While eating more than before, many people lose fat while gaining muscle. Reverse dieting may be something you come across as you research various eating strategies.
What is Reverse Dieting?
Reverse dieting is a deliberate eating strategy that entails gradually increasing your calorie intake over a few weeks or months. This allows you to eat more food after a diet while boosting your metabolism and preventing fat gain. It is a technique that enables you to gradually increase your calorie intake after quitting a low-calorie diet, allowing you to eat more calories without gaining weight.
That approach enables you to increase your calorie intake while increasing your metabolism and preventing weight gain. To achieve that, you must increase gradually; typically, you should add between 30 and 100 calories weekly for a few weeks until you reach your previously undiscovered baseline.
How does reverse dieting work?
There isn’t a universal reverse diet because everybody is different. According to proponents of the strategy, reverse dieters are advised to increase their weekly calorie intake by 2–3%, mostly from fat and carbs. According to theory, you would gradually increase your calorie intake each week until you reach your pre-diet calorie target or another objective. Your current calorie intake, preferred strategy, and target number of calories will all be considered when designing your reverse diet.
What are the usual changes after a reverse diet?
Bodybuilders were allowed to gradually switch from extremely low- to higher-calorie diets by introducing reverse dieting. Slowly restoring their metabolic rates is intended to help them avoid gaining too much weight while allowing them to eat more.
The body changes the following things:
- Changes in Hormones
- Slower in Digestion
- Decrease in Resting Metabolic Rate(RMR)
- Decrease in Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
- Decrease in Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT)
Benefits
Reverse dieting promoters assert that the technique lowers the possibility of weight gain by restoring normal hunger hormone levels. According to studies, carefully regulating your caloric intake may allow the amount of the hormone leptin, which regulates hunger, to return to normal.
As an illustration, strict dieting frequently causes low energy levels due to low-calorie intake. But Reverse dieting, on the other hand, enables you to boost your energy by gradually reintroducing calories to your diet. Your mood will improve, and your focus will improve with that extra energy.
Risks
Reverse dieting has a restrictive eating plan as a side effect, its biggest drawback. According to research, severely limiting your caloric intake increases your body’s level of the stress hormone cortisol, which increases the likelihood that you’ll put on weight around your midsection.
Additionally, physical and psychological side effects from the low-calorie diet that precedes reverse dieting may occur. Examples include obesity, low energy, gallstones, etc.
Contact your doctor
Sex, age, weight, and activity level all affect how many calories you need. For the recommended daily calorie intake, speak with a healthcare professional.
