Why You Should Consider a Reverse Diet (The Only Diet I Support!)
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Are you stuck in “fat loss” mode where you think you need to live in a caloric deficit (burning more calories than you consume) every single day? If your answer is yes, I think it’s time you did a reverse diet!
I know so many women who have gone years and years of under-eating and once they start eating the amount of food they actually need, they end up gaining a lot of weight. Once they do, they think they need to start under-eating again to lose weight. So they go back to restricting their calories, depriving themselves, and the cycle continues.
This tactic absolutely kills your metabolism. Thankfully I have a secret weapon that will help you break free from this vicious cycle and also help you maintain a strong, healthy metabolism: Reverse dieting.
In this episode of Embrace Your Real, I explain what it means to reverse diet, why reverse dieting is so important, as well as a step-by-step guide on how to safely and effectively do a reverse diet!
If you loved this episode, you will also love…
Episode 18: What Happens When You Don’t Eat Enough
Episode 42: What’s More Important for Weight Loss: Calories or Macros?
Check out my Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy to successfully reverse diet! Click here to get started!
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. A podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I give you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get in, let's go.
Hello and welcome back to the Embrace Your Real Podcast. I am so excited that you are spending some time with me today, wherever you're tuning in all over the world, whether you're walking, you're jogging, you're cooking, you're cleaning, you are working out, you're doing the dang thing, choosing to prioritize yourself to become the best possible version of yourself to serve others in your best capacity. Do you remember the episode where I talked about what happens when you don't eat enough? Well, I have more to share with you on that topic.
We think we need to permanently live in this fat loss mode where we're constantly in a caloric deficit, meaning we are always burning more than we consume. And for some of us, we constantly live in this mode where we think we need to eat way less than we burn to see the results that we want. Well, I hope by now you know that this is not the way to build the body that you want. But I know so many of us still need to become better educated on why it's important to eat more and how to actually do it, practical steps to do it. That is what I'm here to chat with you about today.
Before I dive into the episode, I want to share the review of the day. It says positive vibes, love this. It's something that really makes you think not just about your experiences, but how you perceive yourself. It's really difficult as I grew up with very horrible body image and the image disordered how I saw myself in order to be accepted and loved. I am still on a self love journey. This is just the reassurance I needed. Thank you, Julie.
Thank you so much for the review of the day. If you haven't already rated and reviewed the podcast, if you do tune in on Apple podcasts, it really does help us out in the podcast world. It takes less than 60 seconds. All you got to do is pause this, scroll all the way down to the bottom, you'll see the area to rate and review it. If you do, please shoot me a DM. Let me know that you did. Screenshot it so I can personally thank you.
All right. Let's dive into the episode now. I know so many women who have gone years and years of under-eating. And once they start eating the amount of food they actually need, they end up gaining a lot of weight. And when they gain weight, they think they need to go back to under-eating to build the body that they want. So they go back to restricting their calories, depriving themselves, and the cycle continues. As I said in episode 18, what happens when you don't eat enough? When you under-eat, you feel starving. You aren't just starving yourself, you're starving all the essential systems of your body that are required for basic functioning. Plus without fueling your body properly, you also fail to fuel your muscles properly for growth and struggle to build the body that you want. It is so, so important to eat enough food.
Now, if you haven't tuned in to episode 18, or you need a refresher, some of the big signs that you're not eating enough are you are experiencing and fighting crazy cravings on a regular basis. Or even just fighting hunger on a daily basis, you lose your menstrual cycle, your hair and nails are brittle or won't grow, your skin is dull, you're losing chunks of hair to time, your mood is unpredictable, you can't stay asleep or fall asleep, you're chronically constipated, you're always cold, or you feel your hormones kind of all over the place. Those are just some of the big signs that you're not eating enough.
