When I started with my coach, I was eager to begin my journey and ease into a reverse diet. I was so fortunate to have the support of a coach to guide me through the process. Without her, I likely would not have followed through.
I am a huge proponent of using a professional coach who is well-educated in the process, but you don’t need one. My hope is to give you as much insight into the process as I can by sharing my learnings with you to ease any questions or concerns you may have.
1. Respect for Your Body is the First Step
How many times have you gone on a diet or had disordered eating and exercise habits because you are not *insert subjective adjective here* enough?
I cannot tell you how many times I have subjected myself to grueling workouts, rigid dieting, and little to no rest all because I thought I was not *healthy, thin, fit, skinny, etc.* enough.
When I started working with a nutrition and lifting coach I was super excited about doing a reverse diet because I knew I would get stronger, fitter, and eat more food. What I didn’t realize at the time was I needed to do it out of love and respect for my body. This is neither a punishment or a reward system like many diets I’ve tried in the past.
Mental Change is Needed for Physical Change
A reverse diet is, in my opinion, more of a mental adaptation rather than a metabolic adaptation. Meaning, in order to see the benefits of a reverse diet, you have to recognize what it takes to get you there. And that my lovelies takes a lot of self-love.
2. A Reverse Diet Can Be Scary
Okay, so the benefits that people tout about, muscle gain, body recomposition, eating more, better overall health, etc. are so exciting. You can read my post on what a reverse diet is where I talk about these benefits among many others. However, as glamorous as the concept is, it is actually very daunting.
Starting a reverse diet goes against everything I knew about dieting. Throughout my 20s, I always thought I needed to lose weight, eat in a deficit, do excessive cardio, and have a little more self-control. But in honor of respecting my body, I had to throw out what I thought to be true out the window. I clung to these notions of diet culture since I was a teenager and it was scary to shake.
If my younger self knew that by doing a reverse diet I would gain weight, eat more, do cardio less, and NOT restrict myself, I would have walked away. How would that get me to that ideal body I was seeking? Well, I didn’t know that what I was doing wouldn’t. Flash forward almost a decade and my old dieting habits never did work sustainably.
So why is a Reverse Diet so Scary?
Well, it is unfamiliar. If you, like myself and many other men and women, have been deeply ingrained in diet culture for generations, the notion that doing the exact opposite of what you have been taught is scary.
Think about it via an analogy. You grew up on a quiet street and your whole childhood where you walked to school on the path that your mother told you to take. It was safe because you were familiar with it and you didn’t know that it avoided the busy roads and limited having to cross the street.
Once you are old enough for high school the school is in the opposite direction as elementary school. Now you have to take a new path. At first, it is a little scary because you have been doing the same thing your whole life up to this point. But soon you realize it is faster, you have better street smarts, and it is a nice change of scenery.
Maybe that analogy is silly and most people these days are not as naive since we have more technology to keep our kids safe. But my point is if you have been doing something for so long, trying a new thing that is completely opposite of what you are used to can be scary.
A reverse diet is often that. It’s doing something different than what you are familiar with. But trust me, once you get into the grove of it, you will start making progress faster, become smarter about your nutrition and training, and it’s a refreshing change of pace to your lifestyle.
3. Reverse Diets Take Time
Have you tried diets that make claims to lose a certain amount of weight in a short period of time? Maybe you had success with it, maybe you didn’t. Did it stick? Was it sustainable? Are you still reaping the benefits today? My guess is likely not. And I can say that speaking from experience.
I’ve done several different types of diets and got results quickly. That being I probably just lost a bunch of water weight. However, as soon as I went back to normal, so did my body. No fad diet I have ever done has been sustainable. *Cue in my “except a reverse diet! excitement* However, I’m not even going to say that exactly.
A Reverse Diet Doesn’t Have to be a Diet
A reverse diet is probably the most sustainable diet I’ve ever experienced. I don’t even like to think of it as a diet because it really is more of a body recalibration or a practice of metabolic conditioning.
But anyway, it takes time. Actually, it takes a lot of time. As I write this, I am currently in a maintenance phase of 2600 calories (give or take) a day and it took me 3-4 months to get to that from 1800 calories.
Keep in mind, this is my story. I have a friend who took 8 months to get up to 2700 calories before she went into maintenance for a few months then a cut. As you can see, it can take a lot of time no matter who you are and where you are in your journey. Know that when you commit to a reverse diet, it’s not going to be a 6-12 week transformation. It can take months if not years to reverse your body up to what maintenance for your body is.
