Reverse Dieting: Everything You Need To Know

Hold up, hold up. Pump the brakes. Stop the diet train – you’ve been on for way too long – it may be time to put it in reverse. A reverse diet is an odd term but it’s exactly what it sounds like – backing out of a diet.

Before we get into what exactly a reverse diet is, I want to go over some signs as to why you would stop dieting all together in the first place:

• You reached your goal body weight, or you are very close to it. I promise NO ONE will be able to tell if you’re a few pounds off from your ideal weight.

• You’re happy with your appearance (even if your goal body weight wasn’t reached). This is SUPER important. If you’re happy with how you feel and how you look, there is no real reason or need to keep on losing weight.

• You’re receiving bio feedback, meaning your body is giving you signs it needs more food and is telling you that you are currently eating too few calories (e.g., loss of menstrual cycle, difficulty sleeping, loss of sex drive, unable to get a good workout in)

• You’re in a constant battle with food and feel your diet is unsustainable. If you keep looking at food as the enemy, then it may be time to re-evaluate your diet.

When you lose weight (or fat), you are in a calorie deficit, meaning you are eating less calories than it takes to maintain your current weight. This is all well and good, but you wouldn’t want to be in a calorie deficit forever – especially because your body tends to adapt at some point or another, causing you to eat fewer and fewer calories in order for weight loss to occur. Your body is pretty smart, and your metabolism slows down, recognizing that you’re only feeding it x number of calories in order for it to function and thus it adjusts accordingly.1

Unfortunately, by the time you reach your goal weight, the number of calories that you can eat to maintain that weight, or possibly lose a few more pounds, probably translates into eating very little actual food. Not to mention, weight loss is accompanied by persistent hormone adaptations, that increase appetite and decrease satiety, or the feeling of satisfaction and fullness.1 Specifically, it has been estimated that for each kilogram of lost weight, calorie expenditure decreases by about 20–30 kcal/d whereas appetite increases by about 100 kcal/d above the baseline level prior to weight loss.1 Additionally, because you are eating less calories, you aren’t amassing as much energy. This makes exercise and NEAT activities, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis such as activities like walking, cooking, cleaning, gardening, etc. more exhausting and difficult to perform. And now you can see why even after you lose the weight, it’s just as difficult – if not more – to actually keep it off. In fact, a meta-analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies, showed that for those individuals more than half of the lost weight was regained within two years, and by five years more than 80% of lost weight was regained.1

So instead of starving and worrying yourself about gaining back the weight you lost, let me put you on to the reverse diet.

What is a reverse diet?

A reverse diet is a method that involves gradually increasing your calories in an effort to increase your metabolism.2 Just like when you eat fewer calories and your metabolism slows, if you do the opposite, slowly (key word here being slowly), you can see your metabolism increase with minimal weight gain.

Ok, but what happens to calories in vs. calories out? Doesn’t eating more calories cause weight gain? Does the reverse diet defy the laws of thermodynamics? Well, no, but let me explain what’s probably going on here:

1. Your NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and EAT, exercise activity thermogenesis, begin to increase. Because you have extra energy, you will hopefully stop feeling sluggish, and will be able to use that energy to increase output in the gym or just through general life activities.

2. Your calorie deficit was probably too low to begin with. I’m talking to you, “I only eat 1000 /1200 calories each day.” When we are eating too few calories, we can increase pretty significantly without gaining weight because we were eating way under our maintenance calories to begin with.

Is a reverse diet different from refeeds or diet break?

Short answer, yes. Long answer, I’m going to provide definitions here:

Refeed /Diet Breaks

A refeed consists of a brief overfeeding period (e.g., a day, or week) in which caloric intake is raised slightly above maintenance levels, and the increase in caloric intake is predominantly achieved by increasing carbohydrate consumption in a planned and controlled manner3  This is slightly different then what most people consider a “cheat day,” in which someone will eat whatever they want, whenever they want it. While refeeds have shown acute increases in leptin, the hormone that makes us feel full, from short-term carbohydrate overfeeding, the reported effect on metabolic rate has been modest with one study reporting a 7% increase in total daily expenditure3

Diet breaks are similar to refeeds but just extended for a longer period of time, e.g., one to two weeks.

Although there is a lack of research to support refeeds /diet breaks, I do think that this could be helpful – especially in cases when a dieter has trouble with binging or feels fatigued.

Reverse Diet

I would argue that the difference between a refeed / diet break versus reverse diet is mindset and length. Reverse dieting can happen over a few months, whereas refeeds / diet breaks happen over a few days / weeks. Additionally, the mindset of a reverse dieter is to stop dieting all together whereas for refeeds / diet breaks, a person knows they will eventually go back on the diet because they have more weight that they want to lose.

How To Reverse Diet

A reverse diet is slowly (like averaging 50-100 calories more each day) increasing your calories back up to maintenance. So, for example, let’s say your calorie deficit was 1600 calories. Here’s how you could increase your daily calorie intake:

Week 0: 1600

Week 1: 1650

Week 2: 1700

Week 3: 1750

Week 4: 1850

And so forth. Now if you’re nervous about gaining body fat, remember a few things. You have to be in a surplus to gain body fat. This is getting you back up to maintenance, which I suspect is a lot higher than you think it is. And also remember, you control the calorie increase. Let’s say Week 3 you found it somewhat difficult to eat 1750 calories. Maybe Week 4 you try to stay at 1750 calories and increase to 1800 on Week 5. There is going to be some trial and error here and that’s ok.

 How do you know if you’re eating at your maintenance calories? A good rule of thumb is to see if you can stay between +/- 3 pounds for about 4-8 weeks. If you see the scale steadily increasing, you are probably eating at a surplus and may need to adjust if the weight gain bothers you.

Potential Faults or Downsides

Although a reverse diet seems great, it’s certainly not without its faults. Here are some things to consider:

1. In order for reverse dieting to work, you have to be fairly accurate in your calorie tracking.

2. This is not a perfect science and there will be some trial and error.

3. There is limited research on reverse dieting.

4. This is best implemented if you are strength training, which builds lean muscle, further boosting your metabolism.