By: Chris Gates

So you’ve just finished a cutting phase, and you want to eat more calories.

How should you do it?

Is there a right or wrong approach?

What’s the blueprint on how to reverse diet after cutting?

You’ve come to the right place, because in this article I’ll map out everything you need to know about how to reverse diet, and how to manage your nutrition successfully now that your fat loss phase has ended.

Because transitioning out of a cut can be weird.

• You’ve been dieting for a while, so you’re probably worried about losing your progress.
• And if you eat more calories, you’ll probably worry about gaining body fat.
• Not to mention the fact that, depending on how long you’ve been dieting, eating more calories may actually be pretty challenging.

But there’s a way to do it so that you’re able to maintain all of the hard work you’ve put in to losing body fat, while at the same time build more flexibility into your diet.

So if you’re ready to learn more, let’s dive in to how to reverse diet after cutting.

What is A Reverse Diet?

Before we map out an action plan, let’s define what a reverse diet actually is.

Because I think there’s a lot of confusion and misinformation throughout the fitness industry about reverse dieting, and what it does.

• A reverse diet is NOT magic.
• It’s not a strategy that allows you to eat more calories and continue to see fat melt away.
• You’re not going to “trick” your metabolism, or confuse your body, and find a way to defeat energy balance.

Nope.

Calories always matter, and a reverse diet is simply a way to slowly and progressively bring you out of a calorie deficit.

Reverse diets typically happen after you finish a cut, or fat loss phase. It’s a tool that allows you to eat more, while not packing on an excessive amount of body fat.

The goal of a reverse diet is to get you back to right around your maintenance level of calories. And if you don’t know what that means, check out my article on how to estimate your maintenance calories to learn more.

Rather than immediately go from a calorie deficit right to maintenance, a reverse diet will help you take smaller steps to get there. And by doing that, you’ll hopefully maintain a leaner body composition along the way.

How to Reverse Diet After Cutting

Now that you know what a reverse diet is, let’s talk about how to do it.

First and foremost, you should track your diet. That’s a really important piece to this process.

You need to know…

1. How many calories you ate while cutting.
2. Your maintenance calories.

If you haven’t tracked your calories, or if you’re vehemently opposed to doing it, that’s OK. You can still attempt a reverse diet. But you also need to understand that your results may be less efficient, or suboptimal.

But if you have been tracking, and you know your calories in a deficit, then half of the work is done for you.

You’ll just need to figure out your maintenance, and that’s easy! Because I have a free calorie calculator that will tell you exactly what your maintenance calories, protein, carbs, and fats are.

With your deficit and maintenance calories set, all you need to do is figure out how many steps you want to take from one to the other.

Let me share my own personal reverse dieting example with you, so you can see how it all comes together.

How to Reverse Diet After Cutting: My Reverse Diet

In the spring, I did a four-week mini cut that was a huge success. I dropped nearly 6 pounds of body fat and 1.5 inches off my waistline in 28 days.

After that mini cut, I took another four weeks to reverse diet out of the deficit to maintenance.

Before my mini cut began, I was maintaining on around 2,750 calories per day. During the mini cut, I was eating 2,250 calories per day.

So the process was pretty simple. I needed to figure out a way to progressively increase my calories from 2,250 to around 2,750.

Here’s how I did it…

• Step 1: I increased my calories from 2,250 a day to 2,500 a day for two weeks.
• Step 2: I increased my calories from 2,500 a day to 2,750 a day for weeks three and four.

Rather than adding 500 calories back into my diet overnight, I chose to split up that 500-calorie increase into two steps.

These two smaller steps allowed me to have more flexibility in my diet, but at the same time it was mentally and physically a bit more enjoyable.

I didn’t feel super bloated by adding a humongous amount of calories into my diet at once. Mentally, I wasn’t worried about whether or not I was increasing too fast, or adding too much back into my diet, either.

And physically, my body composition remained largely the same. In fact, I even hit a new low weight during the second week of the reverse diet.

