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Diet Break Maintenance Calculator

Enter your current cutting calories, TDEE, and diet break length.

Result

2,500 kcal/day
700 kcal/day
35,000 kcal

How it is calculated

The tool treats a diet break as eating exactly at your maintenance level, which it takes to be the TDEE you enter. Break calories per day are TDEE. The step up from your diet is increase = TDEE − current cutting calories, in kcal per day. The total over the break is TDEE × 7 × break weeks, in kcal. Weeks can be a fraction, such as 0.5. TDEE and weeks must be above zero and cutting calories cannot be negative; otherwise no result is shown. Nothing is estimated for you: if your TDEE figure is too high, the break will not really be at maintenance. The tool does not suggest how long a break should be, how often to take one, or how to split calories into macros, and it does not warn you if your cutting calories are above your TDEE (the increase then shows as negative).

Worked example

You are cutting on 1,800 kcal a day, your TDEE is 2,500 kcal, and you plan a 2-week break. Break calories: 2,500 kcal/day. Increase: 2,500 − 1,800 = 700 kcal/day. Total over the break: 2,500 × 7 × 2 = 35,000 kcal. Compared with staying at 1,800 kcal for the same 14 days (25,200 kcal), you eat 9,800 kcal more.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Entering your current intake as TDEE; the break is then not a rise at all and the increase shows 0.
  • Using a TDEE calculated when you were heavier or more active, so the break lands above real maintenance and stops being a diet break.
  • Entering the break length in days; the field is weeks, so 14 would plan a 14-week break.
  • Entering 0 weeks to see the daily numbers only; a zero-length break shows no result, so use at least a fraction such as 0.5.
  • Treating the total as something to eat all at once; it is spread evenly across the break days at the daily figure.

Sources

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.

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