I've been doing diet breaks without realizing and they actually seem to work

This is just my experience, but it's surprising because I didn't realize it before I actually looked way back in my daily weight measurements.

I've been losing weight since June of 2019, and around November I took my first planned break because of stress it was causing me. I didn't weigh or count calories for the whole month (I did go vegan for a month which might've helped me keep intake at bay without realizing.) In the start of the month I was 70.8kg, and towards the end of the month/beginning of December (once I got the scale back) I weighed 70.2kg. After that I started exercising a lot, lost a kilo in December and by January I had kicked my weight loss in full gear and lost 4 kilos in a month. By February I was around 65kg, and I was feeling a bit of a plateau coming in, but I didn't pay attention to it because for the next 2-3 weeks I was visiting and moving my boyfriend across Europe to live with me. I didn't pay attention to what I ate and weighed 66kg when I started counting again, and the first kilo dropped in matter of days.

So here comes March. In the first 2 weeks I lost about 2-3kg, and then I hit a serious wall of not losing weight for 2-3 weeks. So I started to look into it and read about increasing metabolism by eating more. So slowly I increased my calories every day, and of course I'm still not losing weight. But today I read about diet breaks, and figured: that could be smart. I had already been eating at maintenance for 2 days, so might as well keep it up for 12 more days. Then I started to think back, and realized that for the last 5 months I had been doing it without realizing, and over the time from December until end of March I had lost about 2kg a month, which would equate to the precious 0.5kg a week, or 1lbs a week. I had been advancing in a not so linear, not so straight forward way in the same speed as someone eating a small deficit would. I should note when I restricted I ate 1200 calories (I'm a rather small woman so it was enough.) I just saved myself from my metabolism slowing and hormones going out of whack by taking these 2 weeks to a month long breaks without realizing. Now that I realized and can make them a regular part of my diet and have more control over them, I think I could reach my goal weight without having to stress about plateaus and constant restriction.

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Thank you for coming to my Ted talk, I hope some of you take the initiative to look up 'diet breaks' and I hope the best of luck for all of you!

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