CONTENTS
Chapter 1 - Introduction....................................................................................3
Chapter 2 - the Problem with Weight Loss.......................................................9
Chapter 3 - Maintaining Lost Weight...............................................................35
Chapter 4 - What Is a Reverse Diet and Who Is It for.......................................50
Chapter 5 - How to Set up Reverse Diet Calories............................................64
Chapter 6 - How to Set up Reverse Diet Macros..............................................77
Chapter 7 - Continuing the Reverse Diet.........................................................92
Chapter 8 - Training and Cardio.....................................................................107
Chapter 9 - Ending a Reverse Diet.................................................................127
Chapter 10 - Reverse Dieting FAQ..................................................................136
Chapter 11 - Conclusion and Case Studies.....................................................142
1
3
INTRODUCTION
I
t’s difficult to sell programs that aren’t fat loss based. Most people want to
be leaner. Sure, some want to gain muscle, but almost everyone wants less
body fat. The current data suggests that over 40% of adult males and nearly
60% of adult females are attempting to lose weight every year.1 Perhaps even
more staggering, nearly 50% of high school students report attempting to lose
weight and in the case of females, that number is even greater at 60%!2 Females tend to be more greatly impacted by ‘diet culture’ than males due to expectations of being thin, feminine, and sexy. Due to this, women will attempt
more diets in their lives, in fact a recent survey on college campuses found
that 91% of college women had attempted to diet and 22% said that they dieted frequently or ‘all the time.’3 This has led to an extreme focus on weight loss
attempts through dieting. Sadly, the intense focus on dieting leads people to
completely neglect what happens in the interim between dieting attempts. Diets don’t fail to cause weight loss, in fact the average dieter loses around 5-6kg
per attempt.4 If this is the case, then why are we still struggling with an obesity epidemic reaching epic proportions with nearly half the population being
overweight or obese?5 This is a complicated question that involves a complex
web of physiological, psychological, and sociological aspects of nutrition and
mental health. The short answer is that people are really good at losing weight,
but they are absolutely terrible at keeping it off.
1. (2018, July 12). Products - Data Briefs - Number 313 - July 2018 - CDC. Retrieved July 10,
2019, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db313.htm
2. (2018, June 19). U.S. high school students trying to lose weight in 2017, by ... - Statista.
Retrieved July 10, 2019, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/871927/us-students-who-aretrying-to-lose-weight/
3. (n.d.). Statistics on Dieting and Eating Disorders - Monte Nido. Retrieved July 10, 2019, from
https://www.montenido.com/pdf/montenido_statistics.pdf
4. (n.d.). Weight loss attempts in adults: goals, duration, and rate of ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved
July 10, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1694328/
5. (n.d.). Adult Obesity Facts | Overweight & Obesity | CDC. Retrieved July 10, 2019, from https://
www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
INTRODUCTION
4
The Problem With Diets
Amongst people who lose weight there is dispute as to how much weight they
regained. An often cited number is that diets have a 95% failure rate. It’s a statistic that we have talked about in previous books, but the more we’ve examined the data, the more we realize that it’s difficult to put an actual number on
this statistic. Here’s why: you have to first define what ‘weight loss’ is. Do you
consider 10% of body weight loss adequate to be termed ‘successful weight
loss.’ What about 2%? Or is it more fitting to say 20%? Many of these studies
define successful ‘weight loss’ differently. So when determining ‘weight regain’
it becomes. If you lost 10% of your body weight but then regained 5% back, do
we consider you a weight regainer? Or are you someone who successfully kept
off 5%? As you can see, defining terms can dramatically impact the data. Furthermore, the time duration studied can make a difference. If we are talking
about maintaining a 5% weight loss for say 6 months, there will be a much higher success rate than those who maintained it for 6 years. What is clear in the
literature however, is that losing weight (>5% body weight) seems to be accomplished with relative frequency amongst dieters. Keeping it off for several years
however, is far more difficult. If we are talking about losing 10% of body weight
and keeping it off, then it’s even more difficult. In examining the weight maintenance data beyond 2-3 years from the initial weight loss period, it is clear that
the majority of people will regain a significant amount of weight, and many of
those will actually end up adding back MORE weight than they initially lost.6 7
There are a multitude of reasons that this occurs including physiological, psychological, and sociological factors and we will cover many of these reasons in
the coming chapters. People may quibble over the actual statistics of the failure rates of diets or the regain rates, but no one can dispute that weight regain
is a major problem facing those who lose body fat through dieting. One of the
major issues in this regard is the fact that people don’t typically lose weight in
6. (n.d.). Weight regain in U.S. adults who experienced substantial ... - NCBI. Retrieved July 10,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17572309
7. (n.d.). [The mediocre results of dieting]. - NCBI. Retrieved July 10, 2019, from https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23859104
INTRODUCTION
5
a sustainable long term manner. If you ask people who are dieting what kind of
diet they are on, they will typically reply with some flavor of the month fad diet.
Very rarely will you hear “I’m practicing portion control and self-monitoring” because frankly, that isn’t sexy enough for most people. In many ways, human beings are incredibly intelligent. We have put men on the moon, we have unlocked
many secrets of the universe, and we have harnessed the power of the atom,
but we are also incredibly stupid when it comes to our beliefs about various
nutritional fallacies and quackery. If we pose the question “what is THE most
important thing for losing fat and keeping it off?” we will hear replies like:
“Avoid all sugar and junk food, its addictive and fattening.”
“Keep insulin as low as possible. Foods that spike your insulin cause weight gain.”
“Train fasted, it keeps your metabolism in the fat burning zone.”
“Intermittent fasting, it keeps your metabolism running as fast as possible.”
“Avoid carbs after 5pm so you don’t store them as fat.”
“Put butter in your coffee. It gives you long lasting energy without the sugar crash.”
Now you might think we threw that last one in there as a joke, but it’s actually
a thing (sadly). We’ve seen this sold as a keto bomb in many so called ‘healthy
cafes’ and while it’s easy to dismiss, none of these responses are correct. The
most important thing for losing fat and keeping it off is adherence. You can’t
get results if you aren’t consistent with your approach. This isn’t just a feeling
of ours, it’s supported by actual data. In fact, when you analyze popular diets
versus each other, none of them emerge as being clearly superior to the others
for losing fat and keeping it off. In fact, what is most closely associated with
INTRODUCTION
6
success is dietary adherence.8 9 10 11 This certainly doesn’t sound sexy and isn’t
going to wind up on the cover of a magazine in the checkout line at grocery
stores, but it’s the hard truth. The optimal nutrition strategy is a little bit like
economics, in that what works for consistently building wealth is pretty darn
boring. Save money, live within your means, limit your debt, and don’t make big
purchases that depreciate. There are a lot of self help books out there but the
one thing no one can deny is that in order to accumulate wealth, you must save
more money than you spend overall. That is not what gets attention unfortunately. Weekend courses on how you can make millions ‘easily’ by flipping houses, MLM schemes, pyramid nonsense, and wacky investment strategies are
what gets the most attention. In nutrition, giving good advice about choosing
a sustainable form of dietary strategy that you can adhere to isn’t sexy. Nonsensical supplements, fad diets, waist trainers, topical gels for fat burning and
sculpting, and other such BS are what get the attention. We will promise you
that if you talk with people who have lost weight and have kept it off for YEARS,
it’s unlikely that they will reference fad diets as the reason for their success.
More likely they will talk about changes they made to their lifestyle and dietary
behaviors as the key reason for their long term success. We discuss the key
behaviors and factors for maintaining weight loss in Chapter 3.
Why Reverse Dieting?
One of the tough things about maintaining lost body fat is that often times,
when people end their diets, the level of calories they are consuming is simply
too difficult to sustain. Most people can sustain low calorie diets for a short period of time, but trying to maintain <1500 calories as a long term diet strategy
is going to be really challenging. Trust me, this used to be me (Holly speaking)!
8. (2008, February 12). Dietary adherence and weight loss success among ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved July 11, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4005268/
9. (2017, July 11). Strategies to Improve Adherence to Dietary Weight Loss ... - NCBI. Retrieved
July 11, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28696389
10. (2016, August 12). Weight loss intervention adherence and factors ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved
July 11, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4990387/
11. (n.d.). Adherence and success in long-term weight loss diets: the ... - NCBI. Retrieved July
11, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19828901
INTRODUCTION
7
So what are your options? Be on low calories forever? Raise your calories and
regain the lost weight? This is where reverse dieting comes in.
At the end of a diet where people have achieved their weight loss goal, or at
least have decided that they are satisfied enough with their results to stop targeting further weight loss, many people go back to their ‘pre diet’ eating behaviors and regain a lot of the weight as we discussed previously. Even people who
are very mindful of tracking their calories will often return back to their ‘pre diet’
maintenance calories in a relatively short period of time. What many people do
not realize however is that your maintenance calorie levels after a long diet will
be far lower than what equations can predict, even when based off your current anthropometric measurements (i.e. weight, body fat, lean body mass, age,
etc). Taking your calories back up to your predicted maintenance or your maintenance calories from before you started your diet will likely lead to weight gain,
as your post diet metabolic rate is likely suppressed. We will discuss the mechanisms for this decrease in metabolic rate in Chapter 2, but essentially, your
body responds to dieting by reducing your overall energy expenditure in order to
defend you against starvation. Consider this, if your body did not adapt to a reduction in calories, then you could simply eat in a small calorie deficit, and over
a set period of time, you would lose all your body fat and eventually you would
starve to death. This ‘metabolic adaptation’ is a normal response to dieting and
something that needs to be considered in order to lose weight and keep it off.
So why reverse dieting? Reverse dieting has a myriad of uses and situations
where it may make sense, and we will attempt to cover many of them, but the
primary use of a reverse diet is for people who want to minimize weight regain
while recovering from a long diet and raising their calories back to a more sustainable level. This involves a process of slow and controlled calorie increases
in order to minimize fat regain, while at the same time, increase your energy
expenditure and metabolic rate. Essentially we want to ‘train’ you to be able to
eat more food while not gaining excessive amounts of body fat. Some people
may be able to add a significant amount of calories and not regain any body fat
whatsoever. So why would someone want to do this? Well most people would
probably love to be able to enjoy the flexibility of eating more food and not gain
any weight, especially those who have lost weight from dieting. Studies have
INTRODUCTION
8
demonstrated that people who have lost weight from dieting have significantly
greater hunger levels than weight matched controls who did not lose weight.12
13
This increase in hunger is thought to be about 3 fold higher than the corresponding amount of weight lost and therefore acts as a strong driver and predictor of weight regain.14 MacLean referred to this phenomenon as the ‘energy
gap’ where ‘more energy is desired than is required.’15 It is reasonable to assume
that a method whereby calorie intakes could be increased but fat gain was limited, would allow for the energy gap and hunger to dissipate over time. To put it
simply, we believe reverse dieting may help some people maintain their weight
loss, by allowing them to consume an increasingly greater amount of food over
time, while not adding more body fat than they would like.
Something else to consider is that reverse dieting is not just for a ‘post diet’
phase, in fact there are many potential applications. In particular, people who
have spent long periods of their life yo-yo dieting may find great benefit from reverse dieting. People who truly have ‘slow’ metabolisms or a relatively ‘low’ total
daily energy expenditure due to a sedentary job, may also find value in reverse
dieting. Finally, people who would simply like to have the ability to consume
more food, gain lean body mass, and limit fat gain to an absolute minimum may
also find benefits from reverse dieting. We do want to be clear, as of now there
are no scientific studies that use the term ‘reverse dieting’ as of the time we
are writing this book. We’ve had discussions with a number of researchers and
many are hopeful to carry out studies on this concept in the future, but as of
now, no hard data exits. The purpose of this book is to discuss why we think reverse dieting is a useful concept, the mechanisms of how we think it may work,
how to implement it successfully, and our own client case studies to support
our opinions and hypothesis.
12. (n.d.). How strongly does appetite counter weight loss ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved July 17,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5108589/
13. (n.d.). Successful and unsuccessful weight-loss maintainers ... - NCBI. Retrieved July 17,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6033771/
14. (n.d.). How Strongly Does Appetite Counter Weight Loss ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved July 17,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27804272
15. (n.d.). Biology’s response to dieting: the impetus for weight regain. - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved
July 17, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677272
2
9
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
W
ith the rapidly increasing rates of obesity around the world, many people have concluded that we have a weight loss problem. In reality, we
do not have a weight loss problem, we have a weight regain problem.
As we discussed in the last chapter, weight loss maintenance is incredibly hard
to maintain. Less than 20% of people who lose at least 10% of their body weight
are able to maintain it for even a single year.1 Some have claimed that diets have
a 95% failure rate, and while that may not be completely accurate, the point is
maintaining weight loss is incredibly difficult and not the typical experience
for most dieters. In fact, of those dieters who regain lost weight, one-third to
two-thirds of them will add back MORE weight than they lost in the first place.2
This has led some people to claim that ‘diets don’t work’ or that diets activate
‘starvation mode’, and that dieting causes the metabolic rate to slow down so
much that you end up storing fat even on low calories. Don’t worry, ‘starvation
mode’ is a complete myth and diets do work insofar as they cause weight loss
when caloric expenditure exceeds calories consumed. We’ll talk more on this
later if you don’t believe us.
So why do many people end up weighing MORE in the post diet period? One
thing to keep in mind is that this phenomenon, often referred to as ‘body fat
overshooting,’ is typically seen in lean people who attempt weight loss, relative
to overweight or obese people, who tend to just return to their previous weight.
In fact, research has shown that people who were initially considered ‘normal
weight’ when they began trying to lose, had two times the risk of weight regain
in a 6-15 year follow up compared to non-dieters.3 Further, in a study examining
1. (2010, May 18). Long-term weight loss maintenance in the United States. - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved July 17, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20479763
2. “Biology’s response to dieting: the impetus for weight regain. - NCBI - NIH.” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677272. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
3. (n.d.). Weight-loss attempts and risk of major weight gain: a prospective .... Retrieved August
30, 2018, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10584040
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
10
elite male athletes from age 20 to age 60, it was demonstrated that athletes
who had to repeatedly diet to make weight classes gained significantly more
weight over their lifetime than athletes who did not have to repeatedly diet to
make a specific weight class.4
This data is certainly not what people who wish to lose fat want to hear. We
can’t tell you how many potential clients we have missed out on working with
because we told them what they needed to hear vs. what they wanted to hear.
Weight loss may be hard but keeping the lost weight off is even harder. This
is for a multitude of reasons that include physiological, psychological, sociological, and possibly economical reasons. We will cover some of these, but it’s
important to point out that the difficulties in losing weight and keeping it off
can’t simply be explained by just one thing. There are a multitude of reasons,
some more important than others and we need to do our best to combat them
all. In fact, Dr. Paul MacLean, a researcher from the University of Denver who
has done some of the best work on body fat regain in our opinion, stated in a
review paper on this topic, “To be successful in the long term, our strategies for
preventing weight regain may need to be just as comprehensive, persistent,
and redundant, as the biological adaptations they are attempting to counter.”5
What a powerful statement, and something that is NOT considered by virtually
any weight loss diet or diet book out there, except for Fat Loss Forever (yes,
shameless plug, but it’s great). Think about it, when was the last time you remember a TV personality, diet doctor, celebrity, diet author, coach, trainer (insert whomever you like promoting a diet) speak about how to maintain what
you lost? It’s very rare, mostly because it’s not sexy and doesn’t sell. Most people simply want to know how to get off more weight, but many times that is because they have already been through several cycles of weight loss and regain.
4. (n.d.). Weight cycling of athletes and subsequent weight gain in middleage.. Retrieved August
30, 2018, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16568134
5. “Biology’s response to dieting: the impetus for weight regain. - NCBI - NIH.” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677272. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
11
The Physiological Cost of Dieting - Metabolic Adaptation
If you’ve been following us for any period of time, you could make a nice drinking game off the number of times we say the words ‘metabolic adaptation’ that
would keep you pretty tipsy most of the time. It is with good reason though,
metabolic adaptation is an extremely important aspect of dieting that most
people neglect to consider. It is also the source of much confusion regarding
energy balance or as most people refer to it: calories in vs. calories out (CICO).
Many popular social media diet gurus like to make strong statements regarding
CICO, mainly claiming that it is outdated and not supported by science, however, nothing could be further from the truth. An entire chapter was dedicated
to energy balance in Fat Loss Forever and we don’t want to belabor the point
here, but it’s worth doing some recap, especially for those who may have not
purchased our previous books/ebooks. Energy balance is what it sounds like,
so by saying that energy balance is not valid, is like saying that you don’t believe
in gravity. Many people will claim that counting calories doesn’t work because
they counted calories and didn’t lose any weight, or that someone did not count
their calories and was able to lose weight. That’s like saying gravity isn’t valid
because planes can fly. You may count calories and not lose weight, you may
also not count calories and still lose weight, but regardless of whether or not
you count calories, calories will always count. As much as people would love to
believe the contrary, there are no energy negative foods, or foods you can eat
as much as you want and still lose weight. “But wait a minute, you’ve both said
that even when calories are equated, higher protein and fiber can lead to better
fat loss, doesn’t that invalidate CICO?” Good question, and we can understand
the confusion. First, you need to understand what energy balance/CICO actually is. It’s quite literally the balance or the difference between the energy you
consume and is made available to your body after digestion vs. the amount of
energy your body requires on a daily basis.
