Everything You Need To Know About Reverse Dieting

Dieting sucks.

Not only is it hard to eat less calories, but your body fights you every step of the way.

You’re going to be hungry, feel tired, and the further into your diet you get, you’ll actually burn fewer and fewer calories.

To top it off, research shows that most people who lose significant amounts of weight end up putting it back on (1).

Enter reverse dieting. 

The cool, not-so-new kid on the block that’s apparently the magic fix.

Reverse dieting has been touted as a way to minimize the downsides of dieting and help make sure that you don’t lose your progress after a diet.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding reverse diets, what they do, and how they work.

In this article you’ll learn everything you need to know about reverse diets and whether or not they’re worth the buzz.

Let’s dive in.

What is reverse dieting?

Reverse dieting is a method of gradually bringing your calories back up to maintenance after a period of being in a calorie deficit.

Usually, it’s done by raising your calories in small amounts over a period of weeks until you’ve reached your new maintenance calories. 

Check out the graphic above. Let’s say when you started your diet, your maintenance calories were 2,000. 

You put yourself in a 500 calorie deficit to get to 1,500 calories. 

After 3 months of dieting, you’ve lost 15 pounds and now you want to maintain your weight.

An example of reverse dieting would be increasing 100 calories every two weeks until you reach your new maintenance of 1,800 calories.

Proponents of reverse dieting claim that by slowly adding calories rather than an aggressive jump back to maintenance, you’ll minimize fat gain, help reverse some of the downsides of dieting, and allow you to eat more calories while maintaining a lower body weight.

Is there any benefit to these claims? Can you just increase your calories back to maintenance after a diet?

Before we can answer that question, we have to look at what happens to our body while we’re dieting.

The downsides of dieting 

Aside from the obvious pitfalls of dieting, like being hangry all the time, your body goes through a series of changes in an attempt to stop you from losing weight.

This is because your body is mainly concerned about survival. It doesn’t care how good you look in a bikini on the beach this summer!

When you consume less calories, your body compensates by slowing down your metabolism in an effort to conserve energy.

Your metabolism, or how many calories you burn per day, is made up of four parts. Each portion of your metabolism is affected when you are in a calorie deficit.

Basal metabolic rate (BMR): You need a certain amount of energy to perform basic functions like breathing, keeping your heart beating and organs functioning. This is called your BMR.

Your BMR is affected by how much you weigh. A bigger person is going to require more calories. When you diet and lose weight, your BMR drops because you’re now a smaller person.

Non-exercise associated thermogenesis (NEAT): Your NEAT includes things like fidgeting, talking with your hands, and walking to and from your car. It’s basically any physical activity that you don’t plan out ahead of time.

NEAT is one of the biggest contributors to your overall calorie expenditure. In fact, it’s been shown that NEAT can vary among people of similar size by up to 2,000 calories! (2). 

As you diet, your body tries to save calories by moving less. This has been shown in studies and is called the constrained energy model (3). 

Exercise associated thermogenesis (EAT): Any planned exercise you do like strength training, cardio, or HIIT sessions require calories to perform. This is your EAT.

When you’re in a calorie deficit, you’re going to have less energy simply because you’re eating less and taking in less energy. This means that your workouts aren’t going to burn as many calories because you won’t be able to put as much energy into them.

Thermic effect of food (TEF): Your body requires calories to digest the food and drinks you consume, which is your TEF.

TEF is a relatively small percentage of your overall metabolism anyway, but it also takes a hit because you’re eating less overall food. 

These effects on your metabolism are all normal, and there isn’t much you can do about them. 

When you’re in a large calorie deficit for extended periods of time, a number of your hormones are also affected.

In males, testosterone, leptin, and thyroid production decreases, while cortisol and ghrelin increase (4).

These hormone changes can lead to increased feelings of hunger, irritability, loss of libido, and extreme fatigue.

In females, the production of luteinizing hormone is disrupted, which regulates menstrual cycles (5). In cases of very low calorie diets for long periods of time, you can even lose your period and it can take a very long time for it to come back.

Females also experience the same decrease in thyroid production and leptin, as well as the increase of cortisol and ghrelin.

The good news is that these effects are reversible. 

Once you bring your calories back to maintenance and you’re in a state of equal energy balance, your metabolism and hormones will return to normal. 

The question is whether or not reverse dieting can help minimize these downsides.

Reverse dieting to the rescue?

Let’s say you’ve just finished a diet.

You spent 12 weeks in a calorie deficit and lost a total of 18 pounds. 

The last thing you want to do is put that weight back on after working so hard to get it off!

A reverse diet approach might sound like it makes sense. Slowly increasing your calories over a period of a few weeks rather than bringing them straight back up to maintenance should help minimize the amount of weight you put back on, right?

You’d be correct. 

If you bring your calories up to maintenance quickly, you probably will notice an increase in scale weight.

However, as long as your calories are at maintenance and you’re eating enough protein, you won’t be gaining fat.

That’s because the scale measures more than just fat weight. It also measures everything else in your body, including water and the content in your gut.

If you start eating more calories, you’ll most likely gain a few pounds from water weight and the extra food content in your body.

By increasing your calories slowly, you’ll prolong this increase on the scale. Instead of happening in the first few days or weeks of increasing your calories, you’ll spread it out over a few weeks so it seems smaller.

