Diet Break Maintenance Calculator

About this calculator

A diet break is a planned, extended pause in a calorie-restricted diet — typically one to two weeks — during which intake is raised back to maintenance calories (roughly TDEE, total daily energy expenditure) rather than staying in a deficit. Unlike a single refeed day, which briefly spikes carbohydrates within an otherwise continuous deficit, a diet break sustains maintenance intake for enough days to meaningfully restore hormonal markers such as leptin and thyroid hormones that decline during prolonged dieting, and research (including work by Trexler and Byrne) suggests structured diet breaks can help preserve metabolic rate during extended fat loss phases.

Coaches and dieters use planned diet breaks during long cutting phases to reduce diet fatigue, support training performance, and counter metabolic adaptation, before resuming the deficit with renewed adherence and, often, a partially restored metabolic rate.

This calculator takes your current cutting calories, TDEE, and diet break length to show your daily calories during the break, the increase from your cutting calories, and the total calories consumed over the break period.