Reverse Dieting. What Is It And How Can It Help Me?

There are lots of different ways that people can lose weight and the common theme within all these is a calorie deficit. This allows for you to use you body fat to be used as energy and as a result your total body fat will go down. Now this is very simplified, for more detail see my other blog posts "How To Lose Weight The Right Way and How To Lose Weight The Right Way P2".

While going through reverse dieting you'd be unlikely to see any weight loss and in fact might actually see weight gain. However, the purpose of reverse dieting is not to lose weight immediately, it's purpose is to boost your Total Daily Estimated Expenditure (TDEE). It does this by adding muscle to your frame which is beneficial as muscle is more metabolically active than fat and burns more calories as a result.

The process for reverse dieting is firstly working out your TDEE which is described in the blogs mentioned above. From here we slowly add calories week by week in tiny amounts (10-100 cals). Over this period we monitor your weight and see if you are maintaining your weight at the higher amount of calories. If your weight is increasing a lot then we should reduce the calories you're consuming, we are better off doing this as slowly as possible. This paired with a consistent resistance training protocol is the best method to rebuild someones metabolism, then as a result your body is primed for it's fat loss journey, as you are now burning more calories with less effort and input. This means you have more wiggle room when it comes to plateaus, you'll be eating far more food than your were able to previously so you'll be more satisfied throughout and you're more likely to keep the weight off when you lose it.

If you have any questions on this or want to get in touch with me email me at jacobpttelford@gmail.com.