The problem with this is until you’ve brought your calories up to maintenance, you’ll still be in a calorie deficit, which means that you’ll still be subjected to all the downsides of dieting!

You’re much better off bringing your calories right back to maintenance and simply understanding that the small increase in scale weight isn’t fat. 

Some people actually experience a drop in scale weight when they first increase their calories after being in a calorie deficit for a long time.

This has led to the starvation mode myth.

What is starvation mode?

Starvation mode is the theory that by restricting calories too much, you can reach a point in which you stop losing weight to protect yourself from starving.

While it’s true that your metabolism slows down in an effort to conserve calories, it will never slow down enough to prevent you from losing weight.

This was demonstrated by Dr. Ancel Keys and his colleagues in one of the most drastic weight loss studies ever done. 

It was called the Minnesota starvation experiment (6).

At the end of World War II, 36 volunteers led by Dr. Keys set out to discover the best way to help prisoners of war and people who had been through massive famines recover from starvation.

Participants in the study had to be male and of average, healthy weight. They were also required to perform physical activity every day, to mimic the life of a prisoner of war or somebody in a concentration camp.

For three months, the men ate around 3,200 calories to maintain their weight. 

Then, their calories were cut in half to around 1,570 per day.

The goal was to starve the men and reduce their body weight by 25 percent over six months. 

Dr. Keys and his colleagues achieved their goal. The majority of the men lost the weight and looked like skeletons by the end of the experiment.

If starvation mode was a real phenomenon, it would have surely been observed in the men.

Even though their metabolism slowed down as the experiment went on, they continued to lose weight until the very end of the study.

I knew someone who was eating 800 calories a day and not losing weight.. isn’t that starvation mode?

There are a number of people who claim they can’t lose weight on very low calorie diets. This is another reason that the starvation mode myth exists.

The most likely explanation is that they weren’t actually eating only 800 calories. 

Unless you are tracking and weighing everything you eat, it’s very easy to underestimate the amount of food you’re eating. Studies show that we tend to be very bad at estimating how much we actually eat (7).

It’s also very possible that people who claim they can’t lose weight on low calorie diets are eating very low calories for part of the week, and then splurging on the weekends and eating way more calories, taking them out of a calorie deficit.

Let’s say your daily maintenance calories are 2,600.

2,600 calories x 7 days per week= 18,200 weekly calories.

You put yourself into a 500 calorie deficit Monday through Friday and eat 2,100 calories.

2,100 x 5 = 10,500 calories.

On Saturday and Sunday, you blow past your calorie targets and eat 3,850 calories.

3,850 x 2 = 7,700 calories.

10,500 + 7,700 = 18,200 calories.

By overeating on the weekend, you took yourself out of a calorie deficit!

This is why it’s important to make sure you’re not in too big of a calorie deficit. Even though I know you probably want to lose weight as fast as possible, making sure your calorie deficit is sustainable will make it much easier to stick to.

If you want to know how many calories you need for your goals, you can use my calorie calculator below.

Cal’s Calorie Calculator

If starvation mode isn’t real, why did I lose weight when I increased my calories?

Sometimes, if you’ve been in a calorie deficit for a long period of time, you might notice a decrease on the scale when you increase your calories.

There are a few reasons for this, but first let’s go back to the Minnesota starvation experiment for a moment.

About halfway through the study, the researchers gave the participants a higher calorie meal than they were used to.

Interestingly, the next day many of the participants actually lost weight.

So if they weren’t in starvation mode, what was going on?

The researchers theorized the subjects were retaining water because of high stress. When you’re constantly stressed, you produce high levels of a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol interferes with another hormone called aldosterone, which is responsible for maintaining your body’s fluid balance.

By increasing the calories of the participants, cortisol levels decreased, allowing them to get rid of the extra water weight.

Bodybuilders have experienced this phenomenon for years while preparing for shows, and it’s been called the “whoosh” effect. The scale might not budge for days, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, “whoosh!” 

It’s not that you’re losing fat overnight, you’re losing weight on the scale because of water loss.

Another possible explanation for losing when increasing your calories is that you have more energy and are moving more.

Remember that your NEAT is affected while you’re in a calorie deficit. When you increase your calories, you’ll have more energy and you’re likely to expend more calories by moving around more. 

A simple way to make sure your NEAT doesn’t completely drop off while you’re in a calorie deficit is to keep track of your steps. 

If you were averaging 7,500 steps per day before you started dieting, make sure you’re still hitting 7,500 steps when you decrease your calories. 

How many steps per day should you aim for? 

Research has shown that people who get between 7,000 and 8,000 steps per day have a lower risk of all-cause mortality compared to those who don’t (8).

Wrapping up

If you’ve just finished a diet and you’re wondering if reverse dieting is right for you, hopefully you realize by now that you don’t need to gradually increase your calories in small steps back to maintenance.

Gradually increasing your calories is only going to prolong the time you’re in a calorie deficit, which in turn extends the time you have to experience the downsides of dieting.

Simply increasing your calories back to maintenance is all you need to do at the end of a diet.

The key is to not view the end of your diet as an excuse to eat everything in sight. This will absolutely lead you to gain the weight back you worked so hard to lose.

When you finish dieting, bring your calories back to maintenance, continue tracking to make sure your weight stays stable, and then you can decide what to do next.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below!