The ‘reverse’ diet – what, why, how?
So far in this series we have learnt about what our metabolism is and how it adapts to what we ‘feed’ it, we have learnt the importance of slow progressive dieting and how to incorporate ‘refeeds’ to help blunt the unwanted side effects of dieting. So we have the tools to best get down to our desired body fat %, now it is time to move out of the deficit, allowing our body again to reach homeostasis. However, this is the point at which can make or break your entire diet, this is where if you are not careful you can put back on all the fat if not more than you started with. Avoid the yoyo diet, and please continue to read about the ‘reverse’ diet.
![](https://gallery.mailchimp.com/403ff28cf1dff31d8e92f7661/images/52bec1d9-78f0-45a8-89cb-8f77b8409154.png)
The reverse diet is just as it sounds, when we diet changes are slow and progressive, the reverse diet is much the same, apart from the fact we slowly increase not decrease our calorie intake.
Essentially the aim is to bring our metabolism back up to what it should be, the easiest way to do that is to just eat more. However, if we just scoff a load more food you’ll put on a load of fat in a hurry, especially because our body wants to get back to its old self. To avoid this you have to increase your calorie intake slowly, allowing your metabolism to adjust upwards gradually. That is if you want to avoid as much fat gain as possible, there are cases in which a faster approach may be more suitable, but I am principally talking about people who have followed a successful and healthy diet.
![](https://gallery.mailchimp.com/403ff28cf1dff31d8e92f7661/images/fddfa8e2-32e3-4014-b2f6-931a9d6cc770.png)
Everyones metabolism is a little different, some are very responsive and others less so. Responsive metabolisms do very well off an increase in calories, and you can give them quite sizeable and frequent increases. However, others are not, and therefore you must take a slower approach.
I have a few approaches I like to put in place for my clients, but one that seems to work quite well is to increase carb and fat intake by 10-20% initially, getting them to maintenance. At this point you may want to lower protein in place for more carbs, because carbohydrates are the real ignitors for our metabolism and are protein sparring, plus you’ll be coming out of a deficit so the need for high protein intakes drops.
From this initial increase you’ll want to take visual and body weight measurements to then pick how next to act. Each week from here I would increase fat and or carbs by 5-10% depending on how they looked and how their weight responded. I have seen people drop weight and look better week to week while reverse dieting, but I have also seen others need very slow increases. Again like anything it is very much dependent on the individual. Also while doing the above you would be making sure to try and reduce the amount of cardio taking place. You would keep progressively doing this until the person was eating back up to a reasonable number of calories.
![](https://gallery.mailchimp.com/403ff28cf1dff31d8e92f7661/images/5315a968-8f55-47b8-a12f-37d7717cef10.png)
The above steps could be continued for a long time, especially if the person wanted to transition into a muscle building phase. I also want to note that some people actually find the reverse diet harder than the diet itself. This is because the changes are quite small, making it almost feel like you are still dieting. This can be very tough, especially when you do not have a particular goal in mind. I’d happily allow some people to speed up the reverse diet if they really couldn’t hack it. I personally feel that very small adjustments are silly, that is the best way I can say it. No one wants to continually feel like they are dieting, so an by increasing macronutrients by less than 10g really seems quite, well silly.
![](https://gallery.mailchimp.com/403ff28cf1dff31d8e92f7661/images/8ec0bcdd-af89-4389-910f-aabdfc2ed2dc.png)
So now you have learnt how to get really lean in a healthy manner and then how to build yourself back up out of the deficit. Key is to remember everything our body does is to try and remain in homeostasis, our bodies don’t want to get really lean. So to get their we need to take it slow, and then once their we slowly need to build up our metabolism. Our metabolic rate doesn’t get damaged or break, we don’t enter some weird starve mode in which we can no longer burn fat. Our metabolisms are wonderful things that adjust to what we give them, treat them with respect and you can manipulate it to get the results you want in a healthy and sustainable manner!
If you enjoyed this or any of my newsletter content please like and share my newsletter, any support or feedback is much appreciated!