ANY dietary approach that produces weight loss does so by tipping the balance
of energy in vs. energy out, either by reducing energy intake (CI), increasing
energy out (CO), or both. Protein has been demonstrated to increase energy
expenditure when compared to carbohydrate and fat, therefore tipping the
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
12
scales.6 7 Both protein and dietary fiber may also work by decreasing energy
intake and thereby improving energy balance for fat loss on both ends of the
scale.8 9 In fact, protein appears to be relatively unique amongst the macronutrients in its ability to enhance energy expenditure. However, when protein
and calories are equated between diets, while carbohydrate and fat are varied,
there does not appear to be any significant differences in fat loss or energy expenditure even when very extreme diets are used (ketogenic vs very low fat).10
People seem to confuse the perceived simplicity of CICO with the mechanisms
of CICO being simple. We’ve had people say things like “I was eating in a calorie deficit and I didn’t lose weight.” No, you weren’t. “But…” Just stop, no you
weren’t. You weren’t in a calorie deficit. You may have been eating a level of calories that you thought would cause fat loss or that may be predicted to cause fat
loss based on some equations or that should result in fat loss according to an
expert, etc. but if you didn’t lose weight, then it wasn’t a deficit. Furthermore, it
is important to note that tracking isn’t always perfect either, and there can be
up to a 20% error among food labels, which is often cited by anti-CICO people,
however this is a bit of a cop out. Encouraging people to NOT track macros because you can’t track it perfectly is silly. As we said, calories count whether you
count them or not, so you might as well count them to the best of your abilities,
even if it isn’t perfect, it’s better than having no freaking idea. It’s also important
to point out that if you aren’t weighing/measuring your food, then you are probably underestimating your calorie intake by a lot. How much? Research shows
that people underestimate their calorie intake by anywhere from 18-70%, with
6. “Timing protein intake increases energy expenditure 24 h after ... - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19997003. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
7. “Effect of protein overfeeding on energy expenditure measured ... - NCBI.” 14 Jan. 2015,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25733634. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
8. “Effects of Dietary Fiber and Its Components on Metabolic Health - NCBI.” 15 Dec. 2010,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257631/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
9. “Dietary protein - its role in satiety, energetics, weight loss and health..” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/23107521. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
10. “Obesity Energetics: Body Weight Regulation and the Effects of Diet ....” 11 Feb. 2017,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28193517. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
13
women more likely to under report than men and obese people more likely to
under report than non-obese.11 12 So before you claim that you “ate low calories
and didn’t lose weight,” did you really? Did you measure it all out? Did you track
all the licks, bites, snacks, chewing gum, swigs of drinks while standing at the
fridge, etc? Be honest with yourself, because if you aren’t then you will only
have to face the lack of results.
Even still, there are people who diligently track their food intake and workouts
who still can’t seem to lose weight, even on calorie levels that should facilitate
weight loss. So does that mean they have invalidated CICO? No, it simply means
that they likely have a low energy expenditure. It’s not ‘starvation mode’ or any
other such nonsense. You see, another big reason people fall into the trap of not
‘believing’ in CICO due to ‘simplicity’, is that they also fail to realize that calories
in and calories out are not independent variables. Calories in affects calories out
significantly. This is where metabolic adaptation comes in. Metabolic adaptation
is the adjustment of energy expenditure by the body based on caloric intake (and
body mass) to facilitate return to homeostasis. If you eat fewer calories than you
burn, you lose weight, but your energy expenditure slows down over time, so
that what was originally a deficit eventually becomes your maintenance.
Most of you who have done a weight loss diet where you tracked your calories
for any decent period of time have likely experienced this. You begin the diet on
a certain number of calories and watch the scale drop for a few weeks or even a
few months, but eventually you reach a plateau even though you are still eating
the same amount of calories. This is because firstly, because your bodyweight
has decreased and has a lower energy requirement to move about, secondly, your energy expenditure has decreased from metabolic adaptation. On the
same token, if you overfeed your rate of energy expenditure can increase over
time. But before we get into the mechanisms of how metabolic adaptation occurs, it’s important that we define what encompasses ‘calories out’ or our total
daily energy expenditure (TDEE). Your TDEE consists of 4 basic components:
11. “Assessing dietary intake: Who, what and why of under-reporting. - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19094249. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
12. “Under-reporting of Energy Intake from 24-hour Dietary Recalls ... - NCBI.” 28 Feb. 2014,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4064631/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
14
1. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
2. Non Exercise Adaptive Thermogenesis (NEAT) and Non Exercise Physical
Activity (NEPA)
3. Exercise activity (EA)
4. Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) — The major component of your TDEE is your basal
metabolic rate (BMR). Your BMR accounts for approximately 60% of your TDEE
and is the amount of energy your body requires to run basic processes and “keep
the lights on,” so to speak. A more simple definition might be our “existence calories.” Still, even though this is a baseline to keep you alive, for most people it’s
still the major determinant of your TDEE unless you do a lot of activity, in which
case BMR may be a much smaller overall contributor to your daily TDEE. Some
commonly used synonyms of BMR are resting metabolic rate (RMR) and resting energy expenditure (REE); however, it’s important to note that these terms
have slightly different definitions.
Non exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) and Non exercise physical activity (NEPA) — NEAT is the amount of energy you spend doing unconscious little movements throughout the day that aren’t actually exercise.These include
typing on the keyboard, talking, fidgeting, wiggling your toes, (or, like my lovely
wife Holly, swaying side to side when about to attempt a Deadlift PR). NEPA
on the other hand, refers to walking, standing, and any voluntary, non-exercise
activity. NEAT is actually the most adaptive component of metabolism, and
it increases significantly during a caloric surplus and decreases significantly
during a deficit, often without realising it. Everyone handles a calorie deficit
differently. Sometimes even a small deficit renders you into being as inactive
as Jabba the Hutt,(Star Wars character for those of you who live under a rock).
So as your NEAT goes down, some people will consciously increase their NEPA
to offset the stillness of their metabolic adaptation. Therein lies the difference
between NEAT and NEPA: NEAT is involuntary and not as easily modifiable as
it happens subconsciously. Case in point, if you decide to do extra steps or a
long walk in order to increase your NEAT, then it’s not really NEAT. It’s NEPA, or
even planned exercise since you are purposefully going out of your way to do it.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
15
NEAT is often used interchangeably with NEPA (non exercise physical activity),
though the main difference is whether we are conscious of the activity or not.
For our purposes—and in the interest of not nitpicking, we will refer collectively
to NEAT and NEPA simply as NEAT.
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) — As weird as it sounds, there is also a thermic
effect of food, meaning that it costs you energy to extract energy from the
food you eat everyday. Think of it like a combustion engine. The conversion of
gasoline to energy isn’t perfect; in fact, a lot of the energy is wasted and your
car has to put energy into the system to extract energy from the gasoline. Different foods require varying amounts of energy to be processed and digested.
Generally speaking, foods high in fiber and protein have a higher TEF. Carbohydrate and fat have lowerTEF, around 5-15% for carbohydrates and 0-3% for
fats, whereas protein and fiber are closer to 20-30%.13
Exercise Activity (EA) - This is exactly what it sounds like. When you exercise,
you expend calories. How many you expend depends on the duration and intensity of the exercise performed.
So when we get to the point in the book where it’s time to calculate these equations to begin your reverse diet, you have to take all of these into account.
If all this looked like an equation, that equation would be:
TDEE = BMR + NEAT + EA +TEF
Now that may look simple but consider that while BMR and TEF don’t really
change from day to day in the short term (so long as you are eating the same
calories day in and day out), NEAT and EA on the other hand, are extremely
modifiable. Perhaps you work a job where you stand on your feet and walk all
day and then on your off day, you tend to sit on the couch and watch TV. This
could be a difference of several hundred calories or even over 1000 calories per
13. “Diet induced thermogenesis - NCBI.” 18 Aug. 2004, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC524030/. Accessed 27 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
16
day depending upon the level of expenditure that job requires. Therefore you
could theoretically be eating in a deficit on some days when you are working
and in a surplus on days when you aren’t. So were you ‘eating in a deficit and not
losing weight’? No. We realize we are probably belaboring the point a bit, but it’s
important to understand that while the concept of energy balance is simple,
practically pinpointing a specific number from day to day is more difficult to
obtain, since the systems that determine how much energy goes into your body
and is expended by your body are complex and constantly changing. It’s important to remember that energy balance is not static.
Metabolic Adaptation and The Body’s Self Defense System
If you thought that energy expenditure was complex before, metabolic adaptation takes it to a whole new level when determining energy balance. Let’s use
the example of a car since our bodies similar to a car in many ways (imperfect
production of energy from fuel). Your car you bought comes with an approximate fuel efficiency (this is referred to as miles per gallon of fuel or kilometers
per liter of fuel if you live in a non-US country). Think of the fuel you put in your
car as calories and the gas tank as your body’s adipose (body fat) stores. It’s not
a perfect or exact comparison, but practically adipose tissue exists to store
energy from food. Unlike a car, we’d want the worst fuel efficiency possible so
that we’d burn through our energy stores faster (resulting in loss of body fat).
That fuel efficiency (energy expenditure) can change depending upon whether
or not you are driving in the city vs. the highway, as well as how fast you drive,
how quickly you accelerate, and how often you make a turn. This is why your
fuel efficiency sometimes doesn’t match what it ‘should’ be because what goes
into determining that fuel efficiency is pretty complex, just like energy expenditure in your body. If we were to add metabolic adaptation into this comparison, imagine that as you started burning through more fuel, your car sensed
that and was able to automatically improve its fuel efficiency. Maybe you were
getting 20 miles to the gallon when you had a full tank but now that you are on
half a tank you are getting 26 miles to the gallon! How great would that be for
your car? Unfortunately for us, this means that as we begin losing body fat, our
body becomes more efficient at energy production and our energy expenditure
goes down significantly. This is accomplished through a multitude of adapta-
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
17
tions with one major goal: lower your total daily energy expenditure to spare
energy so that you don’t starve and die.
It’s always important to understand why the body does something from an evolutionary perspective. Becoming obese creates a whole host of health problems, so why in the world would we have evolved to be able to so easily gain fat?
Until the last 70 years or so obesity was not an issue, but for the 200,000 or so
years prior, starvation was a VERY real threat (in reality even further back than
this since our ancestral predecessor species would have faced the same problems). The goal of biology is for an organism to survive long enough so that it
can pass on its genetic material. So that’s it, that’s the major goal. If you starve
and die, you can’t pass on your genetic material, which is pretty shitty for biology. Thus, the body’s metabolism created an elaborate array of protective tripwires to prevent us from easily being starved. In Fat Loss Forever we referred to
it as a 3 pronged self defense system with metabolic adaptation serving as the
first prong of the body’s self defense system.
DEFEND
Metabolic Adaptation
RESTORE
SELF-DEFENSE SYSTEM
Hunger & Fat Storage Efficiency
FAMINE
PREVENT
Number of Fat Cells
Figure 2.1: The body’s 3 pronged self-defense system. Prong 1 is the “defend” prong where metabolism slows during caloric restriction to defend against starvation. Prong 2 is the restore prong
where hunger exceeds the energy required to restore energy balance and systems that promote
fat storage are enhanced while under caloric restriction. Prong 3 is the prevent prong where the
body may increase the fat cell number if weight is regained too rapidly in order to defend against
future energy deficits.
Metabolic adaptation works by reducing the body’s total daily energy expenditure when exposed to an energy deficit (aka diet) through a myriad of adapta-
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
18
tions that affect nearly every single component of energy expenditure. BMR,
NEAT, and to a lesser extent EA are all reduced in response to caloric restriction.14 15 16 Some decrease in BMR, NEAT, and EA are to be expected with weight
loss purely due to a lower energy requirement to carry around a reduced body
weight in response to dieting. That is, if you are 300 lbs and lose 50 lbs, your
body does not require as much energy to carry out daily activity as it did when
you were 50 lbs heavier. Interestingly, the reduction in NEAT and BMR are often
disproportionate compared to the amount of body weight lost. That is, even
when correcting for the loss in total body weight, and we can determine this
with some relatively straight forward math, BMR is still reduced compared to
pre-diet levels. A typical response appears to be approximately a ~15% reduction in BMR more than would be expected based on the amount of weight one
loses.17 Let’s put that in context because that statement in and of itself is a bit
nebulous without numbers. If we use equations like the Müller equation, which
can predict metabolic rate relatively accurately, and compare them to an individual’s ACTUAL metabolic rate, we can get an idea of metabolic adaptation.
We won’t go into too much detail about this equation for now as we will cover
it in later chapters. Let’s say that someone begins a diet with a measured BMR
of 2043 calories per day and their predicted BMR (they never perfectly align)
as calculated by Müller or a similar equation is 2097. After a significant loss of
body weight let’s say their predicted BMR using the Muller is now 1877. On average their measured BMR would be closer to 1595 (15% reduction). Keep in mind
however, that is just the average looking at the available literature on energy
restriction and the adaptive response to dieting.
In the cases of more extreme weight loss and caloric restriction, or extreme
levels of leanness, it appears that metabolic adaptation responds in propor14. “Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete - NCBI.” 27 Feb. 2014,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943438/. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.
15. “Metabolic adaptation to caloric restriction and subsequent ... - NCBI.” 23 Sep. 2015, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26399868. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.
16. “The Role of Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis in Human ... - NCBI.” 9 Apr. 2018, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279077/. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.
17. “Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete - NCBI.” 27 Feb. 2014,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943438/. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
19
tion. For example, Hall et al. examined participants from TV show ‘The Biggest
Loser’ who lost massive amounts of weight (over 100 lbs on average) and found
that even SIX YEARS AFTER the show, their BMR (they actually measured their
RMR, which is slightly different but for our purposes we will use them interchangeably) was ~500 calories LOWER than what was expected using equations!18 When the participants started the show, their average BMR was measured at 2607 kcal/day while their predicted BMR was 2577 kcal/day. Six years
later their measured BMR was 1903 kcal/day while their predicted BMR was
2403 kcal/day, a ~21% difference. This was in spite of the fact that 6 years later most of them had regained quite a bit of weight. This is not the only study
showing extreme metabolic adaptation to weight loss however. Russow et al.
demonstrated a MASSIVE 35% metabolic adaptation in a male natural bodybuilder who pushed leanness to the extreme.19 This subject began his 24 week
diet with a measured BMR of 2424 kcal/day (predicted was 2118, so his BMR was
actually faster than what equations predicted), which then plummeted to 1283
kcal/day over 6 months dieting! His predicted BMR at the end of his prep using
equations was 1973 kcal/day. This is only one case study, but this is a great example and suggests that while metabolic adaptation may average around ~1015% in most cases, if weight loss or leanness is pushed to the extreme, there
may be more extreme adaptations.
NEAT appears to respond with an even more robust reduction in response to
caloric restriction, with several studies showing up to ~500 kcal per day reduction in energy expenditure attributable from NEAT.20
This may seem pretty extreme and you might not think that your body can slow
you down this much, but it’s incredible how powerful these adaptations are.
When I (Layne here) was prepping for bodybuilding shows in back in 2010, as I
18. “Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser ....” 2 May. 2016, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27136388. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.
19. “Natural bodybuilding competition preparation and recovery: a ... - NCBI.” 14 Feb. 2013,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23412685. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.
20. “Estimation of Resting Energy Expenditure ... - Semantic Scholar.” https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cf52/3e3b9d082ba8b3ad391d6ab45f8fec208389.pdf. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
20
approached the peak of my leanness, I remember sitting on the couch watching TV and a show was on that I didn’t care for, but the remote was on the other
side of the couch. In order to change the channel I would need to get off my
position on the couch and grab the remote to change the channel. I elected to
watch another 25 minutes of a show I didn’t like just so I didn’t have to get up and
retrieve the remote. This is a great example of my body attempting to reduce
my energy expenditure by reducing my movement throughout the day. Holly
also experienced a similar phenomenon in her recent diet for WBFF Worlds. We
have a two story home and she realized she was beginning to carry 4-5 beverages up the stairs to her office, just so she did not have to expend energy going
up and down the staircase to stay hydrated throughout the day, lowering her
energy expenditure. This wasn’t a conscious decision, it just happened. Caloric
restriction and weight loss can also reduce fidgeting, and in my case I started
talking less, talking slower, and blinking slower (I’m not kidding about this).