How to Reverse Diet After Cutting: What to Expect

Many people expect a reverse diet after cutting to radically change their relationship with fitness and food.

A common misconception is that the reverse diet will somehow allow you to eat more food while continuing to lose body fat.

And that’s really not true.

Sometimes you’ll notice that you continue to lose weight at the beginning of a reverse diet, but that’s only because you’re still eating in a calorie deficit.

If we go back to my example above, I hit a new low weigh-in during week two of my reverse diet. At that point I was eating 250 calories more, but at 2,500 calories daily I still wasn’t all the way back to maintenance.

Once I added the second batch of 250 calories, my weight stabilized.

You can expect something similar to happen if you reverse diet the right way. The scale may seems surprising, or weird, but you have to remain consistent.

There are so many things that cause the scale to fluctuate. You can’t get too wrapped up in those daily flucutations.

All of the following can lead to your weight changing by several pounds day to day:

• Calories in.
• Calories out.
• Food weight in your digestive tract.
• More carbs.
• More sodium.
• Bowel movements (or lack thereof).
• Sleep quality.
• Stress.
• Hydration status.

For instance, right before I hit that new low weigh-in during my reverse diet, I hit a high of 175.4 pounds. Forty eight hours later, I was down to 173.8 pounds.

Keep consistent, no matter what the scale says. And track the long-term trend.

Don’t get wrapped up in the day-to-day peaks and valleys.

How to Reverse Diet After Cutting: A Quick and Easy Checklist

We’ve covered a lot ground at this point. Let’s piece together a quick checklist that summarizes how to reverse diet after cutting.

Bookmark this page, or take a screenshot and save this rundown so you can easily access it.

1. Track your calories. Know how many calories you ate in a deficit, and use my free calculator to set up your maintenance calories.
2. Outline how many steps to take from your calorie deficit to maintenance.
3. Give each one of those steps 1-2 weeks before adding more calories back into your diet.
4. As you add calories back in, continue to track your diet and be diligent.
5. In addition to stepping on the scale, take waist measurements and progress photos to get a more comprehensive view of your progress.
6. Once you reach maintenance, stay there for a little while before beginning another dieting phase.

It’s a pretty simple process that involves attention to detail and discipline.

Anybody can do this, and if you follow those steps in the checklist you’ll have a successful reverse diet!

Avoid These Reverse Diet Mistakes!

The process of reverse dieting can be pretty fun, considering it’s a strategy that allows you to eat more food.

But it can also pretty easily get you in trouble if you’re not paying attention.

A common pitfall on a reverse diet is treating an additional 100-200 calories like 1,000-2,000.

The simple concept of “now you can eat more,” can lead you down the path of eating far more than intended.

And it makes a ton of sense. You just got out of a calorie deficit. You spent a long time dieting and losing body fat…

Now you want to EAT!

But if you want to do this reverse diet thing the right way, and not take on an excessive amount of body fat, you need to continue being diligent.

Keep tracking your food. Keep paying attention to the details.

And keep up with the healthy choices you made in your fat loss phase, too. Many people treat a reverse diet as an opportunity to eat a bunch of indulgences again.

You go from eating mostly whole, nutritious foods to bringing all kinds of foods “you weren’t allowed to have” back into the picture.

That’s going to make this process tough.

Stick to the high-volume, highly nutritious foods, and slowly increase the portion sizes of those types of foods over time.

Lastly, don’t overreact to the scale. As we just talked about, it’s going to fluctuate. Just accept that now, and don’t let it get to you.

I Hope This Helped!

Thanks so much for stopping by and reading this article! I hope you found it helpful 🙂

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to comment below. I’d be happy to help.

And if you’re looking for some help on your fitness journey, I’d love to work with you! I coach people all over the world to build muscle, burn fat, and make progress with fitness that sticks.

Check out my coaching page to learn more about online coaching, and if you’re interested in chatting about your goals go ahead and submit a coaching application.

Thanks again!

Have a great day 🙂

~ Chris