4. You Need to Be Committed to the Process
This goes hand in hand with the topic above. Not only does it take time, but you really have to know before you start that you are in this for the long haul and you are along for the ride.
Truly, a reverse diet is so exciting. You will learn so much about your body and I’m confident you will start reaping the benefits quickly.
You Need to Stay Consistent to Reap the Benefits of a Reverse Diet
Regardless of your reverse diet and fitness program, committing to staying on track is where you will see the results. Many people have written or spoken on concepts like the 80/20 rule where you can have some flexibility so you don’t burn out.
For myself, I have adopted a form of this rule but I cannot say I follow it perfectly. Nor would I suggest anyone needs to as even that could be too rigid. However, I know the human body is smart and really good at adaptation. So if you can stay on track for 70-90% of the time, the other 30-10% of the time that you don’t really won’t make a difference in the long run.
5. You Will Rediscover Your Body’s Hunger Cues
This one was huge for me. I had some form of restrictive diet or disordered exercise routine for most of my 20s. Because of that, I struggled with understanding my body’s hunger cues and had no idea.
Why do I know now that I did not realize it then? Well, my habits of starving myself all day, not allowing more than XYZ calories, and resisting the urge to binge eat (often failing) at night. Oh, and I would be proud of the fact that “I’m not hungry in the morning.”
It May Take a Reverse Diet to Undo Damage
Well, little did I know that I did some metabolic damage and that’s why I wasn’t hungry all day but then wanted to ravage through my pantry at night. It was a brutal cycle.
Now I wake up and feel hungry based on how much I ate and/or how active I was the previous day. I eat several times a day and can easily say no to dessert because I haven’t starved. Sometimes I am still hungry after dinner, sometimes I’m not. But what is really cool is I now eat because I am genuinely hungry, not because of some rule I made up for myself.
6. Binge Eating May Go Away Naturally
Following up on the previous topic, boy did I fix my binge eating habits. As I had mentioned, I had no idea what I was doing to my body. It was miserable but I had taught myself that was acceptable even though my body hated it.
By doing a reverse diet, I was finally giving my body the nutrition it needed and deserved. Very early into my reverse diet, my body was absorbing the fuel I was giving it and it did not physiologically have to fight for more. Meaning, my cravings and desires to eat more at night were quickly becoming a thing of the past. I was healing my metabolism.
Bingeing May Be a Metabolic Sign
I learned that my binging habits were my body’s way of self-preservation. Because I was undernourishing myself, my body was almost in survival mode and trying to get me to find more food to satisfy its metabolic needs. Well, the body is pretty amazing at trying to take care of itself and those nightly binges were its way of doing that.
7. Food Obsessions Often Go Away
Similarly to binge eating, food obsessions are often your body’s way of trying to get nourishment. I used to constantly think about food all day and it was sickening at times. I remember once crying in my bed because I couldn’t stop thinking about food. I was so consumed.
Since doing a reverse diet and am now in maintenance, I rarely think about food and hardly have cravings. It happens occasionally, but I’m not debilitated by it. If anything, thinking about food or cravings gets me excited. I no longer have agony over the obsessive thoughts and wondering how I can make something tasty that is uber low cal.
8. Energy Levels Likely Will Go Up
Undernourishment, excessive activity, and limited rest are a recipe for exhaustion and burnout. Hopefully, you are complementing your reverse diet with a solid workout plan and recovery. However, with a reverse diet, you are already covering your nourishment needs and that will significantly help with energy levels.
Think about it, can you expect your car to work if it doesn’t have fuel? Of course not. And if you only put a quarter tank of fuel in it you can’t expect it to go very far. Same with your body. If you are under-fueling your body, your ability to do more or just feel more awake can be a struggle.
9. You Need to Prioritize Rest and Recovery
A big part of increasing your energy levels comes down to rest and recovery. Having a solid reverse diet plan can work wonders, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. Your body needs time to digest, repair, and re-energize. If you are only getting a few hours of sleep at night, your progress will be inhibited. That is why it is crucial to take the time to get adequate sleep and get rest to balance out your activity.
10. An Exercise Plan Should Be Used to Complement Your Reverse Diet
The third key element of your reverse diet is having a solid exercise plan. Going to the gym 5 days one week then 1 the next and so on is not very consistent. As your body begins to adapt to the increase in calories, you need to balance it with activity.