Again, I am not a doctor. So please go to your doctor or physician for this. But typically, those are signs that we are not eating enough food. But the thing is, we can't really go from eating a thousand calories or 1,200 calories per day to let's say 2,000 calories or 2,200 calories per day, because we have gone so long depriving our body, all systems of our body have slowed down to do its best to conserve energy. Your metabolism is one of those things. So if you've ever been on a thousand calories a day, or 1,200 calories per day, it's likely that you're going to have an extremely slow metabolism.
Now, news flash. This really has nothing to do with your genetics and everything to do with your body permanently living in this starvation mode. So when you go from a thousand calories or 1,200 calories to 2,000 calories or 2,200 calories, your body isn't able to metabolize the extra food as quickly. And therefore it gets stored as fat. Now, this is also why many people's weight fluctuates constantly when they yo-yo diet. They go from drastically cutting their calories to eat enough calories on repeat and their body cannot keep up with that.
What if I told you you weren't caused with a slow metabolism? Would you believe me? If you've been dieting or restricting your food or calories for some time, I think it's time to educate you on a secret weapon for rebuilding and maintaining a strong, healthy metabolism. I want to introduce you to reverse dieting. I don't know if you ever heard it. Maybe you've heard it floating around the interwebs. Maybe you've never heard this. Or maybe you're super educated on it.
Now, the purpose of reverse dieting is to gradually strengthen your metabolism's efficiency so you can consume a higher caloric intake without drastically changing your body composition. Because again, what happens when someone goes from fad dieting for years and years to eating normally? Their body will typically store excess and unwanted body fat. Thankfully, reverse dieting will help prevent this from happening. Now, when you resume to normal eating, your body will hold any surplus calories and store it as fat in anticipation of the next starvation period. This is why those who lose a large amount of weight often quickly gain the weight back plus more because chronic dieting and/or extreme caloric restrictions cause permanent damage/adaptation to your metabolism. This makes the continuation of losing weight very difficult. And unfortunately, gaining weight becomes much, much easier.
Now, with the metabolism being so adaptable, the opposite effect can be achievable as well. Your metabolism can be trained to be more efficient at burning more calories. But the trick here is to move slow, which society doesn't slow. But the trick is to move slow. You can't simply eat an entire pizza and expect your metabolism to adapt to such a gigantic surplus overnight. Your body needs ample time to adjust. Now, following a reverse diet requires patience, discipline, consistency, and a slow gradual reverse diet process will ensure that the fat you work so hard to lose will not come back.
You might be like, "This sounds great. What are the benefits of reverse dieting?" Now, reverse dieting in a nutshell is you being able to eat more. But not as much as you want right away. Instead, a small gradual increase in caloric intake begins restoring metabolic function. Now, as you gradually increase your caloric intake, daily life continues to get better as well. You'll begin to appreciate the small things again, like going to social events and being able to fit many of those yummy foods into your meal plan or your daily intake instead of getting distracted by hunger cues and/or cravings.
As you continue increasing your caloric intake, you'll be provided with more energy that leads to improved mood, no more being hangry... can I get an amen for that... mental health and freeing you from this dieting/low calorie restriction mindset. Now, reverse dieting can give you a structured break from being in a caloric deficit due to limited food choices. Thus reverse dieting can help you relax. It decreases cortisol levels, which is your stress hormones, enabling you to focus on what you enjoy doing with your loved ones without worrying about gaining fat. Essentially, it's the best of both worlds. Eating more and maintaining your body composition. Not to mention how much enjoyment you'll get back with your training sessions, because there's no more mental and physical fussy, because there's no more mental and physical fatigue. Having more glycogen in your muscles and liver means higher energy level and amounts to spend. So your ability to build muscle actually increases along with building strength, endurance, agility, and stamina.
Are you convinced yet? Honestly, the reverse diet is so amazing. If you are like, "Okay, this all sounds too good to be true," you are in my same boat that I was about six years ago when I was first introduced to reverse dieting. I didn't think that it was a thing. I heard about it. My coach at the time was telling me about it and I was like, "Yeah, right. This sounds way too good to be true." I had been taught after years and years that there's no way that my body could actually look and feel good, most importantly, feel good on a higher number of calories. I was always taught that the lower number of calories was the way to go even though I felt like crap.
