Reverse dieting is an eating plan that involves gradually increasing your calorie intake over a period of several weeks or months to boost metabolism and help your body burn more calories throughout the day.
But let’s take a minute and explain how we get to the reverse dieting phase. For years everyone has always been focusing on losing weight, trying every new fad diet that comes out, hoping it will be the answer to their dream weight loss goals. This includes dropping calories, and for many gets to a point of too low. Also restricting their favorite foods, or even whole food groups, or trying fat burner supplements.
Every fad diet I have ever seen people try, will help the individual lose weight using whatever tactic that diet is associated with (cutting out carbs, point system for food, labeling foods as green, yellow, and red lights, etc.) which is great. It worked, right? But what’s after you complete the program? Your body is not meant to stay at those lower calories forever, and your metabolism has adapted to the lower intake of calories, so you are burning less calories than you would at a maintenance level. Meaning when you go back to eating normal ‘maintenance level calories’ all of a sudden, the weight creeps back on. Therefore reverse dieting is so important, slowly and strategically increasing calories back up for weeks or even months, without putting weight back on.
Many also try to ‘diet’ for months to years in a row when a body shouldn’t be put in a deficit for more than 16 weeks. I usually keep my clients in the 12–16-week range because of metabolism and hormone levels. And some go through this phase 2x a year with a reverse diet and maintenance phase in between.
A reverse diet is for someone:
- Who has achieved their fat loss goals.
- Who has hit a plateau, no longer seeing results and are around the 16-week mark.
- Calories have been too low for a long period of time (yo-yo dieting for years or at 1,200 calories and not losing weight)
- You feel fatigued, hungry, moody, or on edge. (Hormone levels are off)
- Who just completed a body building or physique show.
Take a minute and think about where you are at, and where you want to go. Are you in a situation where a reverse diet is needed?
