Anyone have results with reverse dieting?

bigsistruck

I have just been reading a little about reverse dieting today, and wondered if anyone here has tried it with good results. The reason I looked into it was because the past few weeks I have not been eating my best, and I know I have gone over calorie allowance but I continued working out 3-4 days a week...and I LOST weight. Huh? I have honestly never lost weight before by eating more. A month ago I was working really hard, sticking to my calorie goals and working out 5 days a week and was getting frustrated when my jeans weren't getting any looser. I want to continue this trend and thought maybe trying reverse dieting would be the answer! Thanks all!

shadowofender

I didn't google exactly what this is, but I'm going on what it sounds like.

It's possible you lost weight because you were eating too little previously? The whole eat more to weigh less idea is something I can get behind.

How accurately are you logging btw?

SarcasmIsMyLoveLanguage

what's reverse dieting? Never heard of it.

Kalikel

I eat more some days and less others. I don't really notice any difference.

A LOT of people say that when they have a big increase, they notice a dramatic loss, so there might be something to cycling through periods of more and fewer calories. I don't know.

If it works for you, go for it.

bigsistruck

A short summary is, reverse dieting is where you add 50-100 calories per day each week to your diet until you start gaining. Then you subtract 15% of your calories again to kind of "restart" weight loss. I am very accurate with my calorie counting, but have been doing 1,200 calories so it may have been too low.

icrushit

I'm in the midst of a reverse diet right now. About a month ago I hit my initial goal, and decided to begin to slowly reverse out of my diet at that point. For the last 4 weeks or so, I've been adding 7 calories a day to my intake, which nets to about 50 calories a week, and process-wise I'm very much enjoying eating more. It's actually dove-tailling in with my desire to establish better eating habits, and make peace with food also, but that's mainly due to the extra calories I'm allowing myself.

I don't have results yet, and I'm doing it very slowly, in that I started mid Sept, with the intention of concluding my reverse diet by mid Dec, in time for Christmas. The plan being to enjoy the christmas, but without gaining weight, and then re-evaluate things in the new year, most likely opting for a further fat loss phase, hopefully made easier by the increased calorie maintenance level from the reverse diet.

So, it will be a while before I know how things go, but I shall try remember to report back in here in a few months time, and let you know.

I will say, its something you need the patience for, as you will remain calorie counting effectively for a few months usually. That doesn't bother me, but life is anything but regular right now, and some days my intake is low, although never for more than a day or two at a time, so I don't imagine that will affect things overly, as the net trend remains upward, even if it sometimes is in fits and starts.

I'm not sure where my maintenance calorie level will end up, but I'm hoping it goes up a little from the reverse diet, as my intended form of diet in the new year, is something akin to a 2 day diet each week, where I eat something around 2000 cals for 2 days, then maintenance for the other 5, to take off the remaining lbs

bigsistruck

iloseityes wrote: »

I'm in the midst of a reverse diet right now. About a month ago I hit my initial goal, and decided to begin to slowly reverse out of my diet at that point. For the last 4 weeks or so, I've been adding 7 calories a day to my intake, which nets to about 50 calories a week, and process-wise I'm very much enjoying eating more. It's actually dove-tailling in with my desire to establish better eating habits, and make peace with food also, but that's mainly due to the extra calories I'm allowing myself.

I don't have results yet, and I'm doing it very slowly, in that I started mid Sept, with the intention of concluding my reverse diet by mid Dec, in time for Christmas. The plan being to enjoy the christmas, but without gaining weight, and then re-evaluate things in the new year, most likely opting for a further fat loss phase, hopefully made easier by the increased calorie maintenance level from the reverse diet.

So, it will be a while before I know how things go, but I shall try remember to report back in here in a few months time, and let you know.

I will say, its something you need the patience for, as you will remain calorie counting effectively for a few months usually. That doesn't bother me, but life is anything but regular right now, and some days my intake is low, although never for more than a day or two at a time, so I don't imagine that will affect things overly, as the net trend remains upward, even if it sometimes is in fits and starts.

I'm not sure where my maintenance calorie level will end up, but I'm hoping it goes up a little from the reverse diet, as my intended form of diet in the new year, is something akin to a 2 day diet each week, where I eat something around 2000 cals for 2 days, then maintenance for the other 5, to take off the remaining lbs

That would be great, I would love to hear your results! I will let you know mine as well if I decide to go forward with it!

icrushit

bigsistruck wrote: »

That would be great, I would love to hear your results! I will let you know mine as well if I decide to go forward with it!

