4 Reasons Why Reverse Dieting Is Overrated and What to Do Instead

Reverse dieting is known as the ‘diet after the diet.’ It was first popularized in the body-builder space but overtime has trickled down into the general masses. Reverse dieting is what it sounds like–reversing out of a calorie deficit. 

The approach is more methodical though as it requires you to incrementally increase your calories anywhere between 50-150 per week over several weeks until you reach your maintenance calories. Most proponents of reverse dieting suggest increasing calories primarily from carbohydrates and/or fat but keeping protein constant. 

There are two reasons why you may be interested in reverse dieting: 

1. You hit a weight-loss plateau and want to  "rebuild" your metabolism before re-entering a calorie deficit.

2. You hit your weight-loss/body composition goals and want to return to your maintenance calories and simultaneously avoid fat regain. 

Reverse dieting has become popular largely because it caters to peoples neurosis about gaining weight quickly post-dieting. It also tends to sensationalize its purported benefits by claiming 1) that your metabolism has been damaged by diets and 2) it will not only repair your metabolism but more or less ‘super-charge’ it allowing you to eat more without gaining any weight back.

So let’s discuss some of the problems with reverse dieting and why these claims are frankly- wrong.

It is a misnomer that your metabolism is damaged after dieting. While it’s true that your body experiences metabolic adaptations during a prolonged calorie deficit, the extent of the adaptations is largely over-exaggerated. In a recent study involving 65 pre-menopausal overweight women who were put on a 800 calorie per day diet, the women's resting metabolic rates (RMR) decreased by about 90 calories after losing 16% of their body weight (Martins et al., 2022) 

Half of this decrease in RMR can be explained by a loss of fat mass and/or muscle mass which is expected. The other half can be attributed to metabolic adaptation. Metabolic adaptation is the body’s way of resisting change. In the case of weight-loss, your body starts fighting further weight-loss by lowering your total energy expenditure and at the same time increasing your hunger cues.

What's important to know is that metabolic adaptation is NOT permanent. In fact, it  largely disappears as your weight-stabilizes after a diet. In other words, the magnitude of adaptation is greatest at the end of a dieting period when calories tend to be the lowest but as soon as you increase calories back to maintenance the adaptation largely disappears. Metabolic adaptation is also NOT a predictor for weight-regain as you may have once believed (Martins eta al. 2020) 

So what does this have to do with reverse dieting? Many proponents of reverse dieting claim that it should be used to repair a broken metabolism. But the truth is: your metabolism is not damaged after a diet, it is simply down regulated as a result of being in a calorie deficit. But these metabolic adaptations are usually transient as soon as you increase calories and maintain your new weight.

One of the more popular claims about reverse dieting is it's power to increase your metabolism beyond pre-dieting levels.  The reality is that there is nothing magical about slowly increasing your calories versus increasing your calories all at one time. 

Your metabolism is dynamic in that it responds in proportion to the amount of energy you give it. If you eat fewer calories than you burn your metabolism will decrease. Similarly, if you start eating more calories like when you'd return to your maintenance calories after dieting or begin eating in a slight surplus your metabolism will increase. 

Your total mass and body composition play a role too. People who have larger bodies will generally have a higher metabolic rate than someone petite, for example. The proportion of muscle mass you have also influences your weight. Because muscle is three times as metabolically active as fat mass - the leaner you are--generally the higher your metabolic rate. 

People who claim they can now 'eat more than they previously did' wrongly attribute this to the “magic” of incremental calorie increases, when in reality the reverse dieter likely underestimated the amount of calories they were consuming pre-diet. 

In fact, studies show that overweight individuals underestimate the number of calories they eat by as much as 40%; whereas normal weight individuals underestimate by 20% The degree of error in our estimates is largely attributed by the size of the meal. The bigger the meal is the more prone we are to underestimate the number of calories in it (Wansink & Chandon, 2019)

But even assuming the reverse dieter is right in that they are actually eating more than what they did pre-diet, it’s important to ask how long the reverse dieter has been eating at his or her much higher maintenance? This is important because reverse dieting takes you out of a caloric deficit in a slow and methodical way; theoretically you won’t see any real changes in your weight until you hit your maintenance calories. 

And even if you overshoot your maintenance calories by say  200-300 calories - you may assume you are able to eat “so much more food” when in reality consistently taking in an excess of this size  would require about a month's time before you saw the scale change by 1-2 pounds. That said, the belief that reverse dieting supercharges your metabolism is likely due to faulty tracking or that the additional calories they are consuming are not reflected on the scale - at least not yet. 

Reverse dieting actually can be more harmful than helpful to you because it requires you to slowly increase your calories as opposed to increasing your calories all at once back to your maintenance level. This means if you’ve been in a 500 kcal deficit and decide to increase your calories by 50–100 kcal each week, it’d take you 5-10 weeks to come out of that deficit.

Consequently, by inching your way out of a calorie deficit it is actually going to take longer for your body to reap the benefits of eating at maintenance. I think we can all agree that being in a calorie deficit is not fun, to say the least. 

You may experience more bouts of hunger, poor performance in the gym, sleep disturbances, not to mention the psychological stress of obsessing over what you eat and how much. And for those who get extremely lean the consequences of prolonged dieting can contributed to disturbances in thyroid and reproductive function.

The final issue with reverse dieting is that in order to do it properly, you are assuming the reverse dieter is meticulous at tracking their food with precision. Giving someone an additional 50 calories for the week is the equivalent of ½ Tbsp of oil, 8 almonds, or 1.5 oz of cooked rice. 

Tracking to this level of accuracy is hard to get right even if you are weighing and measuring most of your foods. This is because foods have inherent nutritional variability and even packaged foods can be off by as much as 20% in calories. And the accuracy of the nutritional content of restaurant foods could be even further off because they are not held to a margin of error like retailers. 

That said, the supposed benefits you get from reverse dieting require the dieter to be tracking at a level of accuracy that is likely not feasible even if you are putting forth your best effort. 

By now you are probably wondering, well this great information to have but what would you suggest I do instead, if reverse dieting doesn't provide any real benefits?

Well, first it's important to know what problem are you trying to solve. Have you hit a weight-loss plateau or have you hit your weight-loss goal and now are wanting to get back to a more sustainable calorie level? If you have hit a plateau, I'd suggest you check out my blog post on how to overcome a weight-loss plateau. 

However, if you have hit your weight-loss goal and wanting to switch to maintenance mode I'd suggest first calculating your maintenance  needs based on your rate of weight-loss over the last month. Then rather than incrementally "reversing," simply switch to your new maintenance calories goal all at once. 

Again, there is no need to 'tip toe' out of a calorie deficit because it's not going to provide any metabolic benefits if that's the reason you are doing it. However, if you find you are nervous about 'overestimating' your maintenance calorie needs and gaining weight - you can always start at the lower end of your maintenance needs and monitor your weight for a week or two before adding more calories. 

But as a reminder: there is no real advantage to adding only 50 to 100 calories at a time and waiting for weeks before increasing your calories again. The sooner we can get you out of a deficit the better you will feel both physically and mentally so don't delay it too much.

If you found this post helpful and are interesting in learning more about how to not just lose weight but maintain a healthy weight for the long-run, make sure to check out my program Eat Fit for Fat Loss where I provide you with the nutrition strategies, tools, and accountability you need to lose the weight once and for all. 

Cheers to good health!

Alisa