Reverse dieting doesn‘t increase your maintenance calories!
What it is and isn’t...
Reverse diet doesn’t increase your maintenance calories
Reverse dieting has been significantly promoted in recent years as a method to increase baseline metabolism coming out of a deficit (read: get higher maintenance calories) by only adding 25-50 calories every other week.
We hate to break it to you, but this concept *is not* based on research. “Going slow” after a calorie deficit only prolongs the deficit. It doesn’t increase your metabolism or give you higher maintenance calories. You just spend significantly less of the year in maintenance.
The seemingly obvious next question is, “What if I don’t know my maintenance calories?”
This is why, at @ElevatedPursuitNutrition, we don’t allow you to enter a fat loss cohort without first finding your top end of maintenance calories (not adapted maintenance). We then teach you the tools to monitor your own data so that you can immediately pop back into maintenance post-fat loss phase.
What is your maintenance range?
Your maintenance calories (the calorie intake you need to maintain your weight) is a range, not a specific number.
Depending on how adaptive their metabolism is, some people’s maintenance range is a little narrower and some broader. But most of our clients fall into a 100-200 calorie range.
Example:
if your maintenance range is 2,200 - 2,400 calories, and your intake falls anywhere between those 2 numbers for most of the month, you will easily maintain your body weight.
But, my maintenance is really low
If you’ve spent significant time in a calorie deficit, your body adapts to compensate for and preserve tissue loss. Eventually, your deficit calories become your new adapted maintenance calories.
Yo-yo dieting and spending the majority of the year attempting to lose fat results in people’s maintenance being far lower than it could be. It also leaves them at risk for increased fat gain when they overeat due to their lack of metabolic flexibility (why you feel like you can gain 5 lbs in a weekend).
What exactly is reverse dieting?
Enter, the reverse dieting craze.
Reverse Dieting is defined as slowly increasing your calories over time, which will increase your total maintenance calories. If you slowly chip away at it in 25 to 50-calorie weekly increases, you will achieve total higher maintenance calories.
What’s actually happening when you “reverse diet”:
you’re just undoing the metabolic adaptation and working your way up to the top of your maintenance range.
so why is “reverse dieting” popular?
The biggest problem is that most people don’t know their maintenance range because they haven’t invested the time to track and find the top of their maintenance range successfully.
They’ve only ever tracked to lose weight, so when they start using tracking to increase calories, they’re amazed when they go through the “reverse dieting process” and attribute it to how they increased maintenance calories so high.
What should I do instead?
Currently in a calorie deficit?
At the end of a calorie deficit, we don’t arbitrarily increase 25 - 50 calories a week, prolonging the deficit.
Instead, based on the last four weeks of data, we immediately increase calories to the bottom of the maintenance range and set that as a new minimum daily intake.
We hold steady for 2-3 weeks and confirm that body weight trends flatten out.
What if I’m stuck in adapted maintenance?
Currently feeling stuck in adapted maintenance?
First, refer back to our “how-to-find maintenance” blog.
You’ll start with a 100-200 calorie increase, hold steady for 2-4 weeks, and watch for your weight trend flatten out.
Repeat the process until you’re at a more comfortable calorie level or your weight trends do not flatten (and therefore are now above the top of the maintenance range).
takeaways & Caveats
Just because you’re currently maintaining a certain level of low calories doesn’t mean your body couldn’t also maintain at higher calories. You’ve just never actually given it a shot because it’s tough and uncomfortable.
Reverse Dieting is not a magical process that increases your maintenance calories or, even worse, “increases your metabolism.”
Prolonged dieting or spending too much of the year chasing fat loss without significant time at maintenance in between phases will cause your metabolism to adapt down.
If you track your data, you do not have to prolong the fat loss phase by slowly easing back to maintenance.
References
This is a summary of a @StrongerByScience Podcast EP 96: Stretch-Mediated Hypertrophy and Reverse Dieting
Reverse Dieting: Hype Versus Evidence by Eric Trexler
Trexler, Eric T et al. “Physiological Changes Following Competition in Male and Female Physique Athletes: A Pilot Study.” International journal of sport nutrition and exercise metabolism vol. 27,5 (2017): 458-466. doi:10.1123/ijsnem.2017-0038
Longstrom, Jaymes M et al. “Physiological, Psychological and Performance-Related Changes Following Physique Competition: A Case-Series.” Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology vol. 5,2 27. 25 Apr. 2020, doi:10.3390/jfmk5020027