I want to dive into the practical part of this episode where I just share the guidelines for helping you kickstart your reverse diet. Before you go into this reverse diet, number one, this is very common guidelines. It's not going to be completely customized to you. If you are looking for more of a customized approach, I do offer a program. That's not the point of this podcast. But just to let you know that this program that we have available does allow you the opportunity to work with us directly, and we actually help customize this approach for you. Because every single body is different. Every history is different. All the different types of restrictions and fad diets that we've been on in the past are different.
So when I give you this guideline, just keep in mind it's a great baseline to start, but it's not completely custom. First things first, before going into kickstarting a reverse diet, if this sounds like something that you really want to start doing and you're sick of eating so low calories and not being able to lose weight or just feeling so low energy and hungry all the time and mood swings and all the things that I talked about earlier in this podcast, I need to make sure that you are accurately understanding how much you're actually eating because there's two sides of the spectrum. There's people that think they're only eating like a thousand calories, but they actually have no real concept as to how many calories are in the foods that they're eating.
For example, you could be eating all "clean foods" but that doesn't mean that the calories are just nonexistent. You've always or you've probably seen the side by side, like one serving of almonds versus a handful of almonds. What you think one serving is versus what one serving actually is, that's where all of the small, mysterious calories add up very quickly. But you might not even have any concept there. Or you're on the other end of the spectrum and you think that you're eating enough, but when you actually take the time to tally up and count what you're eating, you're realizing that it's only getting to like a thousand calories or 1,200 calories per day.
Now, before you get scared, if you've never tracked your food before, I want to just provide some insight with you. I previously came from an eating and body image disorder. I struggled a lot with under-eating and over-exercising. Now, I was scared at first to count my macros because I was like, "I don't want to become obsessive." But one thing that I learned was when I was constantly fixating on trying to just not eat this, or not eat that, or eat less of this. And I didn't have any concept of, number one, what my body needed to function properly. And two, what was actually in foods and how to properly look at foods in terms of protein, carbs, and fats.
It actually gave me less stress knowing what my body needed, because it was this mindset shift of like, it's no longer that I'm eating too little or eating too much, or whatnot, that was stressing me out. It was getting to the point where I was like, "No, this is how much I need to eat enough of so that my body can feel its best." And it came from almost this perspective of how can I honor my body? How can I nourish my body so that I can feel my best, I can do my best, all of these things?
And it was so incredible once I started to actually learn how much my body needed and then also in turn feel more empowered around food instead of feeling scared of food, leaning into that fear and saying, "Okay, I am scared of this food, but why am I scared of this food? Because this food provides protein that I need. This food provides carbs that I need. This food provides fats than I need." And so no longer looking at foods as good or bad, instead just being super educated about foods in relation to what my body needs.
If you haven't tracked your food intake before, I just encourage you to track your day from start to finish. If you've never looked at a nutrition label, trust me, I know what that feels like. This is going to be super overwhelming. Or if you've only ever looked at the calorie intake on your foods, it's really important that you listen to my episode 42, What's More Important for Weight Loss: Calories or Macros? Because I really break down why it's so important to focus on the macros and I give you practical advice there. Be sure to tune in to episode 42 if you haven't already.
But focusing on that and if you don't already have a food tracker, I use a free app in the App Store called My Macros+, and it's actually the plus sign. You just type it in, they have a free version. They also have like it's $2.99 a month. I don't even think that you need that one. You can get by with the free version, which is awesome. But this is a great place to start and just track your baseline. Track what you're having for breakfast. Track what you're having for snacks. No judgment. This is trying to get an honest baseline with where you're at.
I know when people first start tracking, they want to be perfect before they track their meals. It's important that you're honest with where you're at and how much you're consistently eating daily because you can't start a reverse diet or you can't start something completely off from what you're normally doing and have it work. That's, key here is that you're honest with where you're at. Before you dive into these guidelines that I'm about to tell you, make sure that you have tracked your food for at least a few days so that you know about where you're at in terms of calories and in terms of protein, carbs and fat intake.