Another area of energy expenditure that metabolic adaptation modifies is exercise activity. There are a myriad of studies demonstrating that voluntary exercise decreases under caloric restriction, but what might be even more interesting is that adding more exercise appears to decrease NEAT even further as
well.21 22 Talk about confusing! This is probably one of the reasons that exercise
alone tends to not have nearly as powerful an impact on reducing body weight
as does caloric restriction or exercise combined with caloric restriction.23 Interestingly, when it comes to exercise it appears that resistance training is
superior to endurance exercise for fat loss.24 This is likely due to resistance
training’s ability to increase lean body mass which would theoretically improve
metabolic rate compared to those who don’t resistance train. What is perhaps
21. “Metabolic and Behavioral Compensations in Response to Caloric ....” 9 Feb. 2009, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2634841/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
22. “Reduced Nonexercise Activity Attenuates Negative Energy ....” 6 Mar. 2018, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5909996/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
23. “Effect of diet and exercise, alone or combined, on ... - NCBI - NIH.” 14 Apr. 2011, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406229/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
24. “Diet, exercise or diet with exercise: comparing the ... - NCBI.” 17 Apr. 2015, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429709/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
21
the most distressing information regarding metabolic adaptation and exercise
is that even when the same amount of exercise is performed, caloric restriction and weight loss reduce the amount of energy needed to perform the same
exercises.25 26 Some reduction in exercise energy expenditure should be expected due to decreases in body weight. Since a weight reduced person will
have less mass to move during exercise, it makes sense that they will expend
less calories. However, even when studies are performed where weight is added in the form of a weight vest to replace the weight that they lost, there is still
a lower cost of energy required to complete the exercise, indicating that there
is metabolic adaptation to make the body more efficient at exercise under conditions of weight loss.27
You may also be wondering about thermic effect of food since it’s the final piece
of the equation we haven’t covered. It appears TEF also decreases during caloric restriction, but only due to eating less total food.28 That is, on a per calorie
food eaten basis, TEF does not seem to decrease under conditions of caloric
restriction and weight loss. The absolute number of calories burned from TEF
however does decrease since less total calories are being consumed.
Taken together, these data indicate a robust metabolic adaptation response
to weight loss and caloric restriction that acts as the first prong of the body’s
self defense system against weight loss/starvation. But how does this happen?
What are the underlying physiological mechanisms? To understand that, we
must first examine a concept called body fat setpoint.
25. “Contribution of decreased body mass to diminished thermic effect of ....” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3235273. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
26. “Greater than predicted decrease in energy expenditure during ... - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12617720. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
27. “Assessment of energy expenditure in ambulatory reduced-obese ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/2228420. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
28. “Effect of circadian variation in energy expenditure, within-subject ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/8491165. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
22
Body Fat Setpoint and Metabolic Adaptation
We just finished discussing what happens to your energy expenditure when you
diet, but it’s also important to discuss the how and the why. We believe the theory of body fat setpoint in large part explains the ‘why’ of metabolic adaptation
and is responsible for directing the how. Before we get into that, let’s discuss
the theory of body fat setpoint. This theory postulates that there is a narrow
range of native body fat that our bodies like to stay at. If we drop too far below
that range, energy expenditure declines and hunger levels increase in an attempt to drive our body’s back into a positive energy balance and put body fat
back on. By the same token, if our weight increases too far above our setpoints,
energy expenditure increases and hunger decreases in an attempt to bring us
back to our norm. If this was the case however, why do people get fat? Shouldn’t
our energy expenditure increase with decreasing hunger and drive us back
down to our normal? In theory, yes, but there are a few caveats. The first being
that these biological controls developed over hundreds of thousands of years,
most of which we did not have access to highly energy dense foods. Ever try
overeating on meats, fruits, veggies, potatoes, rice, and even just plain bread?
It ain’t that easy. But throw in ultra palatable cakes, cookies, chocolates, ice
cream, etc and we can blow right past those normal controls since our hunger
is not satisfied nearly as much by those hyper palatable foods as they are with
whole foods. The other thing to consider is that body fat setpoint likely developed as a biological control in response to risks at both ends of the evolutionary
spectrum. If body fat gets too low, we risk running out of energy and starving to
death. If body fat gets too high, the risk of predation increases. It’s hard to outrun a lion if you’re carrying around 50 extra lbs of fat. In the last 10,000 years the
risk of predation has declined dramatically, far lower than the risk of starvation,
which is still a very real threat in some areas of the world and was still a very real
threat in civilized countries until a century or two ago. Therefore, it would make
sense that the biological controls that prevent body fat from getting too low
would be far stronger than those that put the brakes on fat gain.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
23
So how do our bodies sense this ‘setpoint.’ It seems to largely be signaled by
the size of the individual fat cells rather than total body mass.29 Losses or gains
in body fat are typically due to changes in fat cell size while fat cell number appears to be tightly controlled.30 However, there is some evidence that the total
number of cells can increase under various conditions, but we will cover that
later. The important take home is that under most conditions, fat cell size is
basically an indicator for total fat mass, since the total number of fat cells don’t
typically change. This loss or gain in fat cell size is believed to be communicated to the brain by a hormone called ‘leptin’ and possibly by a yet unidentified
adipose tissue catabolic hormone (this is the hormone that would theoretically
control increasing energy expenditure during overfeeding).31 32 Leptin is a hormone secreted by the fat cells (and some other cells) in proportion 1) to their
size and 2) to short term energy flux across the fat cell.33 Leptin is involved in
many processes in the body but it’s primary role appears to be increasing energy expenditure and decreasing hunger.
Leptin is fascinating in its ability to respond to both short and long term energy
signals in fat cells. As fat cells shrink, leptin secretion is reduced, thus signaling to the brain a reduced energy state and in response, energy expenditure
decreases and the desire for energy intake increases. By the same token, as fat
cells expand, leptin secretion increases and signals to the brain that there is an
energy surplus, thus increasing energy expenditure and decreasing the desire
for energy intake.34 In this way leptin functions much like a thermostat for body
29. “Biology’s response to dieting: the impetus for weight regain. - NCBI - NIH.” https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677272. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
30. “The role for adipose tissue in weight regain after weight loss..” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/25614203. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
31. “The role for adipose tissue in weight regain after weight loss - NCBI.” 22 Jan. 2015, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4371661/. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
32. “A missing link in body weight homeostasis: the catabolic signal of the ....” 7 Oct. 2014,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25295786. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
33. “Role of adipose tissue in body-weight regulation: mechanisms ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/10997652. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
34. “Role of adipose tissue in body-weight regulation: mechanisms ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/10997652. Accessed 31 Aug. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
24
fat. If you set the thermostat at 70 degrees and the room warms up to 71, the
air conditioning kicks in and bumps you back down to 70. If the room cools to
69 degrees, the heater kicks on and bumps it back up to 70. It’s a crude analogy,
but leptin works much the same way with energy metabolism and body fat.
You might be wondering why drug companies haven’t just synthesized a bunch of
leptin shots to cure the obesity epidemic. Leptin, is derived from the greek word
leptos, which means thin. When researchers discovered the hormone in 1994,
they believed it was the key to curing the obesity epidemic. Indeed, ob/ob mice
who have a mutated leptin gene became unbelievably fat. These animals are indistinguishable from normal mice at birth but rapidly gain fat during the course
of their life, on average weighing 3x more than a normal mouse. Due to the mutated leptin gene, these animals have no appetite control and are hungry almost
constantly. These animals also have lower levels of energy expenditure due to
non existent leptin levels and develop type II diabetes along with becoming morbidly obese. When these animals are injected with leptin to match normal levels
of leptin in mice, they lose body fat and eventually become normal weight.35
So why the heck aren’t pharmaceutical companies synthesizing this stuff and
doctors prescribing it to every obese person out there? Probably because obe35. “Leptin Dose-Response Study in Obese (ob/ob) and Lean (+/?) Mice ....” https://academic.
oup.com/endo/article/139/1/8/2986870. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
25
sity is not a function of low leptin, in fact obese individuals actually have higher
concentrations of circulating leptin than non-obese individuals.36 SAY WHAT?
I’m sure you are thinking “ok, so I thought you just said leptin regulated body
fat and when it goes up, hunger decreases and energy expenditure increases?”
That is correct, but something funny happens in the development of obesity.
The leptin receptors become insensitive to leptin, much the same way the insulin receptor in cells become insensitive to insulin during the development of
type II diabetes.37 This has been modeled in a strain of mice called db/db mice
which lack a leptin receptor. These mice become just as obese as ob/ob mice,
but unlike ob/ob mice, injecting leptin does nothing to reduce their body fat
levels, and they remain incredibly obese.38
How does leptin exert its effects on hunger and energy expenditure? Much of
it occurs through leptin binding through leptin receptors in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus.39 In the presence of leptin, the stimulation of these
receptors increases energy expenditure through stimulation of the CNS, cardiovascular system, and brown adipose tissue thermogenesis.40 Leptin also increases the expression of uncoupling proteins through its actions on the sympathetic nervous system (which is mediated by its binding to the leptin receptor
in the hypothalamus).41 42 Uncoupling proteins increase energy expenditure by
36. “Correlation between Serum Leptin Levels, Body Mass Index ... - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3074914/. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
37. “Role of leptin resistance in the development of obesity in older ... - NCBI.” 4 Jul. 2013,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3706252/. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
38. “Metabolic responses to leptin in obese db/db mice are strain dependent..” https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11404285. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
39. (n.d.). The hypothalamic arcuate nucleus: a key site for mediating leptin’s .... Retrieved September 1, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16054045
40. (n.d.). Role of leptin in energy expenditure: the hypothalamic perspective.. Retrieved September 1, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28356295
41. (n.d.). Leptin increases uncoupling protein expression and ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved September 1, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9252501
42. (n.d.). Leptin induction of UCP1 gene expression is dependent ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved September 1, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9688627
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
26
making the production of ATP (the energy currency of the cell) inefficient.43 On
a practical level, this means that your body has to spend more calories to produce the same amount of energy when uncoupling proteins increase, thereby
increasing energy expenditure and the ‘calories out’ side of the energy balance
equation. Increases and decreases in uncoupling proteins are also thought to
mediate in large part the effects of adaptive thermogenesis a significant component of metabolic adaptation.44
So what does this all mean for you, a human who is probably looking to lose
body fat or maintain the body fat you lost? It means that leptin is an important
regulatory hormone that helps regulate body fat setpoint, however, if you gain
enough fat, your body becomes less sensitive to it. As discussed earlier, leptin
responds to short and long term energy status signals from adipose. In the short
term, leptin secretion is regulated by the energy flux into the fat cell.45 That is,
when more glucose and free fatty acids are entering the fat cell vs. leaving it,
leptin secretion increases. Leptin secretion is also increased by insulin stimulated glucose metabolism, unsurprisingly.46 Leptin is also stimulated to a lesser
extent by fats and proteins (though it’s not clear if this is an acute effect due to
increased energy availability or longer term), while fructose does not appear to
increase leptin at least in the short term.47 48 In the long term, leptin secretion
is regulated by the size of the fat cells. The larger the cells become, the more
leptin they secrete, while the smaller they become, the less leptin they se-
43. (2015, February 10). Mitochondrial uncoupling proteins and energy metabolism - NCBI. Retrieved September 1, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4322621/
44. (n.d.). Uncoupling proteins: their roles in adaptive thermogenesis and ... - NCBI. Retrieved
September 1, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11502224
45. “The role for adipose tissue in weight regain after weight loss..” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/25614203. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
46. “Stimulation of leptin secretion by insulin - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3602982/. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
47. “Dietary intakes and leptin concentrations - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4251481/. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
48. “Endocrine and Metabolic Effects of Consuming Fructose - NCBI.” 10 Feb. 2009, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684484/. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
27
crete.49 This information has led many people to believe they should consume
large ‘cheat days’ or ‘refeeds’ or ‘high days’ during dieting in order to raise leptin,
provide temporary restoration of hunger, and improve fat burning. However the
research supporting this idea is very much lacking. In fact, the vast majority
of the research shows no advantage to high and low days for fat loss, despite
the fact that leptin does increase temporarily in response to overfeeding.50 51
It is worth noting that 3 days of carbohydrate refeeding, but not fat refeeding,
increased plasma leptin by 28% and energy expenditure by 7%.52
Now before you go out and eat a box of cereal everyday for the purposes of raising your leptin, with the idea that it may offset some of the above mentioned
negative changes that occur with dieting, keep in mind that if ones baseline
level of energy expenditure is for example 2000 kcals/day, this means that it
would only raise their daily energy expenditure by 140 calories, this is not exactly massive, and likely not even enough to offset the extra calories you’ve overfed on. What seems to be more promising are ‘diet breaks’ which are periods of
eating at maintenance calories (eating enough calories to maintain your body
weight) for periods of around 1-2 weeks. Diet breaks may improve fat loss efficiency and attenuate metabolic adaptation to caloric restriction.53 54 Whether
or not this is mediated by increases in leptin has been yet to be determined, but
based on the underlying physiology, it is likely that it’s possible. If one were able
to significantly increase leptin, but not increase their body weight by eating at
49. “Leptin concentrations and their relation to body fat distribution ... - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10598830. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
50. “Effects of diet cycling on weight loss, fat loss and resting energy ... - NCBI.” 15 Sep. 2010,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951044/. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
51. “Repeated fasting/refeeding elevates plasma leptin ... - NCBI - NIH.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/12676282. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
52. “Effects of short-term carbohydrate or fat overfeeding on energy ... - NCBI.” https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11126336. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
53. “Intermittent Dieting: Theoretical Considerations for the Athlete - NCBI.” 16 Jan. 2019,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6359485/. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
54. “Intermittent energy restriction improves weight loss efficiency in ... - NCBI.” https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28925405. Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
28
maintenance, it’s possible this may attenuate metabolic slowing and improve
subsequent weight loss. When I (Holly here) finished my WBFF world’s contest
prep in 2019, my leptin levels were measured at 0.4ng/mL. After 2 weeks of
eating at maintenance, my leptin had increased to to 3.4ng/mL despite gaining
less than a kilogram of body weight. This is only an n=1 data point and 3.4ng/mL
is still below the normal range for leptin in lean females, so I don’t want to overemphasize it, but it’s certainly encouraging. Going into a long drawn out spiel
about diet breaks is beyond the scope of this book, but we wanted to mention their use during a diet as it relates to leptin. For more information on diet
breaks please see Fat Loss Forever or The Complete Contest Prep Guide.55
So we know that as we restrict calories and lose weight, leptin initially decreases in the short term due to a reduced energy flux across the fat cell, then also
decreases in proportion to the loss in body fat over the long term. This leads
to increased appetite and decreases in energy expenditure. This functions to
drive what was previously a caloric deficit, back to a maintenance level of calories, or if feeding continues, a calorie surplus.
METABOLIC ADAPTATION
kcal Intake
Body Weight
TDEE
TIME
Figure 2.2: Changes in caloric intake, TDEE, and weight over time during caloric restriction.
55. “Books and Ebooks – BioLayne Store.” https://biolaynestore.com/collections/accessories.
Accessed 1 Sep. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
29
Many of you have experienced this during a diet as a ‘plateau’ where what was
once a caloric intake that produced weight loss becomes a maintenance level
of calories. Now you understand the why and a bit of ‘the how’,that this occurs.
Many people mistake this metabolic adaptation as proof that CICO doesn’t
work, but hopefully now you better understand that CICO is accurate, but it’s
not a stagnant model. Your ‘CO’ can and does change based on how much you
eat. Think of it again like a budget. On average, if someone who was getting paid
$5,000 per month gets a huge promotion and jumps to $10,000 per month, are
they still going to spend the same amount of money? A few might if they were
really focussed on saving, but the majority of us are going to spend more in
this situation since we have more financial flexibility. On the same token, if our
income got cut in half overnight, we probably aren’t going to spend like we did
when we were making double the money. This is a model where were spending
is influenced by income, the two variables do not exist independently of each
other. CICO works in a very similar manner. If caloric intake is increased, there
is less need to be thrifty with calories and your body can afford to waste some.
However, if caloric intake is drastically reduced, the body will pull back the reins
on ‘spending’ and become much more efficient with energy production once it’s
self defense system has been activated.
Dieting Prepares Metabolism for Weight Regain
Hopefully by this point it’s obvious that dieting causes your body to induce some
pretty serious survival responses. Thus far we have only covered the adaptations that decrease energy expenditure, the ‘calories out (CO)’ portion of calories in calories out (CICO). The body’s self defense to energy restriction, however, does not end at reducing energy expenditure, but also extends to affecting
the ‘calories in’ portion of CICO. It’s no secret that caloric restriction increases
hunger. That probably makes sense to most of us intuitively, but what may be
less intuitive is that the increase in hunger due to caloric restriction is not a
proportionate response. As with metabolic adaptation, where metabolic rate
decreases MORE than predicted in response to dieting, hunger also increases
more than expected in response to dieting. MacLean referred to this as “more
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
30
energy being desired than is required.”56 Various hormones that stimulate hunger and energy intake are increased during caloric restriction including ghrelin,
Neuropeptide Y (NPY), and Agouti-related peptide (AgRP).57 58
If that wasn’t bad enough, your body also readies you for gaining fat quickly once
you begin overfeeding again. Dieting decreases the thermic effect of overfeeding, meaning that if you have been eating at maintenance or in surplus calories
and you ate a calorie dense meal, you would waste a substantial amount of calories as heat. However, if you have been under caloric restriction for a significant
amount of time, you would waste significantly less calories in response to a high
calorie meal.59 This makes sense from a survival/evolutionary perspective. If you
had been enduring a famine when you finally came across a source of calories,
you would not want to waste that energy, you would want to be able to capture
as much as possible and store it as efficiently as possible. Therefore, it makes
sense that the efficiency of refeeding would increase during a period of caloric
restriction/famine. In Fat Loss Forever, we referred to these changes in hunger
and refeeding efficiency as the ‘restore’ prong of the body’s self defense system
that prepares your body for restoring it’s depleted energy reserves.
