Did you catch my Workshop in my FB Community: Weight Lifting, Nutrition, & Lifestyle for Women this past week on Reverse Dieting? Be sure to give it a listen here. *Pro Tip: I normally listen to podcasts/FB Lives at 1.2-1.5 speed.
Too long don’t want to listen to the Workshop… Read this:
Reverse dieting is a strategy use to raise someone’s calories up over a period of time to help optimize and up regulate their metabolism and hormones (thyroid + sex hormones) that play a big role in health and fat loss. While increasing calories, we work to decrease stress on the body (ie: excess cardio, poor sleep, nutrient deficiencies, etc). If you’ve been living off of LOW CALORIES, your body adapts and down regulates hormones. Using reverse dieting helps your body return to homeostasis.
Here are my top recommendations that I use with my clients when Reverse Dieting:
✔️Download Abby’s Guidebook- How to Lose Fat, Gain Muscle, Improve Body Composition.
✔️Determine how much you’re actually eating. Do this via tracking food on a free App like Cronometer or MyFitness Pal for at least 1-2 weeks (this is Point A).
✔️Determine what your maintenance calories are. Refer to the Guidebook to determine your maintenance needs (this is Point Z).
✔️Gradually increase from Point A to Point Z by ~100-200 calories every 1-2 weeks and pay attention to biofeedback (energy, sleep, performance, hunger/cravings/fullness).
✔️Slow, gradual increases in calories helps to prevent unwanted weight/fat gain.
✔️Track your weight.
✔️ You need to truly TEST (and push) your maintenance calories vs just going off a calculator. For example: My maintenance calories are estimated ~2200 calories BUT my actual maintenance is 2600 calories. The goal is to eat the most amount of fuel while maintaining your body weight.
✔️ You have reached maintenance when the scale starts to trend up OR you no longer can eat more food without being uncomfortably full. This was me… I actually increased my calories by over 1000 calories/day to 2600 calories and lost 2 pounds (see pics below) but couldn’t really force myself to eat more food.
✔️Progress pics, clothing, etc. can also be good indicators of progress.
MOST clients that work with us need a Metabolic Restoration Phase (aka: Reverse Diet) to restore their metabolism before we even touch a Fat Loss Phase because of the chronic dieting they’ve done in the past and the adaptations their body made. But by focusing on the restoration phase we improve energy and biofeedback, and this sets them up for success long-term. It also puts you in a better position going into a diet because you’ll be able to diet off of more calories.
