Ultimate Guide to Reverse Dieting

Are you tired of going from one diet into another, and then gaining all that fat back in the time in between? Do you think you are gaining weight, even after repeatedly trying to get in shape? Do you wish to stay in shape without having to forego everything you love eating? If you answered yes to these questions, then maybe reverse dieting is the best way for you! So, what is reverse dieting, and why do all these experts back this diet so much? While dieters might not agree on the best meal plan to follow, they will agree that dieting is tough. It takes months to shed a few pounds, and the most challenging part is that you gain all of it back instantly if you fall off the wagon. So, how do you stay fit and ensure you don’t just gain back everything you lost?

Why Do You Gain Weight So Easily?

1. Quite honestly, the human body is quite efficient when it comes to putting on weight. It works as a sort of survival adaptation that helps us survive and not starve when a famine comes along.
2. The body shifts its metabolism rate as and when required by small margins. Therefore, when you restrict yourself, your body adapts and slows down your metabolism to ensure that your stored fat remains safe.
3. Adaptive Thermogenesis works to slow down your metabolism, lowering your daily requirement of calories. This makes it a lot harder to lose weight, and a lot easier to gain it back.
4. The Basal Metabolic Rate determines how many calories you need daily. Hormonal adaptations lead to this falling when you go on a diet, making it very difficult to progressively lose weight.
5. The thermic food effect that food has on your body lowers and becomes less pronounced as you stay on a diet, making it harder to lose weight. 
6. Everything from walking in your house to climbing a bunch of steps helps you lose weight by burning calories. However, the amount you burn also steadily decreases, leading to slower weight loss.
7. Also, dieting cannot help you make permanent changes to your inherent metabolism. Instead, the system just adapts to what is happening around it, and there are no long-term shifts or changes. 

So, How Does Reverse Dieting Help?

Reverse dieting helps you crawl your way back from a diet into a regular routine without gaining too much weight. The best way to do this is to steadily and slowly increase your calorie intake every week until you reach your usual level. This will also help you restore your metabolism, making it easier to avoid gaining weight and fat. However, it requires a lot of patience to pull off, as you will have to slowly go through the steps. 

How To Follow a Reverse Diet

• Make sure you follow a meal plan wherein you get 40% of your daily calorie requirements from proteins, 40% from carbs, and the rest 20% from fats. For instance, if you live on a 2000 calorie daily diet, 800 should come proteins (200 grams), 800 from carbs (200 grams), and 400 from fats (44 grams).
• For your first week, increase your calorie intake by 100 calories only.
• Once you are done with your first week, increment your calorie intake by 50 calories for every other week.
• If you want a more aggressive approach, then make sure you maintain at 100 calorie increases, and not anymore.
• Observe your weight and decrease your calorie increase rate if you start seeing a substantial weight gain.
• Make sure all the changes you make are carefully recorded and slowly implemented so that your metabolism gets enough time to adapt to the change.
• Usually, the entire reverse diet will take around 10 weeks to get back to your regular diet. Once you reach your usual calorie intake level, you can try to bulk up, build lean muscle, or start lifting as you wish.

Reverse Dieting Calorie Plan

What Are the Benefits Of Reverse Dieting?

1. Allows you to enjoy food again 
2. Include more treats as and when you feel like
3. Provides a significant energy boost 
4. Helps you improve your workout sessions
5. Enables you to feel stronger and more fit
6. Allows you to start weight training again 
7. Gain some lean muscle 

Tips On How To Stay On the Reverse Diet

• Primarily, reverse dieting works through the application of the philosophy, “eat more, do more.” 
• Make sure you chart out your macro-intake first so that you have a clear idea of your macronutrient goals.
• Next, you need to decide how quickly you want to add more carbs and fat. If you wish to add more muscle or want to overcome a bad binge-eating habit, try out a more aggressive strategy and up your intake by 100 calories every week.
• If you want a slow diet, increase carb and fat intake by 5%, whereas fast dieters should up their consumption by 8% every week.
• Always weigh yourself in the morning and keep track of it to ensure that you don’t gain too much weight. 
• Weight lifting will do more for muscle building than long sessions of cardio ever will so stick to a plan that makes use of weights. 

Try to pair reverse dieting with weight training to accomplish positive muscle gain. While you might not gain a lot of muscle while on this diet, it will help you keep the muscle you have built. Furthermore, it will also help you from gaining weight or fat. Also, you need to make sure that you track your calories carefully while on a reverse diet. Opt for a tracking app, such as MyFitnessPal, to keep track of what you are feeding your body. Having enough protein is also very important, as this enables you to build lean muscle without gaining weight. Use these little tips and tricks to say goodbye to those pounds that creep back onto you. Make sure you never fall completely off a diet and gain weight, by keeping yourself in check using the Reverse Diet!