Again, no judgment here. This is not a time for you to be like, "Oh my gosh, this is so bad." Trust me, when I first started, I had no idea what I was doing. And I realized how little my protein intake was compared to my carbs and fats. And it was so eyeopening for me. Be sure to track your food for at least two to three days before you start this. Once you have done that and you're like, "Okay, this is about how many calories per day I'm eating," with the breakdown of about how many grams of protein you're eating, how many grams of fat, and how many grams of carbs. The first thing you're going to want to do is maintain the same amount of protein. I always recommend 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight.
Now, it varies depending on some people really enjoy protein and they find it super easy to get their protein in based on the food choices that they eat and other people really struggle. Just make sure you're at least eating 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. And to start your reverse diet, you want to increase your fat intake by about 10%. And then same with your carbs. Fat intake would be anywhere from two to four grams of fat, you want to increase. Let's say you realize that you're eating about 40 grams of fat per day. Start your reverse diet at about 43 to 45 grams of fat per day. And for your carb intake, let's say you're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm only eating like 90 grams of carbs per day." Try to start your reverse diet at either 95 grams or a hundred grams. I would encourage you to at least start at a hundred grams. That's a very low carb intake for the average person.
Always recommend going a little bit higher than... definitely over a hundred if possible, to start with. But you don't want to jump so much. And that's the thing about reverse dieting that I was talking about earlier is that it is slow and steady. And that's why people as a whole they either get frustrated and give up or they get intimidated by it because they don't like slow. They like fast, quick results. But the thing is reverse dieting is sustainable. Reverse dieting is an approach that will serve you longterm. For example, I have now gone through four full reverse diets since 2013. And I am able to maintain my body weight and where I'm at right now at about 2,100 to 2,200 calories per day.
Now, if you would have seen me in 2013, I couldn't even maintain my body on about 1,100 calories per day. It's incredible, like I said earlier, how our metabolism is adaptive. And that can either go for you or that can go against you. If you've been constantly in this place of starving yourself, your metabolism is going to adapt to that. And as a result, that's when you're going to feel like you've been caused with a slow metabolism, but it's really just that your metabolism has adapted to all of the things and the fad diets they be gone, the restrictive eating plans that you've been on, all of those things. But on the flip side, your metabolism is so adaptive that if you train it, it can actually work for you, which is exactly what my metabolism is doing for me now, which is incredible. And that was from the work that I've put in over the last seven years through four reverse diets.
Keep that in mind. This is sustainable for the longterm. This is you putting in the work now and you're reaping the benefits of it later. Once you start there, so you have your protein intake at about 0.8 grams to one gram of protein per pound of body weight, you increase your fat by about 10% to two, three, four, five grams of fat, depending on how aggressive you want to go. Some people like to just dive right into it. Other people like to be very cautious. It's totally up to you what you feel comfortable with. And then your carb intake five to 10 grams. Again, it's about 10%. So five to 10 grams additional to what you have currently been eating. So adding that on. And that's going to be your baseline. And I want you to stay consistent.
The thing about reverse dieting is you have to commit to consistency because you can't be non-consistent and constantly trying to push your metabolism if you haven't been consistent in the first place. Just think about this, your metabolism rewards consistency. Again, going back to the adaptation, it rewards consistency. If you've been consistent restricting your food intake, it's going to be consistent to that. And that's where it's going to adapt in the wrong place. If you're consistent with constantly fueling your body and being consistent, it's going to start to adapt to a higher number of calories. When you first start a reverse diet, if you've been super low and you've been in a really high caloric deficit, just remember that it is normal to feel bloated.
