To make sure we are on the same page, let's take a minute to revisit what a reverse diet is and why we do it.

The easiest way to think about a reverse diet is it's the diet after the diet - a transitional phase when we slowly add calories each week to raise our metabolic rate with a goal to limit fat gain. Is it right for everyone? No, but I'll dive into that in another post.

Reason #1 - Panic mode!

We have all seen the transformation stories where some people are able to go from eating 1,400 calories up to 2,600 calories in 12 weeks without gaining a pound. These results are not the majority and the assumption that you will not regain any weight isn't very realistic, but technically, yes, it is definitely possible. Anecdotally, I've noticed about 40-60% of people who reverse diet experience some amount of weight gain; around 5-10lb. Others stay the same and a few even lose weight. You need to understand your results are impacted by two very big factors - your individual diet history and your ability to remain consistent to your reverse diet. If you go up in weight, but you are consuming far more calories than when you initially started dieting, that is a huge WIN! You are in a much, much, better metabolic position to lose body fat the next time. Remember, weight is not stagnant as we age so we can always expect there to be a time period later when we may have goals to lose weight.

Reason #2 - Too much cardio!

It's easy to bounce from panic mode into too much cardio. Often times I see this begin to happen when the number on the scale or a specific pair of pants just don't fit the same as they did a couple weeks prior. Doing excessive cardio during a reverse in hopes to reduce any weight gain is not helpful in the long term because the goal at the end of your reverse is to be able to balance a solid range of calories and movement for your lifestyle. If you like to run, cool, but you shouldn't increase running just to try to impact the scale. That said, let's not take things too drastically. For example, you can't go from 5 HIIT sessions per week down to 1 HIIT session per week without expecting a little weight gain. Cardio should be reduced week by week during a reverse to allow your body to slowly transition into what you find enjoyable and can see yourself maintaining at the end of your reverse diet.

Reason #3 - 'F/ck it' mode!

Lack of patience kills a lot of dreams. Let's take Becca for example. Becca is in week 7 of her reverse and has a lot of anxious feelings about her weight gain (she's up 3 lbs after losing 21 lbs at the end of her previous diet). Over the previous two weeks she pushed through panic mode, but in week 6 she started doing 15 minutes extra cardio each day. She maintained her weight in week 7 but wanted to lose the 3 lbs she gained so... she decides to do a “mini cut.” ***Anecdotally, I see this often with chronic yo-yo dieters and have felt this way myself many times. It's almost like seeing the number on the scale is a trigger to start another diet aka current goals and the logic get thrown out the window the moment I see too high of a number.*** Your body has, for lack of a better term, a 'memory' regarding your diet history. When considering a reverse, you may fall in one of two groups, either the group that hasn't dieted much, or yo-yo dieters. If you haven't dieted much in your life, you can expect to take the same amount of time in your reverse diet as you did in your initial diet (time estimate is assuming an average 12 -16 weeks diet with a moderate reduction in calories). If you have been yo-yo dieting for 5+ years and you expect a reverse to be over in 12 weeks, you’re going into this with unrealistic expectations. A realistic expectation would be to reverse diet for a year or more. That's not to say you can't do mini-cuts during the year, but you want these to be infrequent and well planned. After a mini-cut, you would continue to reverse diet and if needed in another 4-6 months, perhaps do another mini cut. Think of this as a two steps forward, one step back but I'll go into this in more detail in another post.

CLIFFS NOTES: You will increase your metabolism during a reverse diet, but you might see the scale go up slightly in the process (still less than what you saw before your initial diet). To be the most successful, you need to have realistic expectations going into it by not falling into one of the three traps; panic mode, excessive cardio or f/ck it mode.