Taking Dieting ‘Breaks’ Could Lead To Your Greatest Weight Loss Success

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If you’re currently cutting calories (in a safe way, of course) and seeing results in the way of weight loss, good for you! There’s nothing more motivating than seeing your hard dieting work actually pay off. But as you inch closer and closer toward that inevitable plateau we all fear, know that taking diet “breaks” here and there might actually help boost your results.

A new study from the University of Tasmania in Australia found that taking days off from your dieting rules can aid in additional weight loss, as well as help dieters keep the weight off for a longer period of time. Lead researcher Nuala Byrne connects this reaction to the fact that over time, the human body does adjust to calorie restriction and begins to function in its “starvation mode,” slowing down the metabolism to conserve energy (this is called adaptive thermogenesis in the biology world). So by occasionally leaving dieting behind, you keep your body surprised and burning through calories as it should.

For the study, Byrne and her team recruited 51 obese, sedentary men between the ages of 25 and 54, and then separated them into two groups. The first ate a study-supplied diet for 16 weeks that only provided two-thirds of their bodies’ daily caloric needs to maintain their current weights. The second group also had that study-controlled diet, but participants alternated between two weeks following the diet and two weeks eating the full number of calories they would need to maintain their weight at that point in time. The group repeated this cycle for a total of 30 weeks (so they also had only 16 “diet weeks” accounted for in the study).

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While their process took nearly twice as long, the intermittent dieters lost both more overall weight and more fat mass specifically than the group that dieted constantly. And six months after the study (and after eating whatever they chose without scientific intervention), the intermittent dieting group maintained an average of 18 pounds greater weight loss than the group that dieted throughout the entire study.

Now, there are several limitations to this research. First, it focused on a small number of men. Second, the obesity prerequisite means we can’t assume this exact result would follow for dieters of other weight levels aiming to shed pounds. And third, the dieting structure would be incredibly difficult to replicate in a non-scientific setting because we are human and sometimes lack self-control and don’t always measure our diets calorie for calorie like this study did.

These obstacles aside, this is pretty great news for those of us who rely on cheat days and relaxed-rule weekends to get us through the grueling process that can be dieting. While it’s important to not go overboard with these more indulgent times, know that you shouldn’t feel guilty when you do give into them. It’s probably what your body wants and needs you to do anyway.