It is normal to gain some weight, which I don't recommend stepping on a scale, especially if you struggle with the scale, I've told you, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, just throw the scale out. The scale does not need to be something that is holding you back from pursuing your goals in a very consistent way. There's so many other ways to track your progress. But if you do want to step on a scale, just for a means of like number purposes and another form of measurement, in addition to measurements and progress photos and asking yourself how you feel and all of those things, that's totally fine. Just keep in mind and don't freak out when you see the scale spike because your body is used to being in a caloric deficit.
So when you're starting to increase your food intake, your metabolism is going to initially have that freak out moment of like, "What the heck is going on." And over time, if you... like I said, it rewards consistency. Over time, if you are consistent with baseline numbers that you start your day diet with, you will see that your metabolism will start to adapt to that. And you'll also see this. When you first start a reverse diet... or at least for me, because I've gone through four now, every time that I start a reverse diet, my body is at this place where it's like used to this certain number of calories and I'm trying to push it to a new level of my baseline.
When I first start my reverse diets, I'm always super full. That's typically normal. But what's so crazy is if I'm consistent with it by week one or week two or even week three, depending on your body and you're staying consistent to your numbers and you are really trying to be consistent on this journey, your body is so amazing. And you'll start to realize like, "Oh my gosh, I'm not as full anymore. And I'm actually hungry now." That's your metabolism adapting to it.
The thing with that is, stay with your baseline numbers that I just talked about for at least three weeks. I encourage at least... I always say three to six. It's as slow as, or as fast as you want to go. I prefer to go slow simply because I don't want to make drastic changes with my body composition. The whole goal of a reverse diet is to increase your metabolism, increase your metabolic capacity while staying the same, relatively the same in terms of body composition. I encourage anywhere from three to six weeks of staying consistent there. And then once you reevaluate whether it's on the third week, the fourth week, the fifth week, the sixth week, reevaluate and the goal of a reverse diet is to slow and steady increase your food intake. If you've been consistent at your numbers... Again, consistency trumps everything. I know I'm saying it a lot, but you cannot successfully complete a reverse diet if you've not been consistent.
Once you do your check-in, increase your fat intake by about two to 5%. So another two to four grams of fat. If you started at 40, then your baseline was 44. You've been consistent there for six weeks, bump your fat intake to 48. Bump it up about four grams, stay consistent at 48 grams of fat. For your carb intake, let's say you started at a hundred grams and now you are bumping up. You've stayed consistent there for about three, four, or five, or six weeks. Now let's bump you up to 110, 105 to 110 grams of carbs. And for your protein, you're going to stay the same. Your protein is going to be again about 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Stay there again for another three to six weeks. And you're going to want to do that over time consistently for anywhere from... You can do it however long you want. It's totally up to you.
I've seen people do it to the point of getting up to finally where their maintenance calorie should be. And this is why a reverse diet is a great thing to do. I would recommend having someone help you, like having a professional help you. And that's where Josh and I and our teams can step in and help you. Because we're fully educated on where your maintenance should be based on your numbers, and where you're currently at, and where you want to be, based on your goals. Think about this. If you were going into, let's say you just got engaged and you're really wanting to go on a body fat loss phase, but you have only been eating 1,200 calories, well, let's say your maintenance calories are about 1,600 to 1,700 calories, there's no way that you can dip below 1,200 and keep losing weight because you're already in such a high caloric deficit.
Now, think about this. Let's say you're getting married next year and you want to be in a body fat loss. I always look at people, if they're in a severe caloric deficit, I always look at them and say, "There is nothing that I can pull from at this time." My encouragement to you would be to go on a reverse diet to at least get a little bit above your maintenance calories so you're slow and steady, increasing from 1,200 calories, 1,300 calories, 1,400 calories, 1,500 calories, 1,600 calories, 1,700 calories, then you get to about... you reverse to about 1,800 calories, which could take anywhere from eight weeks, to 16 weeks, to 20 weeks, to 24 weeks. I think the longest reverse diet I have done is 24 weeks. And the shortest reverse diet I have done I believe was 18 or 20 weeks.
