Reverse Dieting - No More Low Calorie Diets

Since we began the “Minute to Win It” challenge in January, you have started exercising more, right? I hope you have been working to increase your minutes of exercise each week. But, one thing I want to make sure you are also doing is eating enough to support your higher activity levels.

Simply put, energy in versus energy out is important.

If you take in more energy than you expend, your weight will go up.

If you take in less energy than you expend, your weight will go down.

If you take in just as much energy as you expend, your weight will stay the same.

So, what do you do if you are no longer eating enough to support your activity levels?

Eat more at the end of the day to “catch up” to your energy expenditure? NO.

Let yourself stay at a deficit of 1000 or more calories? NO.

Low calorie diets are something that people believe they have to do, in order to lose weight. This is a misconception. Instead of eating a low number of calories each week to help you lose weight, we want to build up your caloric intake to where it should be, to where you do not have too much of a caloric deficit, based on your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). This is a slow and detailed process; you cannot just start eating larger amounts of food immediately. What we are talking about today is called reverse dieting – where you slowly build up your caloric needs over time. 

Instead of getting to the end of the day and needing 500 more calories after you have already eaten dinner, you slowly increase your daily calories over a long period of time to make sure that your body becomes adapted to the new demands. When you reverse diet, you not only adapt to the demands of a new diet well, but you start to get over the feeling that you need a low calorie diet to lose weight. Because guess what? You can still lose weight and/or reach your goals while reverse dieting.

While reverse dieting, instead of instantly eating the prescribed amount of calories and shocking your body (causing you to feel bloated, miserable, and overfull), you’ll simply add 150 calories to your daily calories for 4 weeks. If you are currently eating 1200 calories per day, you would eat 1350 calories for the next 4 weeks. After the first 4 weeks, add another 150 calories, and so on, until you reach the caloric intake you should be at. Keep in mind, the more you’re undereating, the longer it will take to reverse diet.

To help you in this process, I recommend tracking your daily intake, and more specifically your macronutrients. When doing this, write everything down with pen and paper, or a food tracking app like My Fitness Pal.

If you are currently undereating, adding hundreds of calories to your diet can be hard on your metabolism, body, emotions, and mental state if you do it too quickly. That is why reverse dieting is a better answer.

Do you know how much you should be eating based on your activity level and personal profile? If so, are you eating enough? If not, it is time to reverse diet.

If you don’t know how much you should be eating, or where to start, email me at mharris@mvhospital.net and I can help you get started.

Until next time!

Miranda Harris, NSCA-CSCS, ASCM EP-C

mharris@mvhospital.net