How does one reverse diet?

alondrakayy

Trying to reverse diet to maintenance cals after being in a caloric deficit for 12 weeks. Tips/advice/articles appreciated.

sijomial

Increase your calories either quickly or slowly to estimated maintenance levels. There's a few different ways to estimate but I think your own recent rate of loss is the easiest.

Make adjustments over an extended period of time to fine tune.

Don't react to fluctuations - look for the trend.

You can also try after you have found maintenance levels an experiment to see if you can eat slightly more than that without weight gain. (Sometimes people's NEAT down-regulates in a calorie deficit and eating more brings it back up again.)

LiftHeavyThings27105

^^^^^^^what he said!

quiksylver296

Add a specific number of calories to your day, say 100. Watch what happens with your weight. Still losing? Add another 100 calories per day. Rinse and repeat until you are no longer losing weight.

LiftHeavyThings27105

But, to give more details....

Let's say that your maintenance is 1,800 calories. And, let's say that you are currently at 1,300 calories.

You would pick a time frame in which you will reverse diet to your maintenance calories from your current place. I like to - generally speaking - take the slow route but there is evidence now that suggests going faster has advantages. I can not find the articles now.

So, you add calories to your current macros until you finally reach your maintenance. So, for the first jump you might simply add 65 calories.

So, you are now eating 1365 calories. Find that macro breakdown that works best for you. Now, for a little bit of detail.....in a cut you generally increase protein. You might want to consider lowering protein intake at this point or not. At some point in time you will likely decrease protein a little bit. Of the other two macro-nutrients, most people are going to likely increase carbs. But, find what works best for you based on what satiates you best.

You might sit at 1365 for a week or you might sit there for two weeks. Totally on you. The next increase might be another 65 calories. So, now you are at 1430 for the week. Again, you would increase the individual macros (protein, carbs, fats) to something that fits your style of eating. So, you sit at 1430 for a week, maybe two. Then increase again.

I picked "increase 65 Calories" because that was 5% of your - at the time - current caloric intake. Again, you can go as slow or as fast as you like.

Once you reach your maintenance calories, you might consider sitting there for a week or two.

There was a school of thought that suggested that you reversed dieted for at least as long as your cut.

I like to use a reverse diet to "increase metabolism". What does that mean? Well, for me it means to increase my maintenance.

So, based on this example, you might want to get your maintenance calories up to 2,200 calories. This would put you in a better starting point for several things. I mean, the more you are eating in terms of calories the more play room you have when it is time to cut, right?

The human body has one purpose: to survive. It is amazing how well it adapts to what you give it. So, it can adjust up (with respect to 'metabolism') just as well as it can adjust down (think of the 'cardio bunnies').

Does this help?