When you diet, your body perceives it as ‘controlled starvation’ and initiates an
elaborate cascade of biological responses in an attempt to restore homeostasis and the body’s original setpoint by decreasing energy expenditure (calories
out) and increasing hunger (calories in). This works at both ends of the energy
balance equation to drive you back towards a positive energy balance. In extreme cases, however, your body may take it a step further in order to protect
you against future famine by increasing your body fat setpoint. As we discussed
56. “Biology’s response to dieting: the impetus for weight regain..” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/21677272. Accessed 11 Sep. 2019.
57. “Twenty-four-hour ghrelin is elevated after calorie restriction ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/17299118. Accessed 11 Sep. 2019.
58. “Hormonal Regulators of Appetite - NCBI.” 3 Dec. 2008, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
articles/PMC2777281/. Accessed 11 Sep. 2019.
59. “Dissociation of enhanced efficiency of fat deposition during ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/7653658. Accessed 11 Sep. 2019.
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
31
previously, losses or gains in body fat are from fat cells shrinking and expanding, while the total number of fat cells remains constant. There is evidence in
the post-diet period, however, that it may be possible to increase fat cell number if someone overfeeds rapidly enough.60
PRE-DIET
__
POST-DIET
__
Fat Cells
Shrink
EARLY RELAPSE
__
Fat Cells
Increase In
Number
RELAPSE TO
PRE-DIET WEIGHT
__
Fat Cells
Grow
SURPASSED
PRE-DIET WEIGHT
__
Fat Cells
Grow To
Original Size
Figure 2.3: Body fat adaptations resulting from excessive eating in the post diet setting. As calories rapidly increase, differentiation of nascent pre-adipocytes into fully formed adipocytes may
occur. This increase in fat cell number may cause establishment of a new, higher body fat set
point, making it more difficult to lose fat in the future. Figure adapted from MacLean et al.
Studies in rodents allowed to eat ad libitum (aka as much as they want) in the
post diet period demonstrate that they actually experience fat cell hyperplasia
very early in the post diet overfeeding process.61 In fact, the researchers noted
the appearance of small adipocytes beginning to form within 24 hours of post
diet overfeeding where subjects approximately doubled their caloric intake
from diet levels. Before you freak out about this however, remember that it is
an animal study, so the applicability to humans is questionable. However, there
is some human data which suggest that it is possible to alter fat cell number.62
Further, it is unlikely that the formation of new fat cells occurs that quickly in
60. (n.d.). The role for adipose tissue in weight regain after weight loss.. Retrieved September
18, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25614203
61. (2008, February 20). Weight regain after sustained weight reduction is ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved September 19, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18287221
62. (n.d.). Studies of Human Adipose Tissue ADIPOSE CELL SIZE AND .... Retrieved September
19, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC302341/
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
32
humans, as 1 day of a rats’ life is equal to approximately 20-30 days in a human’s
life. So it is plausible to say that for humans, overfeeding would need to take
place for much longer time frames for fat cell hyperplasia to occur, however
this is just speculation and more research is required to say this indefinitely.
When we first examined this research we were quite perplexed. The normal
model of fat loss and fat gain had established that changes in fat mass were
exclusively due to changes in fat cell size. However, it appears that the immediate post diet state is a unique milieu in which leptin is low, insulin sensitivity
in fat cells is extremely high, fat oxidation is very low, and thyroid hormone is
low. This unique hormonal and metabolic milieu may allow differentiation of
preadipocytes (small, non functional adipocytes) into fully formed adipocytes.63
Still, this seemed quite odd. Based on what we know about body fat set point,
it seemed that during weight regain, fat cells that had shrunk during caloric
restriction should simply refill back. However, there may be a more survival
based reason that this phenomenon occurs.
In Fat Loss Forever, we referred to it as the third prong of the body’s self defense system. If we step back for a moment and consider that the primary focus of the body is to restore it’s depleted energy reserves after famine/energy
restriction, it could make sense that an influx of a massive amount of calories
in a relatively short period of time might trigger the body to create new fat cells
to ensure that maximal assimilation of the massive increase in energy intake.
That is, your body doesn’t know when it will get another chance to get that kind
of massive influx of energy and thus creates new, small fat cells in order to
ensure maximal energy deposition. Not only would this ensure maximal energy deposition, but it would also protect against future energy restriction. Recall that body fat setpoint and leptin secretion are primarily controlled by the
size of the fat cells. If new fat cells were to be created, this means you could
relapse to your previous total body fat mass, but your fat cells would still be
smaller individually than they were at the previous fat mass. In this scenario, it
is likely that hunger and desire for increased energy intake would not subside
63. (n.d.). The role for adipose tissue in weight regain after weight loss.. Retrieved September
19, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25614203
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
33
until more fat mass had been regained and the individual fat cells were once
again at their original set point size, only now the total fat mass would be greater due to an increased number of total cells. This would also make future fat
loss theoretically more difficult due to greater hunger and possible decreased
energy expenditure from reduced leptin levels. In fact, this is exactly what the
researchers observed.
The animals continued to regain fat past their previous body fat mass and did
not stop regaining fat until the size of their individual fat cells matched their
pre-diet size, effectively increasing their body fat setpoint.64 This may, in part,
explain the body fat overshooting phenomenon that has been observed in various human studies in non-obese individuals.65 Some of you may have experienced this for yourself after a diet, the idea has been referred to amongst the
fitness community as ‘post show rebounding’, where weight regain occurs at
an alarming rate, even at the return of what would be considered normal calorie
intakes based on mathematical equations. Often this weight regain continues
until well beyond that of the start of the diet..
We realize that many of you reading this may very likely be freaking out. Most of
us have over eaten drastically at some point in the post diet setting. Did we increase our fat cell number? It’s hard to know. We think it’s unlikely that one day
of overeating could cause this, and that is assuming it occurs in humans. What
we would likely say is that if you began massively overfeeding immediately post
diet, and sustained that for more than a few days and regained a large amount
of fat mass within a few weeks, then it may be possible that this occurred. We
cannot say for sure because this research is still in its infancy and there is a lot
we do not know. What we do know is that eating as much as you want in the
immediate post-diet setting is a bad idea and may have drastic implications
for fat regain as well as future fat loss. Not only that, but think about how many
people yo-yo diet. They lose weight, then regain it quickly and they do this mul64. (n.d.). Biology’s response to dieting: the impetus for ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved September 19,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677272
65. (n.d.). How dieting makes the lean fatter: from a perspective ... - NCBI. Retrieved September
19, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25614201
THE PROBLEM WITH WEIGHT LOSS
34
tiple times. Based on our knowledge of the body’s self defense system, this
could result in individuals who have less LBM due to repeated dieting bouts,
a reduced BMR, and increased body fat due to rapid weight regain in between
bouts of dieting, not to mention possible increases in fat cell number. In fact,
there is some evidence in animals and humans that yo-yo dieting (called weight
cycling in science circles), increases the difficulty of subsequent weight loss
bouts and decreases lean body mass compared to non-weight cyclers.66 67
While the jury is still out on the effects of yo-yo dieting, we would strongly advise against this behavior.
Summary
Weight loss is possible and achieved by a large number of people
each year, but keeping that weight off is incredibly difficult. Most
people add back the majority of weight they lost if not more over
time. Metabolic adaptation to weight loss makes maintenance of
lost weight even more difficult by decreasing energy expenditure
and increasing hunger signals to the brain. Therefore, in order to
maintain lost weight, it is important to utilize a diet plan that is
sustainable, form good habits, and also attempt to develop ways
to mitigate the negative effects of metabolic adaptation over time.
Further, it’s extremely important to have a post-diet plan that enables you to recover from the diet without excessive fat regain and
possible increase in fat cell number.
66. (n.d.). The effects of repeated cycles of weight loss and ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved September 20, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3823159
67. (n.d.). Weight Cycling as a Risk Factor for Low Muscle Mass ... - NCBI. Retrieved September
20, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31231958
3
35
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
W
eight loss is hard. Maintenance of lost weight is equally as hard if not
more difficult. The reasons are multifactorial and include metabolic
adaptation and the body’s elaborate self defense system as we have
discussed in chapter 2, but there are also psychological and sociological factors
why maintenance of lost weight is so difficult. Physiologically, we understand that
increased hunger and decreased energy expenditure are attempting to drive us
back towards our body fat setpoint and possibly even higher, but there are also
psychological and sociological factors that can’t be separated from physiology.
For example, when was the last time you went to a social gathering that didn’t involve food? When was the last time you went to hang out with friends that didn’t
involve food or drink? When was the last time you invited someone to your house
and you didn’t prepare at least some kind of food or offer a snack to your guests?
Food is heavily embedded in our culture, our gestalt, which is why it’s hilarious
that some people still believe it’s simply an issue of solving physiological hunger.
In fact, many ketogenic diet zealots say that a keto diet is the best diet for everyone because it seems to have some satiety promoting benefits. Even if that’s
the case (it’s debatable if a ketogenic diet is more satiating than a non-ketogenic high protein, high fiber diet), many people don’t overeat because they are
hungry, they eat out of stress and anxiety, feelings of guilt or shame, and most
commonly out of boredom, or the need to feel included as a social group setting,
as well as a myriad of other reasons. Socio-economic considerations are also
important. People who are poor or live in poor urban areas are much more likely
to become obese and have less access to high quality foods.1 2 3 Therefore, framing this problem of losing weight and keeping it off purely from a physiological
perspective is short sighted.
1. (n.d.). Can Low-Income Americans Afford a Healthy Diet? - NCBI. Retrieved September 23,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847733/
2. (n.d.). Food Security and Access to a Healthy Diet in Low-Income .... Retrieved September 23,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK206908/
3. (2012, October 3). Dietary intake and dietary quality of low-income ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved
September 23, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3471209/
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
36
With all these variables stacked against us, what do we do? Is it all doom and
gloom? Certainly not, as there are plenty of people who lose a significant
amount of weight and keep it off. What can we learn from them? Probably the
most important thing is to stop worrying about shit that doesn’t matter. We
can’t tell you how many people get obsessed with details that don’t matter, like
what a particular diet does to insulin secretion, or growth hormone, or other
specific metabolic pathways. I’m not saying these small things don’t matter at
all, but focusing on them is a mistake, because you end up missing the big picture. For example, the ketogenic diet is hot right now (2019 for those of you
who read this in the future) and there are people who’ve had success with it.
The ketogenic diet drastically limits carbohydrate consumption and may improve satiety. This reduces the calorie intake from food and allows people to
lose weight. That isn’t a sexy answer to how it works however, so ketogenic diet
proponents have focused on the effects on insulin. The claims circulating are
wide, but essentially amount to the idea that you cannot lose fat when insulin
levels are high and that’s why the ketogenic diet works so well, since by limiting
carbohydrate intake, you limit insulin. This sounds logical to many, since insulin’s action on adipose tissue is to reduce fat oxidation and increase fatty acid
uptake into fat cells.4
However, a myriad of studies have been performed where calories and protein
are equated while fat and carbohydrate are varied, and found no difference
in fat loss.5 Further, even a study comparing ketogenic diets to high carb diets with calories equated have shown minimal difference in fat loss (actually
slightly favorable towards the high carb group) even though insulin was over
20% greater in the high carb group (as assessed by urinary c-peptide, a surrogate marker for insulin).6 The main takeaway here is that you can lose weight
just fine with a ketogenic diet, but you can also lose it just fine eating carbo-
4. (n.d.). Insulin effects in muscle and adipose tissue. - NCBI. Retrieved September 23, 2019,
from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21864752
5. (2017, February 11). Obesity Energetics: Body Weight Regulation and ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved September 23, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28193517
6. (2016, July 6). Energy expenditure and body composition ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved September
23, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27385608
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
37
hydrates too, so long as you are controlling your calorie intake. If you enjoy a
ketogenic diet, then it’s perfectly fine to use but what if you hated it? I (Holly
speaking) personally followed a ketogenic diet for a period of 4 months in late
2016 - 2017, and after just a few weeks, I was missing carbohydrate based foods
so much so that I was ready to open up my own restaurant and dessert bar.
Sure, it was novel and exciting to begin with and I was able to experiment with
new foods and recipe creation, but it was not sustainable. For me, and certainly
for many others, the inclusion of a carbohydrate source is far more sustainable
long term. In fact, I could not foresee myself being able to commit to a lifetime
of adherence to a ketogenic diet. What if attempting to stick to that made your
life miserable and even caused you to start binge eating, which happens often?
All because you were worried about insulin, which in the grand scheme doesn’t
even really make a difference on weight loss based on the research data. This
is one of the reasons that diet preference and sustainability matters. The ‘best’
diet doesn’t mean shit if you can’t adhere to it. You need to pick something sustainable for YOU.
Sustainability, Adherence, and the TRUTH about ‘Healthy’
Diets
A major point that we tried to hammer home in Fat Loss Forever was the message
that there is no magic diet. In fact, between various popular diets including low
carb, low fat, and several others, no one particular diet produced significantly
more weight loss than others.7 What the researchers did note however, was that
dietary adherence, regardless of the diet chosen, was the variable most closely
linked with successful long term weight loss. Therefore, we can conclude that
it is dietary adherence that is the most important factor for producing weight
loss. This has also been supported in another long term trial that showed the
greatest long term weight loss success in the individuals who were able to best
adhere to their dietary strategy, regardless of what that strategy was!8 If that
7. (2005, January 5). Comparison of the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone .... Retrieved
September 24, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15632335
8. (2008, February 12). Dietary adherence and weight loss success among .... Retrieved September 24, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18268511
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
38
is the case, then it makes logical sense for the individual to select the dietary
strategy that is easiest to adhere to for their situation. Some people like a low
carb approach, others prefer a low fat approach, others calorie count, and others may use time restricted feeding strategies such as intermittent fasting to
create a calorie deficit. The dietary strategy you choose should be driven by
what you find the easiest to adhere to and sustain for yourself. This is extremely individual. For me (Holly here), I enjoy using the approach of time restricted
feeding, where I typically won’t eat my first meal until after training around noon,
then I will have my last meal sometime around 8-10pm. I don’t enjoy exercising
with a stomach full of food, and this reduced 8-10 hour feeding window allows
me to have larger meals, and thus help me to feel more satisfied, and improve
my overall adherence to my macro targets. Layne hates the idea of fasting, in
fact for him, this tends to make him ravenously hungry where he actually ends
up consuming MORE food during his feeding window than he would have if he’d
used a non-time restricted feeding strategy. In this way, time restricted feeding
makes perfect sense for me, but less for Layne.
To us starting with adherence and sustainability as the most critical factors
for dietary success makes sense. However, others have challenged this notion,
pointing out that while some of these strategies may produce weight loss, that
doesn’t make them healthy. This criticism is normally levied at those who practice flexible dieting. These criticisms usually imply that specific dietary strategies and/or foods have inherent healthy properties that make them superior
to other strategies. This is not supported by scientific data however, as several
meta-analyses have demonstrated that the vast majority of the health benefits
conferred by diets are due to fat loss.9 10 If the vast majority of the health benefits from dieting are simply from fat loss, and adherence is the greatest factor
for long term fat loss, then dietary adherence is also likely the most important
for producing health improvements. What is the takeaway from this information? The best diet for YOU is likely the one that you can best stick to. There is
9. (2014, July 9). Low carbohydrate versus isoenergetic balanced diets ... - NCBI. Retrieved September 24, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25007189
10. (2018, September 10). Carbohydrate quantity in the dietary management of type 2 .... Retrieved September 24, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30098129
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
39
no perfect diet and it’s certainly not perfect if you can’t adhere to it. We can’t
tell you the number of people we have worked with who obsessed over the minor details in dieting, attempting to construct the ‘perfect’ diet and the majority
of them couldn’t sustain it because it was too impractical and too restrictive.
FAT LOSS FOREVER PYRAMID
07 SUPPLEMENTS
06
05
04
03
02
01
CARBS & FAT MACROS
PROTEIN & FIBER INTAKE
SELF MONITORING
EXERCISE
CALORIC DEFICIT
SUSTAINABILITY AND ADHERENCE
Adapted from Eric Helms
BEHAVIOR AND LIFESTYLE
Figure 3.1: Fat Loss Forever Pyramid (Adapted with permission from Eric Helms’ Muscle and
Strength Guide Pyramid) depicting the priority of of importance for lasting fat loss. The most important factors begin at the bottom and as they ascend the pyramid, become of lower importance.
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
40
Many of them actually developed binge eating over time because as soon as
they consumed a ‘bad’ food they would completely fall off the wagon and go
nuts eating everything in sight. Not only did their attempt to be perfect keep
them from making sustainable progress, but it actually led them to a disordered relationship with food and weight regain if the binging was bad enough.
We aren’t saying that you can eat a ton of junk food as long as it hits your calories, because that isn’t really sustainable long term either. We are simply saying
that whatever approach you choose, you will need to be able to sustain it for the
LONG term if you want to lose weight and keep it off for good. While reverse dieting isn’t necessarily the same thing as weight maintenance, in order to have
a successful reverse, you will still need to have the same mindset unless you
wish to gain excess body fat during the process.
