How to reverse diet
People get really worked up about reverse dieting. They believe there is some magic formula and if you don’t do it just right then your results are going to highly impacted. One way or another the calories need to come up! Whether you do it fast or slow know that while you are in process of reverse dieting you are still “dieting”. You are eating below your potential until you get to maintenance. Our bodies want to be at maintenance. That is where our homeostasis occurs and where we thrive. This is also the food level you need to be at or above to build muscle or get “toned”. So how quick do you want to get there or NEED to get there? How badly is your biofeedback suffering? Some of you have been at this too long and need to get calories up in a big way…worrying about a few pounds of weight gain should be the least of your concerns.
There is no right or wrong way to reverse. JUST EAT MORE. Make goals each week and meet them so you can progress. Protein doesn’t usually need increased if already in .8-1g/lb range. If you aren’t then you may need to get that up to .8g/lb, otherwise it’s just adding back carbs and fat. All of the macros are important, not just protein.
You may need to change your foods to more calorie dense choices to meet your goals. Stop saying you can’t meet your calories but your still using SF syrup and spray butter. Most won’t be able to meet maintenance or surplus calories eating “diet foods”.
Make sure you are aiming for a true maintenance appropriate for your stats and activity. Just because you are maintaining your weight at 1600 calories doesn’t mean that is your maintenance. That is an unfortunate side effect of dieting TOO LONG.
Some of you may need to ditch the scale. The calories need to come up. Stop focusing of a few pounds on scale. How you respond really depends on your dieting history…again another reason why we don’t live in low calorie. Sometimes we have to pay a price for the decisions we made if we want to change and get healthy. Hope this helps! ❤️SC