Diet Breaks — Why Taking a Week Off Dieting Can Help You See Better Results
Dieting is often seen as something you need to push through—stay strict, stay disciplined, don’t let up.
But what if taking a break is actually one of the smartest things you can do?
A well-timed diet break won’t undo your progress. In fact, it can be the thing that helps you sustain it.
What Is a Diet Break?
A diet break is just a planned week where you bring your calories up to maintenance.
Not a free-for-all. Not a “cheat week”.
Just… eating a bit more, on purpose.
A good rough guide is taking one every 6 weeks or so, especially if you’ve been dieting for a while.
Why would you stop dieting if fat loss is the goal?
Because sticking to a diet is the hardest part.
After months of non stop dieting people start to feel it:
You’re hungrier
Your energy dips
Motivation drops off
Everything feels a bit harder than it did at the start
Regular diet breaks give you a bit of breathing room.
Not to speed things up—but to help you keep going.
How do you figure out your calories for it?
It doesn’t need to be complicated.
Look at how your last few weeks have gone.
For example:
If you’ve been losing about 1 lb per week, you’re probably in roughly a 500 calorie deficit
So for your diet break, you’d add about 500 calories back in
That’ll put you around maintenance.
What should you actually eat?
The simplest way: keep your food the same, just eat a bit more of it.
That’s it.
You can add in some extra foods, but where people go wrong is turning it into a week of:
loads of ultra-processed stuff
constant “treats”
completely different eating habits
That usually just leaves you:
hungrier
less satisfied
and struggling to get back on track after
A better approach is to add more of the same healthy stuff you have hopefully already been eating!
One mistake I see a lot
People feel better (more food = more energy)… and then try to “use” it.
They train harder. Add cardio. Move more.
Which defeats the point.
You don’t need to earn the extra calories. That’s not what this is for.
The goal is to let your body and mind recover a bit—not cancel it out.
“But what if I gain weight?”
The scale will go up slightly during your diet break.
And that’s completely normal and expected.
It’s mostly down to your body storing more glycogen (carbs in your muscles), which also pulls in water—You might notice the muscles feeling fuller
The gain is only temporary.
When you go back into a deficit, it comes back down quickly.
When should you take one?
Every 6 weeks is a good guideline, but it doesn’t have to be rigid.
It actually works really well to line it up with real life:
holidays
birthdays
busy or stressful weeks
times when you’re just feeling a bit run down
That way, instead of fighting your routine, your plan actually fits around your life.
The main thing to take away
Diet breaks don’t lead to more weight loss, but they do lead to better diet adherence and continued results over the long and make the whole process more enjoyable.
Since we’ve integrated them into our routine and our clients' routines, we’ve seen just how helpful they can be to the whole process, so we recommend them to everyone!
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With love
Paul & Gemma
Hench Herbivore
PS. If you need recipes that’ll help you achieve optimal nutrition, take a look at our tasty meal plans and variety of healthy vegan recipe e-books.
