If you find yourself in any of the following situations, you should start with reverse dieting:
You’ve plateaued
When you hit a major sticking point on your weight loss setting, rather than beating your head against a wall and torturing your body, refocus your efforts on restoring metabolism.
You’re coming off a diet or show prep
If you’ve just finished a diet or fitness competition, you’ll need an organized plan to minimize weight regain and to ensure metabolism and hormones return to pre-diet levels. Leave nothing to chance and reverse diet correctly.
You’re maintaining weight on miserably low calories
Even if you reach your ideal weight, no one wants to subsist on water and kale for the rest of their lives! You’ll want to re-establish a normal food intake so you can live life comfortably.
You plan to get super lean but aren’t eating much
If you intend to get competition lean, you’ll need room to drop calories. If you’re already struggling to stick to a low-calorie diet, cutting calories further isn’t the answer. By reverse dieting to a higher starting point, you’ll give yourself a mental break from dieting and will have more calories to work with, which may help you hit your target stage weight easier.
You experience uncontrolled urges to binge
If you find yourself preoccupied with food and battling an urge to binge, you’ll benefit from reverse dieting. By giving yourself more calories to work with, you’ll have more room to fit in the foods you crave.
You feel miserable on your low-calorie diet
If your calories are so low that you have next to no energy, tend to have significant mood swings, or just are not enjoying life, it’s best to hop off the diet train.
***Many of the scenarios described are subjective. For an objective definition of" very low calories" that may indicate that it’s time to start a reverse diet, refer to the following guideline:
For someone of average activity level (think 1 hour of intense activity a day and a relatively sedentary job), a very loose definition of "very low calories" might be when you approach 11 calories per pound of lean body mass.
*For a 150lb woman with 25% body fat that is 1,240 calories.
*For a 200lb man with 15% body fat that is 1870 calories.