And that was a pretty aggressive reverse diet. Meaning I was really pushing my metabolic capacity. And as a result, I did gain some fat because my metabolism was still trying to adapt and I was just pushing it a little bit fast. So it's totally up to you. But if you want to get to this place where you want to cut body fat more effectively, efficiently, and without feeling so hungry because you're in such a deep caloric deficit, I would say, "Okay, if you started at 1,200, you reversed 1,800, now let's get you on a body fat loss phase." And the cool thing about you being able to verse diet is, let's say you get to that point of 1,800 calories and you go on your first week of your body fat loss phase, most likely you're going to dip just a little little bit and your body is going to instantly start to respond to what you're doing because your metabolism is in a place where it's so effective and so efficient that when you drop a little bit of calories, it's like, boom, and you start to lose body fat.
That's kind of like the whole picture reverse dieting. I know that this is kind of a nitty gritty topic, especially when it comes to a podcast, but I hope that this served you. And I really hope that this helped you in some way, shape, or form just in terms of reverse dieting. Again, there is no way I would be able to be at this place where I'm at right now without reverse dieting multiple times.
And the cool thing about this is, my first reverse diet, I was only able to maintain my body weight at about 1,600 calories. And then I reverse dieted it again and it was like 1,700 or it was like 1,750 calories. And then I reverse dieted again, and it was 1,850 calories. And then now I'm able to, like I said, maintain my weight at about 2,100 calories, which is so crazy just because I've gotten to my metabolism to a place, which is also awesome because now if I ever want to do like just a mild... feel a little bit tighter and lean up a little bit, all I have to do is cut a little bit of my caloric intake and my metabolism immediately responds because it's so efficient.
So what comes next? You've learned about this, that this might be super clear for you and you might be like, "Perfect. This is what I'm going to start with. I'm going to do it." There are people out there that just... all they need is the information and boom, they can figure it out themselves and they can go from there. That's amazing. Now, if you are the type of person, more like me, that I need a step by step approach and you feel more comfortable and confident working with a professional that knows about this, that knows about how to properly customize your macros based on where you're at and where you want to go, I do have a program. It's called the Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy. It gives you a step by step guide on not only how to reverse diet, but also how to adjust your macros in the future once you get to the end of your reverse diet, you get to maintenance, and then you want to do a body fat loss phase.
If you are confused about what your current macros are, how to even count macros, or how to calculate them, click the link in the show notes, or just go to macrocountingmadesimple.com and you will be able to learn more about our program. It's a program that we built for you because we wanted to make sure that we empower you so that you don't feel like you have to rely on coaches for the rest of your life, because I know what that's like, and it sucks. I don't like feeling like I always have to have a coach for the rest of my life guiding me. So we really try to give you all of the tools and education and step by step on how we did it so we can teach and empower you.
You also get in a community of other likeminded people, which is always really helpful to just feel like you're not alone and feel like you have a place that you can come and ask questions. And Joshua and I are in there. Our moderators are in there always helping you answer questions or encouraging you. Be sure to check that out. If you haven't already listened to episode 18, What Happens When You Don't Eat Enough, I will link that in the show notes. But again, I mentioned that earlier, and I think that that will give you some really good perspective if you are still in this boat of like, "I don't know if I'm eating enough." This is a great episode that will just shed some light on that. I'll be sure to link that up in the show notes below. If you have any questions at all, always feel free to reach out to me on my Instagram, juliealedbetter or embraceyourreal. Both of those Instagrams are for you. We love helping you. We love serving you.
And I really hope that this gave you a better perspective on reverse dieting. Maybe you've heard about it. You didn't really know a lot about, or maybe you had never heard about it. I hope that this shed some light on the fact that your metabolism most likely is not genetically caused. It's that you've consistently trained it to be adaptive to what you've been doing. I love you so much. That is all that I have for today's episode. Be sure to screenshot this, post it up on your story, tag me, juliealedbetter. I love seeing your aha moments. And I will talk to you guys in the next episode.
All right. That's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to so, juliealedbetter... Yes, it's with an A in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world. And I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.