My diet ended over a week ago, but you might be surprised to learn that I’m barely eating more calories now than I was at the end of my diet.

That’s because i’m on “the diet after the diet” … I’m reverse dieting.

There’s a common and disturbing trend that occurs after people lose weight. You spend a ton of time working hard and staying disciplined during the diet, and once you’ve lost the weight and hit your goal, you celebrate.

And celebrate.

And celebrate some more.

Before you know it, you’ve packed on half the weight you lost because you didn’t structure a plan for after your diet. Now you have to hop another diet to get back to square one.

The process repeats itself over and over, and you either get stuck in constant yo-yo dieting, or you give up altogether, thinking “I just can’t lose weight” or “my metabolism just sucks.”

There’s a way to avoid all of this, and it’s by structuring a reverse diet.

A reverse diet is a systematic approach to methodically introducing more food/calories back into your diet. It’s something that is planned and structured, very similar to how you’d plan or structure a long-term weight loss diet.

Once you’ve hit your goal and lost the weight, you slowly introduce calories (normally carbohydrates and some fat) back into your meals over a period of 2-6 weeks. The length of time and amount of calories you re-introduce will be very person-specific and depend on your previous diet, future goals, lifestyle, habits, and much much more.

Hunger and Your Head

There’s both a physiological element and a psychological element to reverse dieting. Psychologically, you are hungry and just finished a long diet. You want to indulge. That’s OK, but to an extent. Having a coach can help you eliminate poor choices and promote good choices.

The physiological element is related to your body, and its tendency or desire to find a “settling point.” If you jump right back into the diet habits you had prior to losing weight, you’re likely to find you’ll pack the pounds right back on.

Your metabolism slows down as you diet. By slowly introducing calories over time in a reverse diet, you can help bring that metabolism back up to speed. The alternative of adding a ton of calories right back into the diet will likely result in packing on excess body fat, because your metabolism can’t catch up quick enough to utilize that amount of food.

My Reverse Diet

What I like to do is introduce between 100-200 calories every 1-2 weeks until I can find a nice maintenance calorie intake. Normally, after a diet I’m looking to work my way back into a bulking phase, but I’d like to do it by reducing the likelihood of packing on excess amounts of body fat. This time around, I’m planning on an extended weight maintenance phase through the summer.

My goal in a bulk is usually to gain one pound every two weeks or so, so I first try and slowly introduce calories to see how my body (and body weight) responds. If my weight doesn’t budge early on, I’ll continue to slowly introduce calories until I see the rate of weight gain I’m aiming for. If I reach a point where I’m gaining in excess, I’ll level off my calories and structure a bulk moving forward.

In a weight-maintenance phase, I’m simply looking to add calories back in until I see a spillover — where my weight gain starts to increase. Once I see that weight gain occur, I’ll know I’m over my maintenance calories and can drop my overall caloric intake down slightly to maintain my weight over an extended period of time.

As you can see, a lot of trail and error is involved. The process is well worth it, though, to preserve the hard work you’ve invested over the long-term diet.

Your Reverse Diet

Again, this is all very person-specific and having a coach guide you through this process is a great way to navigate it appropriately.

As you can tell, this can be a complicated process. We have to fight our urges and desires, but the end result is well worth it.

You dieted down. You were structured and disciplined. Those traits shouldn’t leave the equation in your daily life ever again. That doesn’t mean you need to eat minimal calories forever. All it means is you need to add that same structure and discipline from your diet to your daily life moving forward.

Next time you diet down, do so with the understanding that you’ll have “the diet after the diet” as part of your plan. And if you’d like a coach for any aspect of your fitness or nutrition goals, contact me and let’s talk about how I can help!

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CGF