Keeping Off Lost Weight - The Key Factors
While specific diets are not associated with improved long term weight loss,
there are some factors and behaviors that appear to be key for losing weight and
keeping it off for the long term. We discussed these factors in depth in Fat Loss
Forever and we don’t want to completely rehash that chapter, but we will provide
a summary. As we stated previously, adherence and sustainability are the absolute key. But there are others that appear to make a big difference as well.
Cognitive Restraint: This one is simple. In order to lose weight, you must employ some form of restraint. You can’t eat as much as you want, of whatever you
want, whenever you want. It simply doesn’t work that way. In order to lose fat
and keep it off you must employ some form of cognitive restraint. This can take
many forms such as calorie counting (limiting how much you eat), restricting
food groups such as in low carb diets, low fat diets, clean eating, paleo (limiting
what kinds of foods you eat), or limiting how often you eat as is the case with
time restricted feeding (TRF). All of these are forms of cognitive restraint. It’s
also possible to combine some of these forms, ie utilizing a low carb diet where
you also count calories and time restricted feed. I (Holly speaking), practice
all of these forms of restraint. We aren’t saying you should do that, rather just
pointing out that it can be done and these strategies aren’t mutually exclusive.
You should choose a form of cognitive restraint that feels the least restrictive
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
41
for you. In our case flexible dieting was a godsend because it still allowed us to
eat the foods we love so long as we controlled the amounts. Other people may
not be able to flexible diet as they may find macro tracking too OCD provoking or may have difficulty moderating their intake of energy dense foods. For
other people, low carb dieting feels ‘easy.’ Some proponents of TRF have also
claimed that diet strategy felt ‘easy’ to them. What is most important is to find
out what works best for you! Perhaps now is the time to experiment with a new
approach, now that you have learned that the overarching factor for weight loss
is adherence to calories.
Self-Monitoring: Self-monitoring goes hand in hand with cognitive restraint.
Losing fat requires a concerted effort as does maintaining it. Self-monitoring means you need to remain diligent with your cognitive restraint, whether it’s calorie counting, low carb, TRF, or any other form of dietary restraint.
Self-monitoring also means continuing to hold yourself accountable. This is a
very difficult one for many people. In an era where many people say to throw
out the scale or that the scale is meaningless, the scientific data doesn’t support those ideas. In fact, one of the major commonalities amongst people who
lose weight and keep it off is that they weigh themselves frequently.11 Now if
weighing in every day makes you want to gauge your eyes out and causes you
to have an anxiety attack every time you step on the scale, then moderation
needs to be used. However, if you are having fear of the scale, it’s also likely
that you have been less than adherent to your diet, hence the anxiety. Further,
frequent weighing allows for self-correction. Rather than hiding from difficult
facts, if you weigh frequently and notice that you are beginning to put weight
back on, it is negative reinforcement that you need to modify your behavior if
you do not wish to continue to put weight on.
Exercise: Exercise is HUGE for weight loss maintenance but probably not for
the reasons you think. While exercise does burn calories, this calorie burn effect seems to have a relatively minimal impact on weight loss.12 Even though
11. (2006, July 19). Dietary and physical activity behaviors among adults ... - NCBI. Retrieved
September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1555605/
12. (n.d.). Role of Physical Activity for Weight Loss and Weight ... - NCBI. Retrieved September
25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556592/
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
42
exercise does burn calories, this effect appears to have a relatively small effect on a person’s overall TDEE, which probably seems confusing. Since TDEE =
BMR + NEAT + TEF + EAT we should expect that increasing exercise calorie expenditure (EAT) would raise our TDEE. However, there is substantial evidence
that TDEE is relatively constrained and increases in exercise past a certain
point may actually lead to decreases in NEAT.13 While exercise itself appear to
produce little to modest weight loss on it’s own, exercise plus dietary restraint
appears to be much more effective than dietary restraint on its own.14 This may
be due to the ability of exercise to sensitize the brain to satiety signals, as people who are more active actually tend to consume less calories than those who
are sedentary.15 16 Further, regular exercise has been demonstrated to lower
the body’s body fat setpoint, decrease the expression of lipogenic genes involved in weight regain, and attenuate the increase in fat cell number during
massive post diet overfeeding (discussed in the previous chapter).17 18 19 Based
on this research it is not surprising that people who lose weight and keep it off
successfully, over 70% participate in regular exercise whereas less than 30%
of the people who regained lost weight participated in regular exercise.20
13. (2016, January 28). Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and Metabolic .... Retrieved September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26832439
14. (2011, April 14). Effect of diet and exercise, alone or combined, on ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved
September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406229/
15. (2011, June 29). Exercise reduces appetite and traffics excess nutrients away .... Retrieved
September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21715696
16. (n.d.). Relation between caloric intake, body weight, and physical work. Retrieved September
25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13302165
17. (2016, February 10). Exercise Decreases Lipogenic Gene Expression in Adipose .... Retrieved
September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26903882
18. (2009, July 8). Regular exercise attenuates the metabolic drive ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved
September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19587114
19. (n.d.). Biology’s response to dieting: the impetus for weight regain.. Retrieved September 25,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21677272
20. (n.d.). Successful weight loss among obese US adults.. Retrieved September 25, 2019, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22516488
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
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Ability to Delay Gratification: Recent scientific literature has shown strong
associations between people who have low recency and successful weight loss
vs. those who have high recency.21 Recency refers to the reliance on recent information at the expense of time-distant information. Example: someone who
focuses on the fact they are hungry now versus the fact that they’d like to lose
weight and maintain it in the long term. Additionally, people who have low recency, and can focus on the long term goal, are much less likely to engage in
unproductive fad dieting.
We can’t tell you how many people end up sacrificing what they want most for
what they want right now. This is especially true when it comes to overeating
during social situations, as well as people who engage in fad or crash dieting in
an attempt to rapidly lose weight. In the end, this reliance on crash dieting only
leads them to invariably regain the weight and start the cycle all over again.
Few people want to put in the time to diet correctly: slow and steady, focussed
on the long term goal. Even less people have the ability to successfully reverse
diet if their goal is to lose more fat. We can’t tell you how many people we’ve
worked with who DESPERATELY needed to reverse diet, but only lasted a few
weeks before giving into the temptation to diet again, seeking ‘fast’ results. We
sadly watched them go back down that cycle of crash diet → → overeat → crash
diet → overeat… and so on. Remember that everything is a choice. When faced
with a decision, make the decision that your future self will thank you for.
Structured Programs: Most people do well with some form of structure as opposed to no structure whatsoever. This can take many forms, but when people have confidence in what they are doing and put their trust in a program, it
can improve adherence, and positive feelings about their journey. It’s popular
to make fun of programs like Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, etc,
or even those who hire diet coaches. Heck, almost everyone has access to the
internet, shouldn’t we be able to find the answers we are looking for? In theory
yes, but people still do much better when they have someone to guide them.
The problem with that is much of the dietary guidance online is GARBAGE. This
21. (2015, December 8). The Biggest Loser Thinks Long-Term: Recency as a ... - NCBI. Retrieved
September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4672063/
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
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is why we coach and have a team of highly trained coaching staff to help people
who contact us, so we can ensure they are getting the best structured support
possible.22 It’s also why we write books like this, so that even if you can’t afford
a coach, you still have an evidence-based guide at your disposal. It’s no surprise
that people who participated in structured programs had more success at losing weight and keeping it off than those who didn’t.23
Social Support: This one is a bit tricky and the data in the literature is a bit
muddled with some studies showing a benefit to social support while others
show no benefit or even a negative effect! 24 25 That seems a bit odd to most
people, but upon deeper examination it appears that they way in which people
receive social support matters. In cases where the ‘support’ is in the form of instruction or criticism, it appears to have no benefit or even a negative effect.26
If you’ve ever had an experience where people try to constantly tell you how to
diet or possibly even nit pick your diet, it doesn’t make you feel good. Support in
the form of encouragement or positive feedback however, has the opposite effect. Think about it for a bit, what is the most motivational thing you can get? A
compliment. “Wow, you are looking great!” When you hear something like that,
you are much more likely to keep doing what you’ve been doing. So if you have
a lot of nit pickers in your life, maybe it’s time to adjust your social circle. Hang
around people who encourage you, or better yet, participate with you in your
journey. Nothing is better than a partner to share the emotional and psychological load.
22. (n.d.). Coaching | Biolayne. Retrieved September 25, 2019, from https://www.biolayne.com/
coaching/
23. (n.d.). Long-Term Weight-Loss Maintenance by a Meal ... - NCBI. Retrieved September 25,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28376497
24. (n.d.). The role of social support in weight loss maintenance: results .... Retrieved September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26801339
25. (n.d.). Role of social support in lifestyle-focused weight management .... Retrieved September 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16052189
26. (n.d.). The role of social support in weight loss maintenance: results .... Retrieved September
25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26801339
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
45
Other Characteristics of Successful Weight Loss
Maintainers
●
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●
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Eat lower-calorie foods
Get adequate sleep
Consume high protein
Consume high fiber
Flexible control of diet versus rigid controls (all or nothing thinking)
Consume lower glycemic index (GI) sources of carbohydrates
Limit snacking
Limit stress
Eat mindfully
Don’t eat in response to stress or emotions (this is tricky, since
it’s not exactly a choice for some people. If this is you, we highly
recommend seeking support from a specialist)
Satisfaction with results
High level of emotional intelligence and mindfulness
You may notice something about the characteristics of weight maintainers,
they are almost exactly what you would expect the characteristics to be of
people who lose weight. The difference between those who simply lost weight,
and those who were able to keep it off, are that those who maintained their
weight loss also maintain these behaviors well after the diet ends. In reality, if
you don’t want to gain back all the weight, the diet will never be over. You will
always need to practice the behaviors that helped you to lose weight if you wish
to keep it off. If you go back to the way you were eating prior to weight loss,
then you will regain the weight, it’s really that simple.
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
46
The Importance of Accountability and Being Honest with
Yourself
Many of you reading this book probably believe you have slow metabolisms or
hormonal issues that cause fat loss or fat loss maintenance to be close to impossible for you. Some of you might, but it’s likely a very small percentage. While
there are some situations where people display very low BMRs, they are pretty
rare and even people with low thyroid can still lose weight. In fact, the impact
of thyroid hormone on weight loss may not be as massive as you would think. In
a study examining over 500 people who went on weight loss diets, they found
that those with the lowest levels of thyroid hormone lost about 1.5 kg less than
those with the highest levels of thyroid hormone (about 4kg vs. 5.5kg).27 Further, even in extreme cases of clinical hypothyroidism, the average reduction
in total daily energy expenditure is about 25%, which is definitely significant,
as this would mean someone who would normally maintain at 2000 calories per
day might only maintain at 1500 calories per day.28 Absolutely, this is a significant difference, but if you listened to some people talk, they would convince
you that losing weight is truly impossible if you have thyroid problems or a slow
metabolism. It is not impossible, but it is more difficult.
However, if you have hypothyroidism, it is diagnosable and treatable with medication to help restore normal thyroid levels and energy expenditure. Those
with low BMRs are also pretty rare, in fact obese people tend to have greater BMR than lean people.29 Further, in one study where people identified as
‘weight loss resistant’ it was found they were DRASTICALLY underreporting
what they were eating by almost 50% and also over-reported their physical ac-
27. “Thyroid Hormones and Changes in Body Weight ... - NCBI - NIH.” 31 Jan. 2017, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5461198/. Accessed 26 Sep. 2019.
28. “Thyroid Hormone Action and Energy Expenditure | Journal of ....” 16 May. 2019, https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/3/7/1345/5489459. Accessed 26 Sep. 2019.
29. “[Basal metabolic rate of overweight and obese adults ... - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/29903123. Accessed 26 Sep. 2019.
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
47
tivity by over 50%!30 Let’s think about that for a moment. If they claimed they
were eating 1500 calories per day, that meant on average they were consuming
around 2250! Combine that with over-estimating activity levels by 50% and it’s
no wonder they identified as ‘diet resistant.’ They aren’t alone. The vast majority of people are TERRIBLE at estimating how much they eat and how much activity they engage in. Underreporting ranges from 18-70% depending upon sex
and obese vs. lean. Women tend to under-report worse than men and obese
under-report worse than lean.31
Here is the part where you need some ‘tough love.’ We know what you are probably thinking, “that’s not me, I am definitely not under-reporting, I’m no liar.”
We want to be very clear that we don’t think the majority of these people in the
studies are lying about their intakes. They truly believe that the numbers they
are reporting are accurate. So why the huge discrepancy? Because people are
TERRIBLE at estimating portion sizes. Have you ever weighed out a serving of
cereal? How about ice cream or peanut butter? This last one is our favorite. It’s
depressing how small the serving sizes are. Most people slap in a few scoops of
ice cream and assume that’s probably a serving. In reality it’s probably 3-4! Not
only that, but people typically don’t account for all the licks, bites, and snacks
throughout the day. That quick handful of nuts you grabbed? 200 calories. That
scoop of peanut butter? 250 calories. The pack of gum you chewed today (yes
it counts)? 50 calories. That little bite off of a doughnut you stole? 70 calories.
That’s 570 calories right there. Then realize that most people are terrible at actually estimating portion sizes or even remembering they consumed it. So is
your metabolism really slow? Maybe, but it’s probably more likely that you are
not tracking correctly. So before you conclude that your metabolism is slow, try
this exercise. Don’t change anything you do with your current diet, just weigh
and track every single piece of food that goes into your mouth for a week. This
will be really labor intensive at first, though tracking apps make it way easier.
You will probably shock yourself at how much you are eating. When we’ve had
30. “Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake ....” 31 Dec. 1992, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454084. Accessed 26 Sep. 2019.
31. “Assessing dietary intake: Who, what and why of under-reporting..” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/19094249. Accessed 26 Sep. 2019.
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
48
clients do this, we’ve routinely had people report eating under 1200 calories,
only to find out they were actually close to or over 2000 calories for the day,
even though they genuinely believed they were eating 1200 calories. We aren’t
saying this in an attempt to make you feel bad or beat you down. In fact, this
information should be very liberating to most people. It means that your metabolism probably isn’t as screwed up as you think it is.
We don’t want you to think that in order to achieve your physique goals you’ll
need to weigh everything you put in your mouth from now until forever, but it
is a very useful experience. Weighing and tracking everything over a period of
time will actually make you much better at estimating because you’ll actually
understand how many calories and macros are in food. This will drastically improve your ability to estimate in the future so that you can maintain your goal
physique once you achieve it without the need to weigh out everything. Keep
in mind however, the leaner you want your goal physique to be, the more rigid
you will likely need to be with tracking. It’s not reasonable to think that you can
maintain a shredded physique year round without diligent tracking. There may
be a few select individuals who do it, but for the vast majority (over 99.9%) of
us mere mortals, it won’t be possible without diligent tracking. This is speaking
from a wealth of experience with physique clients (over 2 decades between us).
It is possible to maintain a lean physique without having to weigh everything
you eat but you will likely still have to be doing some loose tracking in terms of
estimating. In the initial post diet phase however, we really recommend that
you continue tracking diligently through your maintenance/reverse diet until
your calories return to a more sustainable level.
Why Maintenance Mindset is Important for Reverse
Dieting
For those of you who already know a bit about reverse dieting, all this discussion about maintenance of lost weight is probably a bit confusing. Why are we
spending so much time discussing maintenance in a reverse dieting book? This
is a great question and the answer is because the habits and behaviors that
make for successful weight loss maintenance also make for a successful re-
MAINTAINING LOST WEIGHT
49
verse diet. Afterall, the goal of a reverse diet is to get your calories up with as
minimal fat gain as possible. This means it’s actually MORE important to focus
on these behaviors during the reverse diet than it would be if you were just
looking to maintain. Maintenance is kind of easy if you keep doing the things
that made you successful during the diet. So long as you keep your calories at a
maintenance level overall and keep your activity steady, you will maintain your
weight. If you want to increase your calories and minimize weight gain however, you will really need to track accurately, be consistent, maintain activity, and
do all the little things right. To be clear, a properly executed reverse diet is more
difficult in several aspects than a fat loss diet. But a properly executed reverse
diet can set you up for much more success in the long run and make your subsequent fat loss phases much more pleasant.
4
50
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
R
everse dieting means different things depending upon who you talk to.
We can tell you how we define it:
“A dietary goal to increase calories and energy expenditure while limiting unnecessary fat gain.”
Now, that can encompass many different kinds of diets and nutritional strategies. For example, someone just finished a show prep and their hormones
are in the tank, no sex drive, voracious appetite, and they are at an unsustainable body fat level. Their priority may be to feel better faster and get to a more
healthy place (i.e. actually allowing themselves to purposefully put on some
body fat so they feel better). This approach to reverse dieting is going to look
much different from someone who lost 100 lbs over the past 18 months and is
now focussed on keeping the weight off but getting their calories up to a more
sustainable level while absolutely minimizing fat regain. Both can benefit from
a reverse diet, but their respective reverse diets will likely look quite different.
Why Reverse Dieting?