A lot of professionals will suggest going into a reverse diet with a weight lifting and strength regime that applies progressive overload. I am a huge fan of this approach but recognize it is not for everyone. If you consistently love going to Barre classes three days a week and hiking on the weekends along with daily walks with your pet, I love that for you.
Find an Exercise Program that Works for You
You don’t need to have intense strength goals to do a reverse diet. But it is important to have consistent activity so you can mitigate any unnecessary fat gain in the process.
11. You May Gain Weight, But That Can Be a Really Good Thing
Alright, no one wants to hear this, but weight gain is not uncommon in a reverse diet. In fact, I would bet it is more common than what’s out there on socials. I’ve seen posts and videos about people who did not gain any weight, and kudos to them. But weight gain can actually be a really good sign that things are working.
Generally, someone who is on a reverse diet is trying to take their body out of a deficit in a manageable way with little impact on their body. If you jump from 1500 calories to 2500 calories immediately, you likely will put on more fat thus gaining more weight than you would like. But if you gradually increase your calories over several months, weight gain will ideally be minimal if other factors are consistent i.e. rest and activity.
Weight Gain Can be a Sign of Body Recomposition
During my reverse diet, I gained about 12ish lbs. That could be horrifying to the stomach. But get this, my waist and hip measurements stayed almost exactly the same. My arms and thighs went up by .5-1 inch tops. What does that tell you? My body recompositioned. I put on muscle and water weight. And about half of that I know is water because when I started using creatine the scale went up 6lbs in one week. You can read about my story here!
12. The Scale No Longer Needs to Own You
Your value is not determined by the gravitational force pulling you into the earth. The scale gives you a snapshot of your total mass at a single moment in time. I will get into this in my other post here.
When you go through the motions of a reverse diet, it’s important to keep in mind that one piece of biofeedback is not a tell-all. Once you get more comfortable with tracking and learning from your data points, you will look at the scale as that, just a data point.
13. You Can Look at Your Body Objectively but Lovingly
Similarly to the scale, your body’s more variable aesthetics, yes I’m talking bloating, can be recognized for what they are. Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror from the side progressively throughout the day? If you are eating food throughout the day and drinking fluids your body has to store it somewhere. Because of that, your belly will naturally stick out a bit.
Sometimes you may indulge a little more one night out at dinner or you just really want that bowl of ice cream you may actually have a lactose intolerance for. Well, your belly may stick out a bit more. But does that mean you gained fat? Heck no! You are literally storing food and fluids. By the next day, your belly will likely shrink back down.
It Takes Time to Feel This Way
It took me a while to be okay with this. Of course, I always knew my belly was bulging from eating a larger meal or literally just eating a normal day’s worth of food. However, it was mentally tough and I struggled to get through the urge to punish myself by starvation and over-exercising the next day.
Fast forward to now since going through a reverse diet. I no longer feel that way. When I see my belly sticking out, that’s cool. I just had a great meal or I’m on my period. Then I move on. It’s a very peaceful mindset.
14. This is Your Journey, No Comparisons Allowed!
When I was just starting my reverse diet I looked for countless blogs, and Instagram posts. I was constantly seeking validation that I was doing the right thing. In the process, I had to learn that this is my journey and that no person will have the same experience.
There is something to be said about the comradery of going through this. If there wasn’t I wouldn’t be sharing my experiences with you. But even as I share these fifteen fundamentals I think you need to know, these are solely from my learnings. I’m proud of them and you can be proud of your own learnings on your journey, too!
15. A Reverse Diet Can Be Life Changing
I can talk for hours about how a reverse diet changed my outlook on life and my overall health. These points I shared with you are only a few ways I grew and shifted how I live my life.
So much in my life has benefited from taking the steps to heal my relationship with food and my body. I’m overall happier, more energetic, and way more present when I’m with family and friends.
This experience has improved how I not only fuel and take care of my body but how important it is to respect and show up for it. I can truly say I love the body I have been blessed with and I want to do everything I can to make sure it gets the attention it deserves. You can read more about my story here.
These fifteen fundamentals you need to know before starting a reverse diet are some of my biggest takeaways. I wanted to share what I wish I could have known before starting a reverse diet program. I hope you find them helpful and am happy to answer any questions.
Thank you for taking the time to read about my fifteen fundamentals you need to know. Have you gone through a reverse diet and had similar or different experiences? I’d love to hear about them below!
Are you thinking about starting a reverse diet and have questions or concerns? I’d love to help give you some clarity. Please share your comments below or send me a private message!
