Reverse Dieting?

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FitnessLover001
FitnessLover001 Posts: 188 Member
in Food and Nutrition
What's everyone's thoughts on reverse dieting? And why did you do reverse dieting?? I've written down a 4 week plan off of iifym.com to try and start so that I will eat at my maintenance calories. I think I've hit a plateau and have eating at a deficit for such a long time that my body is just kinda blehhh, and i kinda wanna try this! Who doesn't love food?? :O I'm 4 pounds away from my GW, but i know that the number on the scale will be forever changing for the rest of my life, so I'm not trying to stay with just one number, but more or less keeping myself within a 5 pound range.

I'm currently 122lbs, 5'2", and eat around 1,450-1,540 calories a day. My maintenance calories are around 1900 calories.

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  • freelifter
    freelifter Posts: 4
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    I have heard of people coming off of fitness competitions after months and months of calorie restrictive diets and then get some pretty good gains the month after once they start eating a caloric surplus. So I suppose it must work in some way?? Im not sure how calorie restrictive your diet is in comparison to someone in contest prep mode but why not try it out for a few weeks and see how it goes? you can always go back to how your eating now.
  • sculli123
    sculli123 Posts: 1,221 Member
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    I'm reversing right now, on week #2. I will add 100 cals a day each week. Enjoying it so far, I woke up looking leaner than my AVI this morning which is 2 weeks old. I'm going to keep going with the reverse until I hit maintainance. At that point I will stick at that for a couple of weeks until mid or late October when I will start a lean bulk until my next cut which will be sometime in late January.
  • FitnessLover001
    FitnessLover001 Posts: 188 Member
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    I'm reversing right now, on week #2. I will add 100 cals a day each week. Enjoying it so far, I woke up looking leaner than my AVI this morning which is 2 weeks old. I'm going to keep going with the reverse until I hit maintainance. At that point I will stick at that for a couple of weeks until mid or late October when I will start a lean bulk until my next cut which will be sometime in late January.

    Glad to hear that you like it! But did you mean 100 calories each week, or 100 calories a day (700 calorie increase each week?)
  • sculli123
    sculli123 Posts: 1,221 Member
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    I'm reversing right now, on week #2. I will add 100 cals a day each week. Enjoying it so far, I woke up looking leaner than my AVI this morning which is 2 weeks old. I'm going to keep going with the reverse until I hit maintainance. At that point I will stick at that for a couple of weeks until mid or late October when I will start a lean bulk until my next cut which will be sometime in late January.

    Glad to hear that you like it! But did you mean 100 calories each week, or 100 calories a day (700 calorie increase each week?)

    100 calories to my daily intake and increase weekly. So 700 calories increase a week total. I ended my cut on 2000 calories a day. Now I'm eating 2200 calories a day 2 weeks later. My TDEE is around 2700 so during this time I'm still losing weight / fat just slower than when on 2000 cals a day obviosly. In 5 more weeks I'll be at maintainance and will stick there for probably a month or so before I start actually bulking..
  • FitnessLover001
    FitnessLover001 Posts: 188 Member
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    Oh okay! I gotcha. I wasn't sure if that was a typo or correct haha. So for this to work should I keep up with my same workout routine and just add more calories a day to meet my macros..? want to be sure I have this right
  • yjackson08
    yjackson08 Posts: 12 Member
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    Oh okay! I gotcha. I wasn't sure if that was a typo or correct haha. So for this to work should I keep up with my same workout routine and just add more calories a day to meet my macros..? want to be sure I have this right

    Depends on what you want to do. Some people train differently during a cut than they would at maintenance or bulking. A person bulking wants add muscle, so instead of doing supersets, circuits and HIIT, they might opt for high weight/low rep weightlifting and low-intensity cardio, if any cardio at all.

    If you want to stay close to the same weight, eat at your maintenance while you do the same workout and see what happens. The key with reverse dieting, even if you don't know your maintenance calories, is adding slowly until you notice you aren't losing weight anymore. That's your maintenance. Of course, that will fluctuate a tad bit if you happen to burn more calories some days than others.
  • sculli123
    sculli123 Posts: 1,221 Member
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    Depends on what you want to do. Some people train differently during a cut than they would at maintenance or bulking. A person bulking wants add muscle, so instead of doing supersets, circuits and HIIT, they might opt for high weight/low rep weightlifting and low-intensity cardio, if any cardio at all.

    If you want to stay close to the same weight, eat at your maintenance while you do the same workout and see what happens. The key with reverse dieting, even if you don't know your maintenance calories, is adding slowly until you notice you aren't losing weight anymore. That's your maintenance. Of course, that will fluctuate a tad bit if you happen to burn more calories some days than others.
    Yeah pretty much agree with this. For me I'm changing my workout because I'm shifting gears into more of an 'athletic mode' to increase performance in the next couple of months. So I will need more calories to fuel my program. Once I get into mid-October I'll switch again into full powerlifting prep mode on my bulk though.

    I always train for a specific task I'm trying to accomplish. So right now I'm focussed on my APFT which is in October. So mostly looking to increase speed and endurance. I'll probably get even leaner in the process even though that's not my main focus anymore.

    Once I get through that I'm training for a powerlifting competition in December.
  • yjackson08
    yjackson08 Posts: 12 Member
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    Depends on what you want to do. Some people train differently during a cut than they would at maintenance or bulking. A person bulking wants add muscle, so instead of doing supersets, circuits and HIIT, they might opt for high weight/low rep weightlifting and low-intensity cardio, if any cardio at all.

    If you want to stay close to the same weight, eat at your maintenance while you do the same workout and see what happens. The key with reverse dieting, even if you don't know your maintenance calories, is adding slowly until you notice you aren't losing weight anymore. That's your maintenance. Of course, that will fluctuate a tad bit if you happen to burn more calories some days than others.
    Yeah pretty much agree with this. For me I'm changing my workout because I'm shifting gears into more of an 'athletic mode' to increase performance in the next couple of months. So I will need more calories to fuel my program. Once I get into mid-October I'll switch again into full powerlifting prep mode on my bulk though.

    I always train for a specific task I'm trying to accomplish. So right now I'm focussed on my APFT which is in October. So mostly looking to increase speed and endurance. I'll probably get even leaner in the process even though that's not my main focus anymore.

    Once I get through that I'm training for a powerlifting competition in December.

    Good luck to you, brother-in-arms!

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