Reverse Dieting: What’s It All About.

Dieting can create a wonderful feeling. You’ve just shed pounds and got some muscle definition going on where there was just large layer of what might be described as pork fat. After all that hard work, you go back to normal eating patterns and all that weight seems to be reappearing. Sounds like reverse dieting may be your answer.

Losing weight is difficult enough. When we diet we are deliberately eating less but in doing so our body counters by increasing our appetite and burning fewer calories when resting. It’s as if the body is buffering against the shock of the diet to minimise the impact of any weight loss. In fact, of course it is. This is a classic protective measure which is intended to protect the body during periods of feeding stress. The body conserves its energy during the lean period of food shortage.

Before we move on, it’s best to establish what reverse dieting actually means. Having dieted, the calories are allowed to come back into the diet. A typical man might diet by reducing the calories from 2,500 per day to say 1,500 per day. After the diet, instead of returning to 2,500 calories immediately, the calories are added progressively in small steps. The intention based on previous evidence of diets is that weight is put on rather quickly if normal feeding is returned to the original calorie intake. The body has not had enough time to adjust and simply undoes all the good work. The much slower return however is meant to let the body adapt so that any return of fat is limited and the body continually adjusts and adapts to the developing regime but without piling on the pounds.

It is reckoned in a reverse diet that about 100 to 200 calories should be added for a week, the level held for a couple of weeks and then an additional but similar amount added. Weight gain and fat levels are monitored until a new, satisfactory value is achieved which reflects more accurately the desired weight level. Simply suspend adding further calories when the new desired weight is achieved. This approach is a way of educating the body to resist the ‘famine reaction’. It appears to be backed up by plenty of anecdotal evidence.