Reverse Dieting

I've just started one to help my metabolism and get over my plateau, despite being low in calories, so hoping it works and I get more energy to do my sports! Feel free to add as a friend

"Although you won’t find the term in any dictionary, reverse diet is a term used within the bodybuilding and competitive weightlifting communities (aka “bro-science”) to describe a period after a calorically restricted eating protocol during which you slowly work to increase calories back to a maintenance level. Using this strategy, and by assessing progress weekly and tracking increases in body fat in comparison to lean muscle mass, athletes can recover their metabolisms and increase calorie intake with minimal increase in body fat.3

"For the majority of individuals, maintaining an extremely low-calorie diet is not sustainable for long-term health, happiness, and function."

The theory behind the reverse diet is that after prolonged periods of restricted caloric intake the athlete’s metabolism adapts to operate more efficiently. Meaning, the athlete is able to operate at a lower energy expenditure and burn fewer calories.2 If the proper dietary adjustments aren’t made to account for this slow down, the body will store those extra calories in the form of fat."




I guess I'm kind of reverse dieting? As I've lost weight, I've cut my deficit to be smaller and smaller, as is my plan to continue (I'm 19lbs off goal now).

Why does weightlifting and bodybuilding equate "bro-science"?

Layne Norton has a video on YouTube about the rationale behind it. Basically you are trying to slowly bring your calories up after you have been on a cut (and most likely reached your goal physique) to a maintenance level, and bring your metabolic rate up. Carb and fat intake is upped by about 10-20% initially, and then ~2-5% each week after, keeping protein to ~1g/lb. You want to monitor your measurements weekly (scale weight, pictures, and tape measurements) to make sure that you not gaining too much body fat.

The benefits of this are that you can stay within close range to a certain weight or physique, but by doing a slow increase, your metabolism adapts to your new intake, and often people find that they can push their overall intake up quite a bit while still staying very lean.

I'm cutting until the end of June but I'll be reverse dieting after that so let's keep in touch!

livingleanlivingclean wrote: »

mizzlarabee wrote: »

Why does weightlifting and bodybuilding equate "bro-science"?

Layne Norton has a video on YouTube about the rationale behind it. Basically you are trying to slowly bring your calories up after you have been on a cut (and most likely reached your goal physique) to a maintenance level, and bring your metabolic rate up. Carb and fat intake is upped by about 10-20% initially, and then ~2-5% each week after, keeping protein to ~1g/lb. You want to monitor your measurements weekly (scale weight, pictures, and tape measurements) to make sure that you not gaining too much body fat.

The benefits of this are that you can stay within close range to a certain weight or physique, but by doing a slow increase, your metabolism adapts to your new intake, and often people find that they can push their overall intake up quite a bit while still staying very lean.

I'm cutting until the end of June but I'll be reverse dieting after that so let's keep in touch!

Layne reverses veeeeeeeeery slowly from what I can gather (from info online and clients).... I know plenty who recommend doing it a bit quicker. It's not easy, and small increases can be frustrating!

Yeah, I'll just have to play around with it, and see how my body responds. I worked too hard for these abs so I'll probably err on the side of caution in the beginning

Also, I'm not on an aggressive cut so I'm not in a rush to get my calories back up.