Since you’re eating more food, you should expect to put on some weight during the reverse diet process. But there are ways to limit this, and you can use your pattern of weight gain as a guide to tell you whether you should change your goal or setting.
To limit weight gain, choose a slow reverse diet setting. This will increase calories slowly, giving your body plenty of time to adapt to the extra food you’re eating. If you want to give your body even more time to adapt and reduce your risk of weight gain further, you can toggle back and forth between this conservative reverse diet goal and maintenance.
To figure out what your pattern of weight gain means and what to do about it, ask yourself the following:
Have I gained weight during the first few weeks of my reverse?
It’s common to see the scale jump up a few pounds at the beginning of a reverse diet, especially if you weren’t eating a whole lot of carbs before. This is likely due to fluid retention rather than fat gain, and it might take a few weeks for your weight to level out. Just keep hitting your reverse diet macros, be patient, and trust the process!
To learn more about why you might be gaining weight at the start of a reverse, read our FAQ.
Am I alternating between gaining, losing, and maintaining weight each week?
During the first half of a reverse diet, weight gain will likely fluctuate—you gain a little weight one week, none the next, lose some one week, and gain even more weight the following week. This is no real cause for concern, as it can take some time for your metabolism to adjust to the increased calories and start burning through fuel faster. Inconsistent weight gain followed by weight plateaus can be a sign that your body is continuing to adjust to higher calories. Trust the system and continue your reverse diet.
Have I gained substantial weight several weeks in a row?
How you respond to this depends on how long you’ve been reverse dieting.
If you’re well into your reverse and begin to gain too much weight by system standards (or by your own standards) for 3 or 4 weeks in a row and weight gain has become linear, you should consider ending your reverse diet. For a while, the extra food each week will stimulate your metabolism to burn through fuel at a faster rate. But at some point, you’ll reach an upper limit where metabolism is no longer increasing to burn off some of those extra calories you’re giving it. When this happens, the extra calories will be stored mainly as fat, and your metabolism is running as fast as it will go.
If you’re still relatively early in your reverse (less than 8 to 10 weeks) and are gaining a lot of weight each week, we recommend changing your goal to maintenance for a while and switching back to a conservative reverse diet when your weight levels out. It’s possible that your body is just slow to adapt and that you still have room to increase your metabolism.
If you need extra help figuring out when you should stop reverse dieting, reach out to our Coaching Team.