 

James: Yeah. That’s, something I do with my clients, similar thing. And it is our, if I do have them go back to maintenance, I generally have them increase their carb intake. Maybe a little bit of fat too. Usually I try to keep protein intakes always high.

So I just basically keep protein intake where it’s at. And if it protein intake goes up along with it, that’s fine. And I also wanted to note too, here we’re talking in terms of weeks, there’s no rule. It has to be even in terms of weeks. You could be a person. And I’ve done this with some people before.

Where you have a diet break, basically, once a week or something like that. Now, that’s not a cheat day and that’s what I want to make that distinction. It’s not a cheat day. It’s just a day where you are deliberately going to eat at maintenance calories rather than in a deficit. 

Mike: Yeah, I should probably add that actually the caveat even for myself.

So the last time my standard where I hover somewhere around 10 percent that’s comfortable for me. And so last time I died it down to the 76 whatever that somewhere in that range percent I was actually now that I think about it, I was doing, I wouldn’t say it was you could maybe you could call it a refeed.

I wasn’t quite getting to maintenance. I was eating a lot of carbs though once a week because it would just feel good and it would feel like Yeah. If nothing else, it would just feel good to eat a bunch of pancakes and syrup. But I was doing that as well. And then because of where I started my cut, I think the last time it was maybe a 12 week cut, but somewhere around the six to eight week mark is where I took a few days.

I’m like, I’m just gonna eat a bit more for the few days up to, if I remember correctly, I just added my lunch at the time was like a salad with some protein. And I added like a side of rice or something, add some carbs there. And then my dinner I just added some additional carbs there. I think I ate some oatmeal cause I wanted to eat oatmeal and that was pretty much it.

That was, and that worked well for me that my workouts were okay. I had good energy levels. I continued to lose fat. No big deal. So it worked. 

James: Yeah. And I also think something to when you do diet breaks, people need to anticipate that their body weight might jump up just a little bit, but you’re not gaining fat.

When you do that’s just, you’re going to have extra residual food in your digestive track. And then you may, maybe upping your glycogen stores a little bit carrying a little bit more body water, but that’s just perfectly normal. Interestingly, I’ve even had people, they, their actually body weight goes down a little bit when they do a diet break even though they’re eating at maintenance calories.

So it varies based on the person, but just to be aware, so people don’t, like if they’re stepping on the scale and all of a sudden, they see the scale go up and they’re like, Oh my God, I’m getting all this fat back. You’re not, if you’re eating at maintenance calories, you’re not going to be gaining a bunch of fat back.

So 

Mike: yeah. And do you think the weight going down would be mostly related to maybe a reduction in cortisol levels? Cause the body is just this is nice. 

James: I used to think that too, but what’s interesting is I actually. Looked at the research in that area. And actually in my research review, I have a presentation on this.

I actually thought for a long time that there’d be cortisol induced water retention. But then when I looked at the studies that looked at dieting and cortisol levels, dieting doesn’t really increase cortisol levels, surprisingly, the only thing that increases cortisol levels is pure fasting, but even if you’re on a very low calorie diet, like some of these 800 calorie per day diets that they’ll put, overweight, obese people on their cortisol levels.

Don’t go up. So I think there’s something else going on that whoosh effect that people get. Sometimes I can’t say what it is. There could be other hormones that are involved. At least it doesn’t appear to be cortisol as the primary factor there. 

Mike: Yeah, so why don’t we just wrap up with where people can find you and your work, including your research review, where you covered this study, and if you have anything else new and exciting that you want to let people know about.

James: So yeah, you just can head to my website, weightology. net. That’s W E I G H T O L O G Y dot net. I’ve got my research review there. And people can subscribe to Verts for a very low monthly fee. And in fact, the study we just talked about, it was a study that was originally just for my research review subscribers, but a number of months ago, I made it publicly available just so for people thinking about subscribing to the research review.

You can just see an example of the type of stuff you might get. So look at that. You can see all my past podcast appearances, including my past appearances with you, Mike. And also all my upcoming speaking engagements are on there. I’m a senior. Your listeners happen to be in an area where I’m coming. So yeah, people can find all that stuff.

And also all my social media accounts, if people want to follow me are on there as well. 

Mike: Great. Yeah. And I’ll just add weightology. net. Go check it out. I’ve been following your work, James, for some time, and you’re on a short list of my favorite people in this space who consistently produce really good content.

And so I appreciate what you’re doing. You’ve taught me a lot. One of the reasons why I just like to have you on the podcast, because it’s easy where I can just go, Oh, what are we talking about today? Cool. I’m going to learn something. Teach me something, James. So everybody listening, definitely James, one of the guys, one of the, one of the good guys that you should be following.

If you like discussions like these, if you like the, this type of information, you will really like his work. Definitely go check it out. Waitology. net. That’s it for now, James. I look forward to our next discussion. 

James: Yeah. Thanks for having me. 

Mike: Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

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Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically my fitness book for women, thinner, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 150, 000 copies in the last several years and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1, 200 reviews on Amazon.

With a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies, they truly desire. And if you want to learn the simple science of building the Ultimate female body, then you want to read thinner, leaner, stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google play.

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