reverse dieting?

megtulip10

Hello,
I am an 20 year old female, 5"0 and 125 lbs. I lost just over 35lbs from March - October eating 1200 calories and have been maintaining since. I've been at college so haven't really been tracking but have kept up running 4 times a week for 5-10km whilst the gyms were shut.

I still would like to lose 5-10lbs as I am still at the upper end of the BMI scale and carry fat on my stomach. However, I've been eating 1500 calories since 27th December and have lost no weight. I've taken progress pictures and see no changes. I've been going to the gym 5 times a week and running twice a week too. I don't want to go back to restricting to 1200 calories as I found the process quite hard, and did result in some binges when I stopped dieting. I've been reading up on reverse dieting and am wondering whether this is the answer?
If I slowly increase my calories from 1500 by 50-100 a week, until I stop maintaining and start gaining, then supposedly I should have increased my metabolism and be able to cut on a higher amount of calories. Has anyone tried this with any success?
Thank you!
Meg x

callsitlikeiseeit

megtulip10 wrote: »

Hello,
haven't really been tracking

I still would like to lose 5-10lbs as I am still at the upper end of the BMI scale and carry fat on my stomach.

you have the answer there. if you're not tracking, especially if eating college food and not items you prepared yourself, you are likely eating more than you think you are.

with that little to lose, it is a slow process. tracking and logging has to be METICULOUS. you can not spot reduce.

lots of good info on this thread: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1161603/so-you-want-a-nice-stomach/p1

megtulip10

callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »

megtulip10 wrote: »

Hello,
haven't really been tracking

I still would like to lose 5-10lbs as I am still at the upper end of the BMI scale and carry fat on my stomach.

you have the answer there. if you're not tracking, especially if eating college food and not items you prepared yourself, you are likely eating more than you think you are.

with that little to lose, it is a slow process. tracking and logging has to be METICULOUS. you can not spot reduce.

lots of good info on this thread: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1161603/so-you-want-a-nice-stomach/p1

Sorry if I wasn't clear - I wasn't tracking from October - December. Since being home and starting my new diet of 1500 calories (from Dec 27th), I've been weighing and tracking everything. Due to COVID, I'm not returning to college this semester so I'm able to continue weighing everything.

thisvickyruns

megtulip10 wrote: »

callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »

megtulip10 wrote: »

Hello,
haven't really been tracking

I still would like to lose 5-10lbs as I am still at the upper end of the BMI scale and carry fat on my stomach.

you have the answer there. if you're not tracking, especially if eating college food and not items you prepared yourself, you are likely eating more than you think you are.

with that little to lose, it is a slow process. tracking and logging has to be METICULOUS. you can not spot reduce.

lots of good info on this thread: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1161603/so-you-want-a-nice-stomach/p1

Sorry if I wasn't clear - I wasn't tracking from October - December. Since being home and starting my new diet of 1500 calories, I've been weighing and tracking everything. Due to COVID, I'm not returning to college this semester so I'm able to continue weighing everything.

If you're weighing and measuring everything and not losing weight, then 1500 cals is your maintenance.

That being said, we are only on 11th January, so 11 days isn't really long enough to say its not working. Give it 4 to 6 weeks, if you haven't lost any weight, try 1400 cals.

tinkerbellang83

megtulip10 wrote: »

Hello,
I am an 20 year old female, 5"0 and 125 lbs. I lost just over 35lbs from March - October eating 1200 calories and have been maintaining since. I've been at college so haven't really been tracking but have kept up running 4 times a week for 5-10km whilst the gyms were shut.

I still would like to lose 5-10lbs as I am still at the upper end of the BMI scale and carry fat on my stomach. However, I've been eating 1500 calories since 27th December and have lost no weight. I've taken progress pictures and see no changes. I've been going to the gym 5 times a week and running twice a week too. I don't want to go back to restricting to 1200 calories as I found the process quite hard, and did result in some binges when I stopped dieting. I've been reading up on reverse dieting and am wondering whether this is the answer?
If I slowly increase my calories from 1500 by 50-100 a week, until I stop maintaining and start gaining, then supposedly I should have increased my metabolism and be able to cut on a higher amount of calories. Has anyone tried this with any success?
Thank you!
Meg x

If this bit is new or more intense than normal, you're likely retaining some water from that too.

As @callsitlikeiseeit the last 5-10lbs is very slow and water retention will more often than not mask any loss.

and as @thisvickyruns points out just over 2 weeks is not enough time to judge if any progress has been made (you're not going to see much in the way of difference in photos in that short a length of time), if you're female you ideally need a full cycle to compare your progress to the same point in your cycle.

sijomial

If you increase your daily cals by 100 and your weight trends upwards by a pound in 35 days you will get confirmation that your current calories are indeed your maintenance calories.

If you suspect you have adapted to a lower number and are more lethargic, low on energy, feeling the cold, your exercise performance is suppressed it's a simple experiment to run to see if increasing CI has an impact on increasing your CO.

Personal experience was that simply eating at maintenance levels for a couple of months was enough to reverse a little bit of adaptive thermogenesis and I started to lose weight on what was initiallly my maintenance calorie level.

On the dropping to 1200 cals issue to lose weight just keep in mind when losing a few vanity pounds any number under your maintenance level works, just the timescales change. There's also no compulsion to restrict every day or every week. You can think of it as nibbling away some calories instead of going back to "diet mode".