Following a sustained bulk I am chasing some body comp goals. I have been slowly dieting since April and have maintained the majority of my strength while dropping from 39” to 36” waist. I am keen to push this down to around 33” in time. Height 5’7” and weight at c181lbs
I have gradually reduced macros over this time and am now as low as I can realistically go - it’s beginning to impact recovery for training (c2000cals low days, 2300cals high days). Strength measured using e1RM’s has been fairly stable until this most recent calorie drop.
Would I see a benefit to my aesthetic body composition goals by increasing calories for a while? I am planning to run the 3 day hypertrophy template so thought a 7 week diet break may fit well with a cycle of this and also over the festive period. Plan would be to gradually increase by 15g carbs / 2-5g fat weekly until measurements began to trend upwards.
Aesthetic benefit? No, unless gaining weight/stopping weight loss would do that. I think long term, compliance is the biggest predictor of success and there’s some data suggesting that periodic diet breaks are useful, though there are many confounders in that data set (as there is in human behavior studies).
In any event, you can take a break if you want to- just have a plan in place for the start and stop points for the break and implement it accordingly.
As as I understand it I wouldn’t see any material metabolic increases in calorie requirements from a diet break, so no benefit outside of longer term motivation/compliance when I got back to it.
Assuming that’s the case I’ll just keep cutting in a way I can best comply with. Conditioning work is increasing slightly in line with the 3 day hypertrophy template so I’m sure that will contribute as well.