Reverse dieting

stuart29

Hi this is along shot .im 33 male . I have been on diet for nearly 2 years I have lost half my body weight. I was 150kg now I am 67kg. I need know how to reverse diet and bulk as I want to build my body with good muscle

watts6151

Unless your stage lean you don’t really
Need to reverse diet, just eat at your new maintenance calories, then slowly up them

giancarlov1191

I did a reverse diet this year as I transferred to a bulk, what do you want to know?

sardelsa

When I'm coming out of a cut, I slowly add about 100-150 cals every week until I hit maintenance and track my weight with a trend weight app. If I see huge jumps sometimes I stop adding cals then monitor.

pdmatthews

After two years I would slowly bring cals up as mentioned above as you don’t really know what your maintenance is any more. I also reverse dieted after a prolonged cut - I took about 4 months to get back to maintenance (where scale didn’t move). Held that for another month or so and now am in roughly 100 cal surplus and gaining nice and slowly.

A big jump in calories now and I think you will gain a lot of bodyfat especially if you are very lean

I’m making assumption you are weight training as well

ElizabethKalmbach

Do you guys drop cardio as you add calories? I read somewhere that you should, but I'm not sure if that's relevant to those who enjoy it (or have an active life/job)?

I'm in a completely weird situation where this subject is of interest and possibly applicable for me with a bit of tweaking.

middlehaitch

ElizabethKalmbach wrote: »

Do you guys drop cardio as you add calories? I read somewhere that you should, but I'm not sure if that's relevant to those who enjoy it (or have an active life/job)?

I'm in a completely weird situation where this subject is of interest and possibly applicable for me with a bit of tweaking.

You shouldn’t have to drop your cardio to reverse diet, just make sure you are fully fuelling it.

As far as I know, and have experienced, reverse dieting is slowly pushing your maintenance cal level above your initial maintenance cal level while still maintaining weight.

I realize this is a different view than some mentioned above where one is raising cals from a deficit to maintenance or bulk.

Cheers, h.

Audreyonfire

A great YouTube series on Reverse Dieting is on High Fat High Fun's YouTube channel. He has a series with a great coach on his Reverse Diet. I'm currently on week one of my reverse diet. I know that it's not easy to wrap your head around this when you're used to dieting. It's a little scary, but it works and long term success is what it's all about, right?

LucijaJadera

And how much were you guys and girls adding on the base of a week? And how much have you gained weight?

PAV8888

LucijaJadera wrote: »

And how much were you guys and girls adding on the base of a week? And how much have you gained weight?

Are you seeking to gain weight, or are you at the tail end of a deficit time period and looking to find your maintenance level? Are you trying to strength train, build muscle, or to maintain your current physique?
How long were you "cutting" for? How much weight did you drop in total?
How much have you been eating on average during the past 4 to 6 weeks?
How much did you weight trend change during this time period?
How often do you weight yourself and are you using a weight trend app?

I have seldom seen articulated a compelling narrative as to why we should use small increments in seeking the lowest level of potential maintenance.

Any immediate gains at that minimum potential maintenance level are water weight, not fat related. So the only gains that would truly need to be evaluated would be persistent increases in one's weight trend when one pushes ABOVE that minimum potential maintenance level.

Thus, my personal take would be an immediate jump to the minimum potential maintenance level which is the one that would be supported by food logging in conjunction with the last couple of months of losses.

Full maintenance would be, quite likely, higher than that. But it would be AT LEAST that. After that initial immediate jump, then the remainder jumps / push to increase maintenance would be done using smaller increments.

The first initial jump to reflect recent eating and losses has to be done anyway regardless of scale consequences (see water weight discussion above). So there is no reason to mess around hesitating about it.

Beyond maintenance, if bulking, generally, one would try to maximize performance while minimizing fat gain. So I would think a weight trend increase rate not exceeding 0.5lbs a week would provide a good balance between energy availability and fat minimization. Unless maybe for a male in his early 20s! But people who have actually done this are probably better suited to answering this part!