IF YOU’VE JUST completed a successful diet, you’re probably ready to dive right into all the pizza, pasta, and pastries you’ve been missing out on. Of course, though, you don’t want to spoil all your progress. There’s a smarter way to ease yourself off your diet: reverse dieting.
“Reverse dieting is a gradual increase in calorie intake following a period of caloric restriction, often used for weight loss,” explains Aderet Dana Hoch, R.D. “After reaching a target weight, this method helps support a stronger metabolism and continued weight management by slowly adding calories every few weeks.”
This practice is commonly practiced among athletes, often bodybuilders and those who participate in sports with weight classes, such as wrestling.
Here, dietitians explain what reverse dieting is, who needs to do it, as well as tips on how to best reverse diet.
What is reverse dieting?
Reversing dieting implies the existence of regular dieting—which, at its most basic, is the state of being in a calorie deficit, or taking in less calories than your body is burning. This is what causes fat loss. When dieting is over, the reverse diet is the idea that you can add in more calories to your daily intake without fat gain.
To do that, you have to increase in tiny increments—typically adding anywhere from 30 to 100 calories a week for a few weeks until you get back to your newfound baseline. For those not used to counting, this is a very tiny amount of calories. A spoonful of yogurt, a half an apple, or one to two bites of chicken, are all roughly 30 calories, says Leslie Bonci, R.D.N., M.P.H., and sports dietician for the Kansas City Chiefs.
Why reverse diet?
There’s two main reasons people reverse diet.
The first, is to attempt to combat a weight loss plateau.
Our bodies will adapt to how many calories we consume and how much energy we are burning as a protective mechanism (to prepare for starvation, or whatever else could happen next). They act as guardrails to our weight in either direction—to make sure you don’t gain too much weight, but also so you don’t lose too much weight.
Think about it: Your body doesn’t want to waste away, so it adapts its energy expenditure to be lower, since it’s getting less energy from food. So, your deficit becomes less of a deficit since you’re not burning as much, causing you to stop losing weight.
“I don’t have enough energy in my body right now, so I have to figure out a way to survive with less energy,” says Don Saladino, Men’s Health advisor and celebrity trainer. Our bodies do this, in part, by stopping our non-exercise activity thermogenesis. These are the tiny movements we do throughout the day, such as fidgeting and shaking our legs when we’re nervous.
When you eat very little, your body will stop this kind of movement, so that it doesn’t expend too many calories in an effort to conserve energy. By adding more calories, in small doses, your body will increase its activity, and thus calorie burn, because it feels safe as it gets more energy.
“Gradually and slowly increasing calories after weight loss rather than a rapid increase in calories can help to prevent the decrease in resting energy expenditure which would allow those who have lost weight to eat more without the consequence of weight regain,” says Bonci.
While many people struggle to combat weight loss plateaus, Bonci says these struggles are completely normal, and there’s no scientific evidence that reverse dieting will work when it comes to getting to the other side of the plateau.
“Body fat loss is a series of steps, not a slide,” Bonci says. She recommends focusing on the quality of your diet rather than the caloric number to ensure body fat goals. This means monitoring fluid, fiber, and protein intake, she says, as calorie intake can be too arbitrary for most.
The other reason reverse dieting is used is to slowly come off a big calorie deficit. This is common in the world of bodybuilding, and weight class athletes. Often, per the nature of their professions, these athletes are required to hold themselves into a super strict deficit.
“[Their diet] is going to affect recovery. It’s going to affect sleep quality. It’s going to affect mood,” says Saladino. “[It will affect] the way you move, and your energy throughout a workout.”
It’s like getting into a cold pool one step at a time. If you spend some time at each step, your body will adapt to the cold. If you dive in head first, your body is going to start shivering and your extremities will ache almost immediately.
Adding in food one step at a time will help prevent any shock to the system.
How do you reverse diet?
There’s a few schools of thought as to what the best way to go about reverse dieting is. It’s mostly dependent on what your diet looked like before you planned to exit.
Bodybuilders and athletes typically track macronutrients rather than calorie intake, because they need to ensure proper protein intake to build muscle for their sport. Saladino recommends adding in foods by increasing your macros allowance a little bit at a time. So, when reverse dieting, someone may add in maybe 10 grams of carbs, 10 grams of protein, and 3 grams of fat each week to your diet. This adds about 107 calories to your daily allowance.
If you’re not a macro tracker, and you prefer to diet in reference to calories, it’s typical to add in about 30 to 50 calories a week on a reverse diet. Again, calorie intake can be difficult to envision and is too arbitrary for most, so Bonci recommends adding food that “fill up, not out.”
This means aiming for volume in your added calories. Veggies such as celery, tomatoes, and broccoli all have high water content that will help keep you full throughout the day. Bonci recommends foods like salads, vegetable soups, and veggies with salsa to fill up.
Does reverse dieting work?
Everybody is different, and needs different things.
If you’re in training for a bodybuilding competition, or are aiming to make a certain weight class in boxing or wrestling, reverse dieting may be an option if you’re strictly controlling your intake.
But, if you’re an average person just looking to lose some body fat and gain some confidence, Bonci recommends more positive metrics for determining diet. That means keeping full with healthy, whole foods, ensuring proper protein intake, and hydration.
“Think progress rather than suppress, with awareness, quality, quantity and consistency as a way of optimizing body composition through lean mass preservation,” she says.
Whoever you are, and whatever you’re training for, speaking with a nutritionist or physician before coming out of any diet is always the way to go.
3 Tips to Start Reverse Dieting
Take it slow
If hopping on the reverse diet bandwagon, Hoch says to increase your calorie intake gradually each week, aiming for about 50 extra calories weekly (or what is recommended to you by a healthcare professional as this is not uniform), but adjust based on how your body responds. “Extend this process over weeks or months until you reach your maintenance calorie goal.”
Be mindful of diet quality
Though you may be craving that pizza and pasta, be aware of the quality of the foods you’re eating.
“Pay attention to where your calories come from by focusing on balanced macronutrients,” says Hoch. “Aim for a good mix of protein, fiber, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates to support steady weight management.”
Monitor your progress
Unlike other realms of nutrition, reverse dieting isn’t exactly a popular field of scientific inquiry.
“Since research on reverse dieting is limited, remember that everyone’s body responds differently,” says Hoch. That’s why the dietitian recommends tracking your weight, energy levels, and other relevant metrics to monitor your progress and make adjustments as needed as you pursue a reverse diet and/or decide if it’s for you.