No worries, will try remember to report back in two months!

Re: deciding on the reverse diet, it took me about two weeks to make up my mind - it seems it was tough to actually make the decision to stop dietting for a while, even if a reverse diet is quite a slow way to stop, lol

Sam_I_Am77

I haven't read the book on it yet, but I've read the research on Metabolic Adaptation and Body-Fat Overshooting, plus listened to Dr. Norton discuss this and I think the theory is very sound. I know a couple people that fall into his examples of people that hurt their metabolism through restrictive dieting and that experienced body-fat overshooting first-hand. I think it's a very good approach to coming off of a diet and will serve you well in the long-run. I think his colleague Sohei Lee (spelling?) actually wrote the book and I've heard that it's very good; I hope to read it one day soon.

Fizz500d

I've never done it on purpose, but I've had the experience where I was faffing around only half heartedly logging and not eating particularly well so I was staying the same or putting on a bit every weigh in. Then I got serious again and also started focusing on *what* I was eating and not just counting and the scales suddenly shot down, some of that might have been water weight but it continued albeit at a slower pace and I'm consistently loosing.

I like the "fill up on healthy food to loose weight" theory, although I still have to be careful of portion sizes as that was part of what got me in trouble in the first place.

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Runnermadre

It sounds like it's along the same lines as calorie shifting, which I did with a lot of success! When I originally joined MFP, I lost around 30 pounds, but plateaued about half way. I started calorie shifting, and the weight started coming back off again. Your daily calories don't matter as much as your weekly goals. You have high days and low days so you aren't eating the same amount each day. I also eat back my exercise calories (it never slowed me down), and I still stuck with the shifting without an issue. In fact, some days I wouldn't feel like eating back all my calories to hit my goal, so it would be a low day. I could then eat more on a day when I didn't necessarily have as many calories. I don't know if that makes sense or not...

icrushit

Sam_I_Am77 wrote: »

I haven't read the book on it yet, but I've read the research on Metabolic Adaptation and Body-Fat Overshooting, plus listened to Dr. Norton discuss this and I think the theory is very sound. I know a couple people that fall into his examples of people that hurt their metabolism through restrictive dieting and that experienced body-fat overshooting first-hand. I think it's a very good approach to coming off of a diet and will serve you well in the long-run. I think his colleague Sohei Lee (spelling?) actually wrote the book and I've heard that it's very good; I hope to read it one day soon.

Wow, that's one expensive book! Sounds good, but am imagining not too many people will get to read it.

One of the things I did take away from the page pimping it, is that resistance training may be a big component of their whole reverse dieting ideology, as it would seem to be quite important to grant the hormone/ metabolic growth stimulus effects from the reverse dieting, ie the boost in metabolism.

If so, I hope I haven't been wasting my time for the last 4 weeks, as I've been doing little resistance training, just low resistance cardio, and only really incorporating resistance training during the last week or so.

Anyway, thanks for the link, I had not realised a book had been written on the subject

ps its Sohee Lee

icrushit

Runnermadre wrote: »

It sounds like it's along the same lines as calorie shifting

Not so much. Reverse dietting is about upping your daily calories each week in small increments usually, so the overall level of your intake is going up over time. Calorie cycling usually has the same intake, week to week, just the intake on individual days is varied, ie your high days/ low days, etc, but no overall increase in your overall calories over time like reverse dieting.

Glad to hear you've had good success with calorie cycling, its something I plan to dabble with in the new year, when I am tackling those last tricky pounds. From what I've read, it would seem its a good way from keeping the hormone levels from getting out of check, and thus negatively affecting your dieting efforts ala hunger levels/ adherence/ plateaus.

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icrushit

MrM27 wrote: »

The price of that book is absurd. And for an Ebook none the less.

He was very excited to start working with Sophie Lee and I'm sure the book has great information buy no way would I pay 90 bucks.

Yes, think its evidence of an overcrowded market. Reminds me of the photography market, where a lot of the real money is made off of other photographers, rather than selling people images. The $90 pricing would seem to place it firmly levelled at fitness coaches than the actual general fitness market (fitness enthusiasts, et al).

Anyway, I'm hijacking the OP's thread now with something peripheral to the question posed