Fat Loss
This goal is for those wanting to lose weight.
If you have a healthy metabolism and are maintaining your weight eating a normal amount of food, it will be appropriate for you to start on this goal. On the other hand, if you have a history of extreme or repeated bouts of dieting and are accurately tracking your calories but struggling to maintain your weight on very little food, you might be better off choosing a reverse diet.
It’s important to understand that you’ll need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. If you’re already struggling to lose weight on a low-calorie diet, the system will need to cut calories even further to force you to lose weight. At some point, when calories become low enough, fatigue, hunger, and urges to binge may make it next to impossible to stick to your diet. At this point, fat loss may no longer be appropriate.
Reverse Diet
Reverse dieting is best suited for those just coming off a diet who want to rebuild their metabolism and maintain their new body weight on higher calories, and it can also be helpful for those who are struggling to stick to a low-calorie diet.
After successfully losing weight, it isn’t healthy or sustainable to continue eating a low-calorie diet. You also shouldn’t jump right back to eating what you were before your diet, since this can cause massive weight regain. Instead, you’ll need to gradually increase calories by reverse dieting. This will allow you to keep lost weight off while helping your metabolism and hormones return to pre-diet levels.
If you have a long dieting history and are struggling to stick to a low-calorie diet or manage your weight while eating very little food, it might be a good idea to reverse diet. Years of dieting can thrash motivation and energy levels, increase hunger, and slow down your metabolism. Calories may need to be dropped pretty low to lose weight, and with lower motivation and higher hunger and fatigue, sticking to those calories can be tough. By reverse dieting, you’ll give yourself a much-needed break from dieting while improving your metabolism. If you want to lose weight in the future, you’ll be starting on higher calories with a renewed sense of determination.
On the reverse diet setting, your calories will increase following each weigh-in (as long as you hit your targets and don’t gain too much weight). This increase in calories will stimulate your metabolism to increase and burn through more food, and it will also make it easier to stick to the recommendations. Over time, you can increase adherence to diet recommendations, renew motivation, and improve your metabolism through reverse dieting.
Maintenance
The maintenance goal is designed for those looking to maintain a stable body weight, or for those just coming off of a reverse diet to give their body time to adapt to their higher calorie intake.
If you’re happy with the calories you’re eating and just want to keep your body weight within a certain range, this setting is right for you. We also recommend that people who reverse diet switch to this setting for at least a little while before attempting fat loss. Doing so will give your body more time to adapt to the higher calories and ensure that you’re in a better mental place to diet again, maximizing your chances of success when you ultimately cut.
Muscle Gain
The muscle gain goal is for those who want to gain weight.
Since building muscle is a very energy expensive process, you’ll need to eat a lot of food to support this. You’ll also need to follow a solid weight training program. The muscle gain goal will put you in a calorie surplus, forcing you gain weight at a certain rate based on your setting selection.
Although both the reverse diet and muscle gain goals will put you in a calorie surplus to make muscle building easier, the main goal of muscle gain is to increase your body weight, whereas the main goal of reverse dieting is to increase your calorie intake.
***Need help deciding which goal is right for you? Take our goal quiz!