As we covered in chapter two, there are a series of redundant mechanisms that
facilitate post diet weight regain by reducing energy expenditure and increasing appetite through changes in hormones, nervous system, and adipose tissue adaptations. These metabolic adaptations occur in response to an energy
deficit which is unfortunately a requirement for fat loss. The good news however, is that just as metabolism can adapt to reduced calories, it can also adapt in
the opposite direction with increased calories. Indeed, a myriad of overfeeding
studies demonstrate that when calories are increased above maintenance, energy expenditure significantly increases to a much greater extent than would
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
51
be predicted by the gain in body mass.1 2 3 The studies examining energy expenditure increases with overfeeding however were not concerned with the rate
at which calories were added, they simply overfed the subjects significantly
from day one. Most of the tightly controlled overfeeding studies used intakes
of greater 40% above maintenance calories, which for someone eating 2000
calories per day at maintenance equates to them eating 2800 calories. Some
of the studies overfeed by as much as 75% above maintenance!4 The least aggressive overfeeding study we could find examined feeding 20% above maintenance calories compared with 40% and 60%, and found that those consuming 20% above maintenance calories gained significantly less fat and the same
amount of lean body mass as those in the other groups.5 This study was particularly interesting as while it only had six subjects, it was extremely tightly
controlled and utilized a metabolic ward where the food provided to the subjects was tightly monitored and the researchers could also closely monitor the
subjects energy expenditure.
This information not only has implications for gaining muscle, as it appears just
throwing a ton of calories on top of an already sufficient surplus is not better
for gaining lean body mass, it also provides interesting insights about metabolic adaptation. In fact, increasing 20% of calories above maintenance for 3
weeks significantly increased the participants metabolic rate by approximately 70 kcal per day (2725 to 2796 kcal/d on average). While this doesn’t sound impressive amount when we look at this in isolation, however over a 7 day period
this would equate to 470 calories, and in a social situation this would be quite
1. (n.d.). Overfeeding and energy expenditure in humans. - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved October 2,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1415004
2. (n.d.). The effect of 6 weeks of overfeeding on the body weight, body .... Retrieved October 2,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7369169
3. (n.d.). Metabolic efficiency and energy expenditure during short-term .... Retrieved October 2,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16039676
4. (2017, December 1). The Effects of Overfeeding on Body Composition: The Role of .... Retrieved October 2, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5786199/
5. (2007, November 27). Efficiency of autoregulatory homeostatic responses to ... - NCBI. Retrieved October 2, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18042669
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
52
handy, enabling one to consume an extra meal. Further, the participants did
not gain significant body fat over the 3 week time period (only 0.08 kg on average fat mass gained and only 0.67 kg total weight gained). They did however,
show a significant ‘cost of weight gain.’ By that we mean the amount of calories
that were ‘wasted’ in the process of energy deposition due to overfeeding. So it
appears at this level of caloric increase, the subjects deposited less than was
expected and this was explained by an increase in TDEE, disproportionate to
the increase in caloric intake. What’s more, the responses between individuals
in the study were quite variable. Two of the six subjects actually lost weight
during the 20% overfeeding period, rather than gaining it! Now does this mean
energy balance has been debunked and calories in vs. calories out does not
apply? No, but what it does mean is that for those two subjects, the increase in
energy intake was overcompensated for by an even greater increase in energy
expenditure. We want to be clear on this point, when many people hear energy expenditure, they simply think of purposeful exercise, but understand that
purposeful exercise is actually only a small amount of your TDEE. Your BMR
and NEAT are both very modifiable and for two subjects it appears that their
BMR + NEAT increased to a greater extent than even the increase in calories.
It’s important to note than when the researchers overfed the subjects by 40%
and 60%, they did not see the same overcompensation. In those overfeeding
periods, they did see further increases in TDEE, but not nearly enough to offset
the massive increase in calories. Now this is only one study, however, it was extremely well designed and tightly controlled and provides insights that support
the notion that calories in vs. calories out is not a static equation, it is a moving
target and it is possible to shift your TDEE based on not only how many calories
you consume, but also the rate at which you increase them.
How Did The Idea Start?
This concept of the rate of increasing (and decreasing) calories having an impact on TDEE vs. fat gain first came to me (Layne speaking now), as anecdote
during coaching. From 2007 to 2013, the majority of my income was from online
nutritional coaching with people one on one. During this time, my primary clientele were natural physique competitors who were either prepping for shows
or going through their offseasons. Over the years I made some interesting ob-
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
53
servations regarding increasing calories vs. weight gain. One of the first things
I noticed was that people who worked with me during their offseason often
would reach plateaus in weight gain that could not be overcome without much
larger calorie increases. For example, often I’d just try adding ~100-150 ish calories once someone had stopped gaining weight. Theoretically, this should
equate to about a ~1 lb per month gain in weight, but quite often in practice it
didn’t. Often people would not gain at all even after several weeks of adding calories slowly. Often I’d have to increase calories by 200-300 and only then would I
see a significant jump in weight gain, sometimes more than I anticipated based
on the fact that they had not been adding weight on smaller calorie increases.
This led me to theorize that perhaps there were ‘thresholds’ for weight loss and
weight gain. It’s likely these thresholds are variable from person to person as
research has documented that not everyone gains the same amount of weight
from the same calorie increases. For example, those who find it difficult to gain
weight, and are more resistant to fat gain, tend to add far less weight than the
average person in response to calorie increases, due to increases in NEAT and
BMR.6 7 Therefore, it is likely that some people can make larger caloric increases than others without significant weight gain. Even if someone was relatively
resistant to weight gain however, they still would gain weight if we increased
calories aggressively enough, but what I observed was rarely linear weight gain.
Often they would plateau for several weeks and then jump up a pound or even
several pounds in a week. I always found this quite interesting and it definitely
shaped some of my thoughts regarding metabolic thresholds.
Another observation I made was in clients who I prepped for shows who were
in great shape several weeks before their shows, so we began to add calories
back in. I first started doing this circa 2008, with the idea that if we could add
calories back in before their show, we could fill them out so they’d look more
muscular onstage, while maintaining their leanness. What I observed in many
cases absolutely shocked me. Not only did many of these people not gain
6. “The Role of Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis in ... - NCBI.” 9 Apr. 2018, https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279077/. Accessed 5 Oct. 2019.
7. “Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in resistance to fat ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/9880251. Accessed 5 Oct. 2019.
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
54
weight, a good portion of them actually began to lose MORE weight and body
fat. As someone who doesn’t believe in magic and always looks for a scientific
explanation as to why I might observe something, this baffled me. I also found
that the clients who I was able to implement this strategy of increasing calories
slowly into a show, tended to not regain as much body fat post show as to those
whom I really had to be very aggressive with. At the time, I didn’t think a whole
lot of it until I started understanding that this concept might be a worthwhile
tool for a post-diet setting as well.
Until 2013 I never really looked at the weight regain data, but I was starting to
notice a trend amongst the clientele I was getting who had been coached by individuals or teams that I would consider less than stellar. More accurately, their
coaching was complete and utter dogshit. I was getting hundreds of inquiries,
(mostly women) describing horror stories of how they had prepped for a show
on ~1000 calorie diets or less, that were not only calorie restricted, but limited
them to only a select few foods. This was coupled with up to 10+ hours of cardio
per week, on top of resistance training 5-7 days per week.
These people were able to lose significant body weight, at least initially, but after their show (or diet) was over, they absolutely blew up. We often refer to this
as the post show rebound. Weight regain of 30, 40, 50, 60, and in one extreme
case over 80 lbs of weight gain post show, all inside of a 9 month time frame.
These weren’t obese people, these were mostly people who were already normal
or lean who had dieted down improperly and then absolutely blown out during
the post diet period. Interestingly, many of them struggled to lose weight on
the same calories that had previously allowed them to lose the weight. Now I’m
not so naive to realise that some or most of these individuals were likely making tracking errors, underreporting, and possibly having difficulties with binge
eating, as many of them did. However, even amongst my clients who were extremely rigorous with tracking, I still noticed that after having undergone one
of these sorts of diets (or even worse, multiple diet cycles), they seemed to really struggle to lose weight due to extremely low energy expenditure. I formed
a hypothesis that perhaps the answer was not to continue to try to lose fat,
but rather to implement structured, slow, progressive overfeeding, as a means
to increase TDEE and get these clients to a better metabolic place so that in
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
55
future, they may be able to lose fat without having to starve themselves during
weight loss attempts.
I’m not sure who first coined the term ‘reverse dieting’ but I don’t think it was
me. In fact, I didn’t really know what to call it, I just felt that these people needed to get back to a normal level of energy expenditure so that hopefully in the
future they could lose fat. It was a tough sell and many people didn’t want anything to do with it. “What do you mean I need to eat more so that I can lose fat
in the future, I want to lose fat now.” Lord knows how much potential income I
turned down from people who didn’t like what I had to say and wanted results
NOW. Remember from the last chapter that the ability to delay gratification is a
big part of being able to keep fat off in the long term, and I found that to be true
in practice with my clients.
Reverse dieting didn’t start off as an idea in my head, nor did I ever figure it
would become something that I spoke much about. It just seemed to be a reasonable solution based on my experience in working with clients. As I began to
dig into the literature on weight regain further however, what I saw shocked me.
As described in chapter 2, weight regain and difficulty losing weight in subsequent diets wasn’t just confined to physique competitors, it was the majority of
dieters. I can still recall the day I ‘broke the internet’ as friend and fellow coach
John Gorman liked to refer to it, when I released the first video on my youtube
channel describing metabolic adaptation, and the problems with dieting and
weight regain. I regretfully titled it ‘metabolic damage’ as that was the common
term to describe people who were dealing with the ‘symptoms’ of rapid weight
regain after a diet and difficulty with subsequent weight loss phases. The response was overwhelming. Within 24 hours I had received over 200 inquiries
for coaching from people who were absolutely desperate for help. People said
“it was like you described my life.” Others said things such as (paraphrasing),
“it’s like you had a camera on me and were describing what happened to me
with such accurate detail that it was almost creepy.” I’m sure others in the industry had probably talked about this topic before, but I am not aware of when
or where, but that video was the first video to really strike a nerve in the fitness
community regarding this topic of metabolic slowing and weight regain.
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
56
I was already 95% full with clients at the time and was instantly overwhelmed
with inquiries, questions, and people who were just completely and utterly desperate for help. I had described their situation, but what was the solution. I felt
that reverse dieting could be helpful for a few different populations, of course
people who just ended a diet and wanted to maintain as much of their fat loss
as possible, as well as people whose energy expenditure was incredibly low
from years of chronic yo-yo dieting or even one or two really bad diets. I also did
a series of videos on reverse dieting, unfortunately however, I underestimated
how easily it was for people to misinterpret, misrepresent, or misunderstand
the spoken word. I heard things like “well I’ve already gained weight after a diet
so I’m screwed because reverse dieting only works for people who have just
finished a diet.” I heard things like “reverse dieting is just adding 50 calories
per week.” I also heard and read things that have been completely taken out
of context, such as people claiming that you need to reverse diet even after a
2 week mini-cut (you usually don’t unless it was incredibly severe restriction).
Other’s claimed that if you had already gained weight and incurred ‘metabolic
damage’ that there was nothing you could do and could never lose weight again
(NOT TRUE). On an unexpected note, some ‘experts’ said that I claimed that my
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
57
clients violated the laws of thermodynamics because they lost weight while
adding calories, so I must be full of shit. Looking back, I wish I had approached
the entire situation with more of a plan and with a more clear cut hypothesis
for reverse dieting. I never dreamed it would resonate with so many people and
strike such a chord and to be honest, I was still ‘making it up as I went’ in terms
of describing what I was observing with my clients who were using this tactic.
Who Is a Reverse Diet For?
In an ideal world, you would run a fat loss phase until you reached the desired
amount of fat loss, and then maintain it indefinitely, but sadly this is not how
things go for most of us. Even if you are able to achieve the desired amount of
fat loss, often by the end of that diet phase, your energy expenditure is very low
and as such, your calories are often too low to sustain. If you were able to lose
the desired amount of fat and you were still eating an amount of calories you
could maintain indefinitely, then things are very easy, just maintain that intake
and your current activity levels and you should be able to maintain your goal
body fat. For most people however, this is not how things typically go, since
energy expenditure declines significantly during a fat loss phase as described
in chapter 2. Thus, many people would love to be able to maintain their fat loss
results while also increasing their energy expenditure and calorie intake back
to a more maintainable level. This leads us to the first population of individuals
that we feel reverse dieting is applicable for.
Population 1: Fat loss goal achieved, but calories are below a sustainable level
For these people, the focus will be on increasing calorie intake up to a level they
feel is sustainable, while minimizing body fat regain. Most people in this category, like me (Holly here again), will likely want to do a conservative reverse diet
and add calories slowly since they are absolutely looking to maintain as much
of the weight loss as possible. They will also need to remain incredibly diligent
with the methods and habits that they employed during the weight loss phase
in order to maintain that weight loss while increasing their calories.
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
58
Population 2: Fat loss goal achieved during contest prep or extreme diet, recovery required
Not everyone diets to a sustainable level of body fat. In the case of physique
competitors, combat athletes, and other sports that require very low levels of
body fat, the level of body fat that is achieved may not be sustainable and the
calories certainly won’t be. This is probably not a popular statement, but most
of the people you see in the ‘fitness’ magazines don’t look like that year round.
In fact, most of them take all of their professional photos during a very short
timeframe while their physique is at its peak. Many of them are not even very ‘fit’
or ‘healthy’ in point of fact due to the toll their extreme diet will have taken on
their hormones. In natural bodybuilding case studies, nearly every single male
is hypogonadal (clinically low testosterone levels) and many females, (myself
included) deal with amenorrhea (loss of menstrual cycle) once body fat levels
dip below a certain set point.8 9 10 11 12 13 In order to recover from this beatdown on
their metabolism, they will NEED to increase their body fat levels to a healthier,
more sustainable level of body fat in order to recover their hormones, metabolic rate, and feel normal again. That doesn’t mean that they need to add excessive amounts of fat just for the sake of ‘recovery,’ but some fat regain will be
expected. These individuals will likely need to start out with a more aggressive
reverse diet which can be tapered to a more conservative reverse once their
body fat has returned to healthy levels. While we expect some body fat regain
8. (n.d.). Case study: Natural bodybuilding contest preparation. - NCBI. Retrieved October 7,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24901578
9. (2018, January 15). Nutritional strategies of high level natural bodybuilders ... - NCBI. Retrieved October 7, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5769537/
10. (2013, February 14). Natural bodybuilding competition preparation and ... - NCBI. Retrieved
October 7, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23412685
11. (n.d.). Natural Bodybuilding Competition Preparation and Recovery .... Retrieved October 7,
2019, from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7eb2/f2177a56705379065088b3480ce75329fd8e.pdf
12. (2015, May 1). A nutrition and conditioning intervention for natural .... Retrieved October 7,
2019, from https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-015-0083-x
13. (2017, March 1). Psychophysiological Tracking of a Female Physique ... - NCBI. Retrieved
October 7, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5360372/
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during this time period, we want to make sure that this is associated with the
maximum increase in corresponding calories, and that a healthy relationship
with food is also restored.
Population 3: Fat loss goal not achieved but calories are unsustainably low
This is a tough group to work with and sadly encompasses the vast majority of
the clientele we have worked with. Typically, these individuals have endured
multiple improper diet cycles, where they drastically restrict calories in order
to lose body fat, which is followed by quickly regaining much of what they lost
within a short period of time. Many times these people continue this vicious
cycle of yo-yo dieting, where they lose and regain the same 10 lbs over and over
again for YEARS. For some the weight range is even greater, and sadly this is
the worst possible way that one can diet. Every time you diet and create an energy deficit, you activate the body’s self defense system (described in chapter
2). The more often you activate this system, the stronger it defends. People
think regaining the weight they lost is the problem, but that’s not necessarily
the case. If they regain it over a long period of time, where their metabolic rate
has a chance to recover, then they should be able to lose the weight they lost
again (hopefully more permanently this time).
However, if they regain it too quickly and do not give their metabolic rate sufficient time to recover before dieting again, their future weight loss efforts are
going to be much more difficult. This is supported by a highly controlled study
(albeit in rats) which demonstrated that yo-yo dieting lowered metabolic rate
and made each subsequent weight loss attempt SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult
and also made each post diet weight regain more severe.14 Now you might say
‘well that’s just in rats’ but there is also human data to show negative health
outcomes with yo-yo dieting, including reduced lean body mass, often caused
by extreme approaches to weight loss, in addition to decreased strength, and
increased risk of developing sarcopenia (muscle wasting).15 Since lean body
14. (n.d.). Medical, metabolic, and psychological effects of weight cycling.. Retrieved October 8,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8002684
15. (n.d.). Weight Cycling as a Risk Factor for Low Muscle Mass ... - NCBI. Retrieved October 8,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31231958
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
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mass is the portion of your body tissue that is the most metabolically active,
especially compared to fat mass which is not very metabolically active, losing
lean body mass from multiple yo-yo diets could, in part, explain the reductions
in metabolic rate from highly restrictive yo-yo dieting.
It’s important to consider that some of these individuals who claim to be eating very low calories and not losing weight are also likely underreporting their
caloric intake. As we discussed in chapter 3, the majority of people, as much
as we hate to admit this, underreport their food intake, and overweight people
frequently underreport more than non overweight individuals. So before you
claim that you are eating low calories and not losing weight, be sure that you
really are. We aren’t saying this to be mean or to upset you, we simply want you
to make sure you are truly tracking everything you eat before you claim that
you simply can’t lose weight even on low calories. That means every lick, every
bite, everything that goes in your mouth including alcohol, which many people
don’t take the time to track and is very calorie dense (7 kcal/gram), it all must be
tracked. Many people also eat low calories during the week, but then don’t track
on the weekends and eat well above their normal intakes (2500-4000 calories)
and wonder why they aren’t losing weight. So before you plant yourself in the
category of ‘eating low calories but not losing weight’ BE HONEST with yourself
and BE ACCOUNTABLE with what you are really taking in.
