Are you tired up of dieting? Have you tried all the ways to lose weight, but didn’t lose a single pound? Dieting can reduce your weight but this can also slow down your metabolism. Reverse dieting is the dieting that allows you to reduce your weight by eating more.
If you are decreasing your intake of calories or following a keto diet, you will lose weight for some time. But, after returning to the normal routine, all the fats is sticking back to your body. This is all because of the slow working of your metabolism. When you eat less, your body intake fewer calories, your metabolism slows down and it gets used to it. After returning to the normal routine, it is not able to process the food speedily. This causes the fat to stick to your body again. Reverse dieting doesn’t work in that way.
Losing weight is really hard and that’s why you have to be motivated or sincere to achieve your goal unless if you’re planning on having the fast way which is doing a Gastric Bypass Surgery. In this article, you’ll learn more about reverse dieting and how to achieve better results.
Reverse Dieting?
Reverse dieting means the “diet after diet”. It is essentially what to do after a restrictive diet.
Reverse dieting is the diet plan in which we increase the intake of calories over a period of several weeks or months gradually. When we will eat more, it will boost our metabolism and also, help our body burn more calories throughout the day.
Mostly, it is popular among bodybuilders and competitive athletes who want to increase their energy levels while maintaining weight loss and body composition. It is best for those who are looking to return to a normal eating pattern without gaining extra weight or fat.
Working Of Reverse Dieting
I know you are still confused about this phenomenon that how can we lose weight by eating more. It always seems impossible until it’s done.
Let’s say you’ve cut your calorie intake to a low 1,200 per day to lose weight, and you have hence shed a few pounds. Advocates of reverse dieting recommend steadily expanding your calorie intake by 50–100 calories per week for almost 4–10 weeks, instead of basically returning to your pre-diet eating design. People who advocate for this approach claim that it can help increase metabolism, normalize starvation hormones, and decrease the chance of orgy eating or fast weight recapture.
Benefits Of Reverse Dieting
Reverse dieting helps in many ways;
- Increasing your calorie intake may boost metabolism and help your body burn more through non-exercise activities like walking, and talking.
- Also, it may normalize levels of circulating hormones, such as leptin, which regulates appetite and body weight.
- BMR rises which is the amount of energy you require to live while resting. This reduces energy out.
- When you will increase the calorie intake, you may consume more energy. That’s how workout capacity increases.
- You can eat more without starving your stomach.
- Cutting calories can alter the levels of several hormones that influence hunger and appetite. Reverse dieting reduces your hunger.
- Make you feel more active and stronger.
How does it help in weight loss?
Yes, there is no doubt of its benefit that it helps in weight loss. Reverse dieting helps in balancing hormones such as leptin. Research shows that leptin, which is produced and excreted by the fat cells in your body, decreases to reduce the calorie intake. When the level of leptin falls, appetite increases and calorie burning reduces.
Ideal situations of reverse dieting
- I want to eat more without gaining weight.
- I’m consuming 1,200 calories per day but not losing weight
- I want to get ripped.
Drawbacks of reverse dieting
As there are many benefits of reverse dieting, it also has many drawbacks.
- Difficult to follow: An extra 50-100 calories per day can be difficult to measure and requires very strict caloric monitoring. You can blow this with just one small snack. Thus, small increases are harder to manage.
- Calorie counting is no fun: If you have been counting calories for weeks or months, the last thing you want to do once the diet is over continues to calorie count.
- Quantity matters: It is all about a number of calories. You have to keep it in mind that the calories of the cake are not similar to the calories of carrots. Not all food has the same number of calories.
- Less research: There is little to no research on reverse dieting. Therefore, until further research is conducted, reverse dieting cannot be considered an effective tool for weight loss.
Conclusion
Reverse dieting is the diet plan in which we increase the intake of calories gradually. Increasing calorie intake may boost metabolism and help the body to burn more fat. It balances the hormones, reduces hunger and, boosts the energy level.
If you will maintain your weight on a 2000-calorie diet, you will be able to eat up to 400 extra calories per day without seeing a big impact on the scale. But an extra 800 daily calories? It is probably going to weigh you down.
So if you restrict calories for six months, you may need to give your metabolism six months to adjust.
But, it is difficult to follow.