Reverse diet: eat more to gain less?

Author: Olha Frolova - fitness enthusiast.
2017-05-27

"Reverse dieting" literally means "dieting in reverse." This method is designed to restore metabolism after a prolonged cutting phase, involving a very slow and gradual increase in macronutrients in the diet, which allows a return to normal eating without increasing body fat percentage.

Reverse dieting gained popularity and scientific justification only a couple of years ago among strict fans of natural training in the USA.

If we believe coaches like Lane Norton, the results are indeed impressive: dozens of athletes who applied the method immediately after competitions managed to increase their daily caloric intake for maintenance by 500-2500 calories while fully maintaining their competitive fitness or gaining a small amount of quality mass.

Essentially, all you need to do is determine your daily caloric intake at which you neither lose nor gain weight immediately after finishing your cutting phase, and stick to it, gradually adding very small amounts of nutrients at specific intervals (for example, 100 calories by adding 25g of additional carbohydrates per week, or even less).

At first glance, it all seems logical—if you can continuously reduce your caloric intake without losing weight, then adaptation mechanisms should exist in the opposite direction to protect us not from depletion but from obesity. Indeed, this phenomenon does exist—people who overeat to 7500 calories a day should gain a kilogram of fat every day, but the process happens much slower as absorption is suppressed, fat cell sensitivity to the storage hormone insulin decreases, and basal energy expenditure and non-conscious physical activity increase.

So, does this mean that you simply eat more, and your metabolism automatically trains to burn more? Doesn’t it sound too good to be true?

1. Theoretically, it all works. However, in practice, the first challenge you will face is that sticking to a reverse diet is even harder than the cutting phase itself, despite the increased nutrient intake. Willpower is a limited resource, and the final phases of cutting drain it completely. If there were competitions involved, who can endure another couple of months of restrictions after that?

2. The second problem is that since you are adding nutrients very gradually, it is critically important to hit your daily caloric intake and specific macronutrient targets accurately. In practice, this is only possible if you eat the same thing every day. Again, for months on end.

3. Thirdly, if you are a competing athlete, your productive off-season will only start at the final stage of reverse dieting. Yes, months after the competitions. Although you will need much less time for subsequent cutting, many coaches recommend competing only after a year.

Reverse dieting is clearly not for everyone, but throwing caution to the wind after a long caloric deficit is not the solution either. During this period, the body turns into a machine for storing triglycerides (fats). Yes, normally, regardless of how much is eaten, a person cannot gain more than 400g of fat per day. However, a concentration camp prisoner or an athlete who has reduced their body fat to 3% will store as much as they can digest.

Experiments on mice have shown that there is such a concept as a "set-point" — the weight that the body always strives to maintain. If you weigh less, an increased appetite will torment you until you reach your set-point. If more, weight gain will be slowed down. An example of a low set-point is typical hard gainers. They feel they have eaten 2000 calories, but in reality, they have only consumed 400. Even if they manage to stuff in what they need, they start unconsciously moving around, getting fidgety until they burn everything they’ve eaten just to maintain body temperature.

So, the mentioned laboratory mice were first put on a radical long-term diet and then given unlimited access to food. Naturally, they quickly regained their previous weight, but after that, fat gain for some reason did not slow down. It turned out that after strict prolonged restrictions, living beings not only store more fat but also increase the number of fat cells (which was previously thought to remain stable throughout life). In other words, a complete lack of a transition period between starvation and mass gain literally shifts the set point upward!

Coaches like Eric Helms recommend that for at least the first two weeks after cutting, when the body is most responsive to excess food, one should not significantly increase caloric intake but gradually introduce larger amounts of starchy carbohydrates, as the speed of restoring normal metabolism primarily depends on the amount of glucose that enters the body.

Now we are almost touching the truth. Ultimately, the question that really concerns us can be formulated as follows: "Will I have to go hungry for the rest of my life to keep my body fat percentage below double digits (9% or lower)?"

Theoretically, there is no need to. It is indeed possible to increase your maintenance caloric intake while preserving body composition, even by a thousand calories (if you are a larger man). But even if you perfectly adhere to the reverse diet, you will likely need additional ways to expend energy.

The fact is that the lion's share of the calories we expend is related to basal metabolism, that is, what you burn while sleeping and resting. Reverse dieting will not only fail to increase this expenditure—it will likely decrease slightly, considering your new, lower body weight. What remains is the activity from both training and non-training.

Doing an hour of cardio every day? Sorry, but if you eventually have to cut again, how many hours of cardio will you need then? Additionally, dietary restrictions already suppress anabolism, and cardio will completely destroy the possibility of any slow, but still effective recomposition.

Since you want to eat more safely, you'll need to modify your strength training program. How? Present it in the form of a magical triangle of "intensity-frequency-volume" and pull at the last two corners. Although the energy expenditure of the highest-volume training will be lower than that of cardio, you can still "reclaim" yourself 200-500 calories this way. There are energy expenditure calculators for strength training online, which are a great help in this endeavor.

And lastly, reverse dieting works with natural training. With the introduction of additional variables into the game, such as withdrawal syndrome, impaired tissue sensitivity, and insulin production (ephedrine and clenbuterol essentially cause temporary insulin resistance), the consequences become unpredictable.