For people who truly are eating low calories and not losing weight due to decreased energy expenditure, it’s not the end of the road, but the road ahead is
going to be pretty long. Since you aren’t at the body fat that you desire, it means
we need to reverse diet with the goal of minimizing fat gain, while increasing
energy expenditure so that in the future you will be able to lose body fat more
effectively at a more reasonable calorie intake. This type of reverse dieting is
a very difficult ‘sell’ to people who haven’t achieved their goal body fat. People
who get locked in to chronic dieting mentality find it difficult to break loose
from their diet mindset. It’s almost as if they only feel comfortable if they are
dieting. The idea of purposefully overfeeding to increase energy expenditure
to help restore their metabolic rate seems great in theory, but also very difficult for them in practice since they aren’t dieting seeing the scale go down and
relatively quick physical changes. As we have said to many clients in the past,
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
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“if you continue to do what you have always done, you will continue to get what
you have always gotten. If you want a different result, you need to try a different
approach.” As our friend Sohee Lee says, “you can’t diet your way out of a bad
metabolism.” This is advice many of you probably don’t want to hear, but NEED
to hear. If you are happy to diet on very low calories in order to make fat loss
progress, then reverse dieting might not be for you, but we have yet to meet
one person who is ‘happy’ dieting on low calories. Low calories are typically
not very sustainable either, so what invariably happens is that these people are
able to stick to low calories for a certain period of time, but often end up drastically over consuming calories on weekends, holidays, or at special events and
end up back to square one in terms of their progress. If your energy expenditure is low from chronic dieting and you find that you have difficulty sustaining
a calorie deficit due to how restrictive your calories are, then a reverse diet is
likely one of your best options.
Population 4: No immediate fat loss goal, simply want to increase ‘metabolic
capacity.’ I.e. prepare for a more successful future diet, perform better or
simply be able to eat more calories.
‘Metabolic capacity’ is a term that I (Layne speaking now), loosely coined years
ago to describe increases in energy expenditure with sustained overfeeding.
This was something I looked to utilize in my ‘offseason’ clients to increase their
energy expenditure so that when they began dieting they would have a greater caloric cushion to cut back down from. For these individuals, the goal was
typically increasing muscle mass while getting calories up as high as possible without putting on excessive body fat. These individuals may choose to do
any different type of reverse diet, from conservative to aggressive depending
upon their tolerance for gaining body fat, as well as how quickly they want to increase their energy expenditure. The idea is that if we take 2 theoretical identical people and one is able to maintain their body weight on 2000 calories per
day, but the other is able to maintain their calories on 2500 per day, in theory,
the person on 2500 calories per day should have an easier time losing fat the
next time they diet, as they have a greater ‘calorie cushion’ to create a deficit
from. The person who maintains their body weight on 2000 per day only needs
to hit a few plateaus in their fat loss journey before they are staring down 1200
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
62
calories per day as their only option for making more progress, whereas the
person starting with a maintenance of 2500 calories per day has quite a bit of
room to bust through a few plateaus while dieting.
Fat loss plateaus are normal and something that you MUST account for when
setting up your diet. As we discussed in chapter 2, metabolic adaptation is going to happen. There are various ‘tricks’ and techniques you can use to try to
mitigate metabolic adaptation like employing diet breaks, refeeds, wearing
weighted vests, and a host of other ‘tricks’, but no matter what you do, there
will be metabolic adaptation and you will have to plan for fat loss plateaus. Many
people can be dedicated for short bursts of time, but few people can be dedicated for extended periods of time. What ends up happening to many individuals is they are very dedicated to a fat loss phase, but once it ends they stop
caring and they regain the weight without first optimizing their metabolic rate.
Ideally, most people would not want to regain all the weight they lost, unless
they had a goal of building as much muscle as possible. If they did regain all the
weight however, the next best thing would be to do so in a way that maximizes
their metabolic rate and energy expenditure so that when they diet in the future, the subsequent fat loss phases will be less difficult due to an enhanced
energy expenditure. Now we don’t want to oversell reverse dieting. If you are
maintaining your body weight on 1800 calories per day, it’s highly unlikely that
you can reverse diet yourself to a new maintenance level of 4000 calories per
day, there are definitely limits. In fact, some people don’t get huge improvements in their energy expenditure, while others see very large increases from
reverse dieting. However, it’s still better than entering ‘fuck it mode’ post diet
and regaining all the weight (if not more) while having no regard for improving
your metabolic rate or building muscle.
We realise that not everyone has the burning desires to become an ‘aesthetics brah’ or achieve a fitness celebrity physique, but perhaps they are more interested in being able to increase caloric intake for the potential performance
benefits. Others may simply like to be able to consume a greater amount of calories to facilitate their social preferences and allow for greater food flexibility
rather than always feeling like you have to miss out.
WHAT IS A REVERSE DIET AND WHO IS IT FOR
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The reverse diet can absolutely be used for these two populations to drive exercise performance and make for a more enjoyable lifestyle.
Population 5: Ended fat loss phase, goal may or may not have been achieved
but now focussed on building muscle.
One of the most popular questions we get asked is “can I build muscle while
reverse dieting.” ABSOLUTELY. In fact, a conservative reverse dieting is almost
the perfect ‘lean gaining phase.’ There is very little difference between reverse
dieting and ‘gaining’ or ‘bulking’ from the perspective of they all involve overfeeding. The difference is in the rate of overfeeding and that in reverse dieting
we are dealing with an ‘allowable weight gain’ vs. an ‘expected weight gain’ when
talking about a bulking or gaining phase. We will discuss what we mean by this
later, but essentially in a gaining phase you expect to gain weight and if you
don’t gain weight, you keep increasing calories until you do, whereas in a reverse diet we aren’t purposefully trying to gain weight, and in some cases if we
do, and if the weight regain is greater than what was ‘allowed’ based on the parameters we set, we will make adjustments (more on this later). This population
will be similar to the previous insofar as they could choose from any number of
styles of reverse dieting depending upon how fast they want to increase their
calories, and their tolerance for body fat gain.
Summary
There are many potential populations that can benefit from reverse dieting depending upon their long term goals, tolerance for
fat gain, and individual metabolism. It’s important to emphasize
that reverse dieting is not one particular diet or rate of increasing calories. It can encompass a range of different approaches depending upon the individual and their goals.
5
64
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: CALORIES
N
ow that we’ve covered the background on reverse dieting, why it is helpful, and who it’s for, it’s time to dive into the nuts and bolts of setting one
up starting with how many calories you need. As we discussed in chapter
4, there are many potential populations who may benefit from reverse dieting
and the term reverse dieting covers a range of nutritional strategies. So where
in the hell do we start figuring out how many calories to start a reverse diet with?
No matter what type of reverse you choose and what your goals are, we need
to first determine your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) so we know what
your maintenance calories are. We will use TDEE and maintenance calories interchangeably, they aren’t truly the exact same thing, but they will be the same
number. TDEE is the total number of calories that you expend in a day. Maintenance calories is the amount of calories you need to consume to maintain your
body weight. Since maintenance calories will be equal to your TDEE, they will
both be the same number. So how do we go about determining this number?
There are a few different methods that can range from relatively simple to pretty
complex, depending upon how exact you would like to be when narrowing down
that number. We tend to err on the side of simple, only because it’s unlikely you’ll
be off by an incredibly huge amount and even if you are off by quite a bit, we will be
giving you instructions on how to adjust your dietary intakes as you go depending upon how your body responds. So even if you underestimated your TDEE and
your calories were too low, you’d see your weight dropping and we could increase
calories to compensate. Likewise, if you overestimated your TDEE your weight
would increase and you can adjust calories back down in response to that. These
are only going to help you set a starting point for your reverse diet, so try not to
get too obsessed with them. That said, we will show you different methodologies
to determine your TDEE starting with the most simple and progressively moving to the most complicated (albeit likely a bit more accurate). With any of these
formulas, the first step is to determine our approximate BMR. Then we can apply
activity factors to account for things like NEAT and exercise activity (EAT).
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65
Now most of these formulas will require you to know your lean body mass and
in order to know your lean body mass, you need to have your body fat assessed.
There are a multitude of ways to assess body fat, some are more accurate than
others, but please understand that none of them are truly 100% accurate. They
all make various assumptions and use mathematical estimations in order to
determine total body fat levels. We personally like calipers because you are
measuring what you actually care about, which is the thickness of the skin. Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry (DXA) is considered the gold standard in research, but it’s not without drawbacks. The first being that it’s difficult to get
access to if you aren’t involved in a university study or unless you’d like to pay
a hefty amount of money for a single scan (around $125 in the US). It’s also not
something that you can likely use often either, which makes it impractical to
use to assess progress as well. People treat DXA like the word of god, but in
fact DXA can be easily manipulated or inaccurate as it is a 2 compartment model, by that we mean it shows tissue as being either fat or lean, and lean tissues
account for more than just our skeletal muscle mass. Lean tissue includes organ mass, hair, skin, nails and bone mass, as well as water, and water is very
easily influenced, dependent on a number of variables. If you eat a lot of food
and drink a lot of water before a DXA scan, guess what it registers as? Lean
body mass. So you could get a DXA, then go back in 5 minutes later after chugging a jug of water and the DXA will measure you as having miraculously gained
a bunch of new lean body mass. Did you really add new muscle tissue? Hell no.
Further, if you performed a vigorous workout the morning of or the day before
the scan, or you simply consumed a heavily salted meal the night before your
DXA, you may also experience changes to your total body water. So you could
see that unless you were taking a DXA under the exact same conditions each
time you do it, you could have very significant fluctuations in lean body mass
based on how much water you’ve drank and food you’ve eaten. In this case you
are much better off doing calipers since you can do them in the comfort of your
home and take your measurements the same way every time: fasted from food
and fluid, in the morning, right after you’ve weighed in. There are also methods like underwater weighing which is fairly accurate, but this method suffers
the same accessibility and cost pitfalls as the DXA. There are handheld devices
which are convenient for home use but probably a bit less accurate than cali-
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: CALORIES
66
pers in our opinion. That said, they are completely suitable if you are pressed
for time and want something easy that you know you’ll use. Even if they are
slightly inaccurate, it’s likely that the relative change in body composition, or
measurement to measurement accuracy is still pretty good. Meaning, if someone measures at 17% body fat but they are actually 14%, and they drop 3% body
fat on the handheld device, it’s likely they did indeed lose some fat. You may not
have exactly the right number, but that’s less important than the relative progress. The most important thing is to pick ONE method of assessing your body
fat and then ALWAYS do it the same way every time you do it.
With that out of the way, let’s discuss the various methods of determining BMR,
the largest component of TDEE starting with the most simple formula and
moving to the most complicated (but likely most accurate) way to do it.
Most simple: Aragon Formula:
Multiply lean body mass in kg (LBM) by a factor of 25.3.
Example 1: 25 year old male, 80kg total body weight (TBW) and 15% body fat.
Works a job that requires him to stand or walk most of the day and also very
intense daily resistance exercise
So if you are 80 kg male at 15% body fat, that equals 68 kg LBM. 80 kg x .15 = 12
kg fat mass (FM). LBM = TBW - FM. 80 kg TBW - 12 kg FM = 68 kg LBM.
BMR = 68kg x 25.3 = 1720.4 kcal/day (round it to 1720 kcal/day)
Example 2: 30 year old female, 70kg TBW and 16% body fat. Has a job that requires some standing and walking and also exercises regularly at a moderate
intensity 3-4 days per week.
FM = 70kg x 0.16 = 11.2kg; LBM = 70kg - 11.2kg = 58.8kg
BMR = 58.8kg x 25.3 = 1487.8 kcal/day (round to 1488 kcal/day)
Now we have to apply activity factors (AF) to BMR in order to determine TDEE.
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In traditional equations, they apply one activity factor, but we find it’s more accurate to use 2 factors: A lifestyle factor and an exercise factor. This basically accounts for NEAT & EAT. So the equation to determine TDEE will look like
TDEE = BMR x AF
Lifestyle Factor
0.6 - Sedentary (desk job, very little standing or walking needed
during the day)
0.7 - Light Activity (some standing and walking during day to day
activities and job)
0.8 - Moderate Activity (You spend a good portion of the day on
your feet during your job and activities)
0.9 - High Activity (You spend virtually all day on your feet and rarely
sit down)
1.0 - Extreme Activity (You work a heavy labor job)
Exercise Factor
0.55 - Sedentary (You don’t exercise)
0.65 - Light Exercise (You do some walking and aerobic activity a
few days per week)
0.75 - Moderate Exercise (You do multiple days per week of exercise, some resistance training)
0.85 - Intense Exercise (You TRAIN HARD at least 5 days per week)
0.95 - Extreme Exercise (You train intensely over 2 hours per day,
virtually every day)
Select the activity factor that best describes your lifestyle and then the activity factor that best describes your exercise routine. Add them together to get
your overall activity factor. For Layne and I, we both work a sedentary job, so
we would select 0.6, although Layne might select a 0.7 since he tends to run
around chasing the kids a lot more than I do. Then our exercise is very intense,
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68
so we would probably select a 0.85. That puts me at a 1.45 activity factor and
Layne at a 1.55 activity factor. You then multiply your BMR by that activity factor.
So if we take first example and assume their lifestyle factor is 0.8 (moderate)
and an exercise factor of 0.85 since they train hard. We then add 0.8 + 0.85 =
1.65, we would then multiply their calculated BMR of 1720 by 1.65. 1720 kcal x
1.65 = 2838 kcal TDEE (estimated).
If we examine our second example we would likely choose a lifestyle factor of
0.7 since the example females job requires some standing and walking and exercise factor of 0.75. This yields an overall activity factor of 1.45. We then multiply her BMR of 1488 x 1.45 = 2157.6
2nd Most Simple: The Müller Equation
For our second calculation, we come to the Müller equation. Müller et al. noted
the flaws of the World Health Organization’s calorimetry, and they came up with
their own calculations based on a homogenous modern population.
In this one, we have a few more variables to take into account. We have age and
LBM again, but we also have to account for fat mass (FM), and biological sex,
which is represented by a 0 if you’re a woman, or a 1 if you’re a man. This equation is our preferred option because it accounts for most of the variables that
have the biggest impact on metabolic rate (LBM, FM, Sex, and Age).So all that
yields the following equation:
(13.587 x LBM) + (9.613 x FM) + (198 x Sex) – (3.351 x Age) + 674 = BMR
For our above examples. We would plug in the numbers as follows:
Example 1: (13.587 x 68) + (9.613 x 12) + (198 x 1) - (3.351 x 25) + 674 = 1827.5 (Round
to 1828 kcal)
TDEE = 1828 x 1.65 = 3016.2 kcal (round down to 3016 kcal)
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: CALORIES
69
Example 2: (13.587 x 58.8) + (9.613 x 11.2) + (198 x 0) - (3.351 x 30) + 674 = 1480.1
(round down to 1480 kcal)
TDEE = 1480 x 1.45 = 2146 kcal.
As you can see there isn’t a ton of difference between the two equations. The
major difference is that male TDEE will probably work out a bit higher when using the Müller equation since it gives an extra 198 calories to men. For females as
you can see the numbers are pretty close. However, for older women the Müller
will probably work out to be slightly lower. Here is the important thing to remember, these are just ESTIMATES. It is very likely that they will not nail your maintenance calories dead on, but they will probably get you pretty close in most cases
and in nearly all cases get you in the ballpark. We can tell you that most people
put WAY too much emphasis on finding their ‘perfect’ maintenance calories. We
see people stress so much over this. DON’T. Do your best but even if you are off,
this book will teach you how to adjust your macros and calories accordingly so
that within a couple of weeks of starting, you will be able to self correct back
into the appropriate value if you practice what we discuss in this book.
The Problem with TDEE Estimate Equations
As we emphasized previously, these calculations of BMR and TDEE are ESTIMATES. It is important to point out however, that the population reading this
book may be more likely to fall outside of the normal calculations. Dieting, especially prolonged dieting, or yo-yo dieting, reduces TDEE significantly as we discussed earlier in Chapter 2. The average reduction in BMR from prolonged dieting is usually around ~15%. So how can we apply this knowledge? We tend to look
at this from more of a holistic, dieting history perspective. If you don’t spend
much time dieting or rarely diet, then there’s no need to apply any adjustment. If
you do have a dieting history then it can be useful to apply some metabolic factors to your calculations. If you spent over a third of the year in a caloric deficit,
then we would recommend reducing the BMR calculation by 5%. If you spend
over half of the year in a caloric deficit, reduce the BMR calculation by 10%. If
you spend over 2/3 of the year in a caloric deficit, reduce the BMR calculation by
15%. If you are a perpetual yo-yo dieter then reduce the BMR calculation by 20%.
