What Happens After a DIET? The WHY and HOW to Reverse Dieting

This is a concept often described as “the diet after the diet.”

We have established that it's NOT NORMAL to be on a diet FOREVER. Check out "3 Reasons Why JUST Eating Less And Exercising More Doesn't Work" to learn more. 

If you have been under-eating for years, and would like to increase your energy levels  and recover both your metabolism and hormonal function, while still maintaining your weight and body composition

- then reverse dieting might be a way for you to come out of this pattern.

It is a controversial topic, as some claim that reverse dieting can be an effective method to ramp up weight loss in between periods of "dieting". Since it boosts your body's ability to burn energy, the naysayers dismiss it as unnecessary and ineffective.

I find that it is very helpful when working with clients to find the glorified BALANCE and develop a better relationship with food. I described the approach briefly in a previous post, but let's dive more in depth with the research and HOW TO. Hopefully, once you have read this post, you will have a better idea of how you can approach your road to recovery from a long diet.

What is reverse dieting & How Does it Work?

In its simplest form, reverse dieting involves gradually increasing calorie intake after dieting in an effort to boost metabolism. It 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 restore its normal functions and burn more calories throughout the day.

This is popular among anyone that has followed a low calorie diet for a while. This is a "protocol or method" used by those looking to return to a normal eating pattern without gaining extra weight or fat by allowing the metabolism to play catch up.

Some advocates of the plan also claim that it can boost energy levels, reduce hunger, and help break through plateaus that happen along bigger weight-loss journeys.

Most diets involve decreasing calorie intake to create a calorie deficit, meaning that you’re consuming fewer than you’re burning. Over time, your body starts to adapt, slowing down your metabolism in an effort to conserve energy

This can become problematic when you’re ready to return to a normal diet but want to maintain your weight — or when you hit a weight loss plateau and are unable to further cut calories.

How to reverse diet

Reverse dieting typically involves increasing calorie intake by 50–100 calories per week above your baseline, which is the number of calories you’re currently consuming to maintain your weight.

This period lasts 4–10 weeks, or until you reach your target, pre-diet intake.

Because protein needs are typically calculated for body weight rather than calorie consumption, your protein intake can remain the same throughout the diet.

Benefits of Reverse Dieting: What Happens Inside Your Body:

Increasing your calorie intake may boost your metabolism, and help your body burn more through non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), which includes everyday actions like walking, talking, and fidgeting. You may also experience feeling warmer, and no longer struggle with cold hands and feet as the body starts having more energy readily available.

In addition, reverse dieting helps normalise levels of circulating hormones, first to mention are two friends called leptin and ghrelin. They are the hunger hormones that regulate appetite and through that your body weight. What this means is that by increasing your intake, you will STOP feeling hungry all the time since there becomes a balance in circulation of those hormones.

Your reproductive hormones are also very sensitive to low calorie intake, and increasing food intake, especially increasing fat in your diet will result in better circulation of testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. Stabilizing your period if you are female, often bringing it back if it has been missing for some time and for men boosting performance, sleep quality and sex drive. You may feel an increase in sex drive as you start to increase food intake, change in your skin as you get rid of blemishes and spots that have been bothering you (or in some cases start getting spots if you have been low on testosterone for a long time).

Your mood, focus and energy might change, as your brain has more energy available you will experience going through your day´s with more energy reserve. Like having fuel left in the tank at the end of a road trip. You might actually be able to do more - take on new projects, socialise after work or find the motivation to go to the gym!

But How Does it work for further weight loss?

Currently, research is limited on the effects of reverse dieting. Most of its benefits are only backed up by anecdotal evidence.

That said, increasing your calorie intake could boost calorie burning and normalize hormone levels, which should lead to you decreasing your calories slightly for a limited time to lose more weight.

But because calorie restriction always reduces NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis) as well as leptin levels, it stands to reason that gradually increasing your intake may take long and only have a very slow reverse effect on these.

Reverse dieting is also useful to reduce the risk of overeating, and binge eating which both are a common issue  those on highly restrictive diets. I find with clients, it works really well to ease your transition back to a normal diet - and to maintain a sense for what NORMAL eating is vs. a SHORT restrictive diet.

Challenges of Reverse Dieting: Why it can be hard to implement.

Reverse dieting is not just a walk in the park, it has its own challenges and downsides.

It can be hard to execute

Although many tools like MyFitness Pal, Hand Portions and Meal Delivery can estimate your prime calorie range, it can be very difficult to calculate precise needs and intake.

This makes it pretty challenging to increase your intake by small increments of 50–100 calories each week, as reverse dieting recommends, as this is a very subtle change in your portions sizes almost just 1 extra potato with your dinner pr week.

In fact, large studies show that people typically underestimate the calorie content of a meal by up to 259 calories, which may end up hindering the progress while reverse dieting - where the increase is almost TOO MUCH pr week.

Focuses on calories

One issue with reverse dieting is that it focuses solely on calorie intake without taking other factors into consideration. Weight loss is incredibly complex, with many components playing a role. Not only do various micro and macro nutrients impact metabolism, hunger, and appetite differently, but factors like sleep, stress, and hormone fluctuations also affect body weight and need to be taken into consideration

Lack of research

All in all, very little research supports reverse dieting. Most of it is built up around best practice, case reports and anecdotal evidence because that is all that exists. 

The bottom line

Reverse dieting involves gradually increasing your calorie intake to boost metabolism and prevent weight regain after dieting. It may also increase energy levels and reduce hunger.

Although it can be slightly difficult to execute and focuses solely on calories without taking other factors into consideration. What’s more, a lack of research makes it challenging to evaluate its effectiveness.

While it’s unclear if reverse dieting works - we could sit around and wait a decade for better science or, try to take the best action we can with the best knowledge we have and conduct our own experiment on our own bodies.

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