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If we look back at our examples. Let’s say example 1 (using the Müller equation)
had carried out a 12 week diet this year, we might apply a 5% reduction to his
BMR. If we use the Müller BMR calculation of 1828 kcal, reducing that by 5%
would be 1828 kcal x 0.05 = 91.4 kcal (round to 91). 1828 kcal - 91 kcal = 1737 kcal.
TDEE = 1737 kcal x AF 1.65 = 2866.1 kcal (round to 2866).
For example 2, let’s go the opposite direction and assume she has been a long term
dieter and spends a fair portion of the year in a deficit. If we apply a 15% reduction
to her Müller calculated BMR, we get: 1480 kcal x 0.15 = 222 kcal. BMR = 1480 kcal 222 kcal = 1258 kcal. TDEE = 1258 kcal x 1.45 = 1824.1 kcal (round to 1824 kcal).
Most Accurate and Complicated Way of Calculating TDEE
The most accurate way to calculate your TDEE is to monitor your weight and
your calorie intake over time. If we know those two parameters, we can come
up with a very accurate assessment of your TDEE/maintenance calories. Since
tissue weight has a caloric value associated with it, we can monitor weight
changes and determine what kind of calorie deficit/surplus an individual is in.
We want to be clear here, you need to examine your weight change across the
most recent 2-4 week period of time and when we say weight change, we mean
your average weekly weight. That is, we recommend weighing in daily every day
for 2 - 4 weeks and then taking the average of each week’s weight to determine
your average, then compare those averages against each other compared to
the caloric intake. In our previous books we went through in painstaking detail
how to calculate what calorie amount is associated with weight loss. We won’t
beat those to death, but if you want to learn how we came to those calculations,
you can find them in Fat Loss Forever or The Complete Contest Prep Guide.1
Briefly, let’s examine the estimated calorie content of 1kg of FM and 1kg of LBM:
Adipose tissue/Fat Mass (FM) is 87% lipid/fat. Therefore 1000g x 0.87 =
870g fat. Fat = 9 kcal/g. FM = 870g x 9 kcal/g = 7830 kcal per 1kg FM. This could
also be expressed as 7.83 kcal/g of FM.
1. “Books and Ebooks – BioLayne Store.” https://biolaynestore.com/collections/accessories.
Accessed 27 Oct. 2019.
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LBM is approximately 70% fluid and non-caloric. The remaining 30% of tissue
is mostly protein in nature. Therefore, 1 kg of LBM = 1000g x 0.30 = 300g lean
tissue/protein. Protein = 4 kcal/g. LBM = 300g x 4 kcal/g = 1200 kcal per 1kg of
LBM. This could also be expressed as 1.2 kcal/g of LBM.
Knowing this, if we have weight, and specifically body fat measures, we can
determine how many calories are associated with fat loss or fat gain. For example, let’s say someone takes their weight every day while they are on the last
4 weeks (28 days) of their diet. During this time they lose 3 kg of weight going
from 80 kg to 77 kg. Over that period of time their body fat percentage drops
from 16% to 14% body fat.
This means that at 80 kg their total mass was comprised of FM 80 kg x 0.16 =
12.8 kg. LBM = 80 kg - 12.8 kg = 67.2 kg.
At 77 kg their new total mass was comprised of FM 77 kg x 0.14 = 10.8 kg. LBM =
77 kg - 10.8 kg = 66.2 kg.
Therefore, the total FM lost during this time frame was 12.8 kg - 10.8 kg = 2.0 kg.
Total LBM lost was 67.2 - 66.2 = 1 kg.
Since FM is approximately 7830 kcal/kg, (from the first equation), the calories
from FM are 2.0 kg x 7830 kcal/kg = 15660 kcal.
Since LBM is approximately 1200 kcal/kg (from the first equation), the calories
from LBM are 1kg x 1200 kcal/kg = 1200 kcal.
In order to determine the total calories lost over that period of time simply add
FM + LBM = 15660 kcal + 1200 kcal = 16860 kcal. This is the TOTAL calorie deficit
over that period of time. As we stated previously, this was lost over 4 weeks or
28 days. In order to determine what the average daily caloric deficit was, we
can divide 16860 kcal ÷ 28 days = 602.1 kcal/day.
If we assume this person’s average daily caloric intake during this time was 1700
kcal/day, we can find their approximate maintenance calories/TDEE by adding
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: CALORIES
72
their deficit calories to their intake. So in this case TDEE/maintenance calories
= 1700 + 602.1 = 2302.1 kcal/day.
What if you didn’t lose weight? What if you gained weight? Let’s take the previous scenario and say that they actually overate during that time by 7000 kcals
based on their weight increase?. In that case, 7000 kcal/28 days = 250 kcal surplus per day. If they were consuming 1700 kcal per day we would SUBTRACT
250 kcal from 1700 kcal - 250 kcal = 1450 kcal/day = TDEE/Maintenance Calories
This way of tracking body fat, body weight, and calories is the most accurate
way of determining maintenance calories, but it also requires quite a bit of
math. I (Holly speaking) have a short 5 minute video on Youtube that illustrates
this exact equation if you are requiring some additional assistance.
If you have the data already, then it’s probably not a big deal as the math isn’t
crazy difficult. But if you are wanting to get started on a goal, don’t feel like you
need to take 4 weeks of diligent tracking before you can get started on your reverse, as we stated previously, the estimations we provided in the first section
will get you in the ballpark.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: CALORIES
73
On the other hand, perhaps you’ve gotten a bit lucky and you’ve been tracking your intake for a while and also maintaining your weight, that makes it very
easy! You are currently eating your maintenance calories… no math required!
Where Should I Start My Reverse Diet Calories?
As we discussed in Chapter 4, there are several different populations of people
that could benefit from reverse dieting. Where you start calorie wise will depend
on your specific goals and your tolerance for fat gain. Regardless of the population you belong to and your goals, we at minimum recommend starting your
reverse at your current maintenance calories. Notice we said CURRENT. As we
discussed, if you have been dieting for a while, your post diet maintenance calories will be significantly different from the calories you began your diet on. Before
the diet began, your maintenance calories might have been 2100, but after a few
months of dieting it could be closer to 1800-1900. You want to be sure you use the
CURRENT maintenance as your starting point rather than your pre-diet maintenance. Now that said, we will discuss a few different methods of reverse dieting.
Conservative: Goal of less than or equal to ≤ 0.2% of body weight gained per
week. A conservative reverse is recommended for people who want to absolutely minimize any fat gain and are willing to take a longer period of time to get
their calories up. This reverse protocol is especially recommended for those
who are not yet at their goal body fat but want to improve their energy expenditure and caloric intake, as well as those people who have reached their goal
body fat but are not currently eating a sustainable amount of calories to maintain this on. We recommend starting at your maintenance calories, up to maintenance + an additional 10% calories.
Moderate: Goal of less than or equal to ≤ 0.5% of body weight gained per week.
A moderate reverse is recommended for people who want to get their calories
up relatively quickly but don’t want to gain a lot of fat. We recommend setting
your starting calories at maintenance + 10%, up to maintenance calories + an
additional 20% calories.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: CALORIES
74
Aggressive: Goal of less than ≤ 0.8% of body weight gained per week. An aggressive reverse is for people who wish to get their calories up very quickly and restore
their metabolic rate as quickly as possible and are ok with gaining body fat. This
reverse is typically reserved for people who have reached very low levels of body
fat and want to recover from that extreme condition quickly, but not gain excessive
amounts of body fat. We recommend your starting calories be set to your maintenance calories + 20%, up to maintenance calories + an additional 30% calories.
Let’s use a new example of someone who’s TDEE is 1570 kcal/day. If they wanted
to do a conservative reverse diet they would start at anywhere from 1570 kcal/
day (maintenance) to 1727 kcal/day (maintenance + 10%). If they wanted to do
a moderate reverse they would start at 1727 kcal/day (maintenance + 10%) to
1884 kcal/day (maintenance + 20%). If they wanted to do an aggressive reverse
it would be 1884 kcal/day (maintenance + 20%) to 2041 kcal/day (maintenance +
30%). As you can see, there is a large range of where you can theoretically take
your calories to begin a reverse diet. If by the end of your fat loss phase you are
feeling like absolute rubbish, low energy, low libid and your mood is constantly
poor, then you may like to start with a more aggressive reverse in order to help
you feel better faster. Initially you will regain body fat at a slightly faster rate,
however once your energy levels are somewhat restored, you can transition back
to a more conservative reverse diet approach. While it may be very tempting
to hang on to your new lean physique, consider that someone who has been on
highly restrictive calories has likely endured a myriad of physiological changes
within the body. These include changes to your hunger hormones, which are all
driving you to eat. So choosing the more aggressive approach might be the most
sensible option, rather than trying to struggle through the initial weeks of a reverse diet consuming what is likely going to be still very restrictive calories, and
thus placing you at a much greater risk of binge eating and uncontrolled weight
regain. You could start with a more aggressive reverse initially until your hunger
normalizes and then continue with a more conservative reverse from there.
Calorie Cycling and Weekly Calorie Planning
One of the most common questions we get regarding reverse dieting is “should
I do refeeds, diet breaks, or calorie cycling on my reverse?” Since a reverse is
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: CALORIES
75
not an energy deficit there is no real benefit to having high and low calorie days
unless you simply prefer to have high and low calorie days and it helps improve
your overall adherence, especially in the immediate post diet setting where
calories may still be low. If you choose to do calorie cycling it doesn’t seem
to be detrimental when done within reason, so if that’s something YOU prefer,
whether it be to facilitate eating out socially or to fuel performance in the gym,
and it helps improve YOUR adherence, then go for it, just understand it’s not
superior to just eating the same calories everyday. Let’s take our previous example of someone who has a TDEE of 1570 calories. Let’s say they decide to do
a conservative reverse and start their calories at maintenance + 5% because
they really want to limit fat gain. This equates to an average daily calorie intake
of 1649 kcal. If we multiply that by 7 days in a week we come up with a weekly
caloric budget of 11543 kcal to distribute across the week. Let’s say this person
decides that they’d rather have more calories on Fridays and Saturdays so they
can enjoy some adult beverages or eating out with friends, etc. So they decide
to allott 1800 kcal per day to Friday and Saturday. How would the rest of their
week look? 1800 kcal x 2 days = 3600 kcals. We then need to subtract that from
our weekly calorie budget of 11543 kcal - 3600 kcal = 7943 kcal left to distribute
across 5 days. 7943 kcal ÷ 5 days = ~1589 kcal/day for the remaining days. Now
you don’t have to do high days as we stated earlier, and if you choose to include
them, you don’t necessarily have to stick with 2 days either.
You could include 1 high day, 2 high days, 3 days or even 4 days, etc. Just keep in
mind that the higher you make your high days and the more frequently you have
them, the lower your calories will need to be on other days in order not to exceed your weekly calorie budget. In general, We don’t really like to set high day
targets by more than 50% above low days, not because their is science to support physiological downsides, but rather, we don’t want to condone someone
starving themselves a few days per week in order to facilitate structured food
binges. This does not help people to form a healthy relationship with food. That
being said, intermittent fasting (IF) is very popular at the moment and many
people are trying out different IF protocols. We are ok with this nutritional concept, so long as the individual realizes that there is no magic to IF, it does not
boost your metabolism or increase fat loss compared to normal dieting when
weekly calories are equated. Therefore, we only recommend IF if it fits YOUR
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: CALORIES
76
lifestyle and enables you to be more adherent to your overall dietary targets. I
personally find that this approach works best with people who are on relatively
low calories when they begin their reverse and would like to have some days
with more room in their diet to be flexible so that they can have a night out, etc.
It’s important to note that these days are not physiologically superior as calorie
cycling has not been shown to improve body composition compared to weekly
equated calorie diets, but that does not mean it can’t be a useful tool for you.
Summary
This chapter focused on helping show you how to set calories to
begin a reverse diet. In summary, the most important thing is to
understand your CURRENT maintenance calories/TDEE when you
start the reverse so you can then base your initial caloric intake
off that. Regardless of whether you choose a conservative, moderate, or aggressive reverse, you will be basing your intake off of
your maintenance calories/TDEE. Also, keep in mind that once you
have selected a conservative, moderate, or aggressive reverse,
you don’t have to stay on it indefinitely. As we mentioned, you can
start with an aggressive reverse for the first few weeks to help you
recover from something like a contest prep or very restrictive diet,
then switch to a conservative or moderate reverse once you start
feeling better to help minimize additional unwanted fat regain. You
could also start with a conservative reverse if you are really afraid
of fat gain, but once your calories get higher and you feel more confident you could switch to a moderate reverse. There are a number
of ways you can apply reverse dieting, but these should be based
on your individual situation and goals. This is not a one size fits all
method to reverse dieting.
6
77
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
D
etermining starting calories for a reverse diet is the most important step
but we also need to figure out what kind of macronutrient breakdown you
will be utilizing for a reverse diet. As we’ve laid out previously in our books
The Complete Contest Prep Guide and Fat Loss Forever, we always start by determining our calories first, then we determine protein, and then the remaining
calories are allocated towards carbohydrates and fats based on personal preference. While your calorie intake is the most important variable for determining your progress, macro ratios still matter. While all calories are created equal
since a ‘calorie’ is simply a unit of energy, all calorie sources are not created
equally when it comes to influencing energy expenditure and body composition.
Protein
We begin with protein because it is by far the most important macronutrient
for improving lean body mass and increasing energy expenditure. The current
government recommendation for protein is 0.8g/kg body weight. For an 80kg
person this is 64g of protein per day. This intake was determined using nitrogen balance studies to determine what levels of protein prevented a negative
nitrogen balance. Nitrogen Balance = Nitrogen intake (protein is the only nitrogen containing macronutrient) - Nitrogen loss (urine, feces, sweat). The
amount of protein needed to keep you in a positive nitrogen balance is pretty
small, but a positive nitrogen balance doesn’t mean that you’ve optimized body
composition. In fact, the research suggests that intakes of up to 2-3x the RDA
for protein may improve body composition compared to lower protein intakes
closer to the RDA!1 2 This is likely due to dietary protein’s ability to stimulate
1. “Dietary protein for athletes: from requirements to optimum ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/22150425. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
2. “A systematic review of dietary protein during caloric ... - NCBI.” 2 Oct. 2013, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24092765. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
78
muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and improve net protein balance.3 4 Net Protein Balance = Protein Synthesis - Protein Breakdown. MPS is thought to be
more responsive to nutrition than protein breakdown and thus we are able to
increase MPS, it should lead to better accrual of lean body mass.
When we tell people this information, many of them (especially women) say,
“that’s great, but I don’t want to look like a bodybuilder.” Fear not, you are not
going to accidentally get too muscular from consuming a high protein diet. Take
it from two people who have spent the better part of their lives trying to get
‘too muscular’, it doesn’t happen by accident and without specifically training
for that purpose. Besides, getting jacked isn’t all protein is good for. It turns out
that high protein diets are better for body composition compared to normal or
low protein diets.5 6 7 This is not only due to dietary protein’s influence on MPS,
but also its effects on energy expenditure. Diets higher in protein have been
shown to increase energy expenditure, likely from the thermic effect of food
(TEF) being greater for protein compared to carbohydrate and fat.8 9 TEF refers
to the amount of calories the body must expend to extract out the energy from
the food you consume, much like how a car must expend energy to extract the
energy from gasoline. The TEF for protein in fact, is far greater (~20-30%) com-
3. “Muscle protein synthesis in response to nutrition and ... - NCBI.” 30 Jan. 2012, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3381813/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
4. “Optimal protein intake to maximize muscle protein synthesis.” 1 Dec. 2016, https://www.
researchgate.net/publication/288150322_Optimal_protein_intake_to_maximize_muscle_protein_synthesis_Examinations_of_optimal_meal_protein_intake_and_frequency_for_athletes.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
5. “Dietary protein and exercise have additive effects on body ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pubmed/16046715. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
6. “Effects of dietary protein intake on body composition changes ....” 15 Feb. 2016, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4892287/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
7. “Higher Dietary Protein Intake is Associated with Lower Body ....” 31 Mar. 2010, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3411511/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
8. “Effect of Dietary Protein Content on Weight Gain, Energy ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pmc/articles/PMC3777747/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
9. “Diet induced thermogenesis - NCBI.” 18 Aug. 2004, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC524030/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
79
pared to carbohydrates (5-10%), and fat (0-3%).10 Interestingly, alcohol also has a
relatively high TEF (~20%).11 What does this mean practically? While 100 calories
from protein containing foods still contains 100 calories, ingesting it increases
energy expenditure more than ingesting 100 calories from carbohydrate or fat.
In the case of protein, around 20-30 calories will be expended to extract the
calories from 100 calories of protein vs 5-10 for carbs, and virtually nothing for
fat. Now before you decide to go on an all protein diet, keep in mind that the
sustainability of a diet is incredibly important. If you’ve failed diets repeatedly
because they were too restrictive, now is not the time to continue down that
path. We definitely want to get enough protein, but there’s no reason to go crazy
high with it, as this would come at the expense of other important food groups.
So how much protein should we consume? Based on current scientific literature there doesn’t appear to be any negative health effects with intakes up to
4.4g/kg per day, so how much?12 We have put together a chart of recommended protein intakes based upon whether or not you are in a calorie surplus or a
calorie deficit. There is evidence that you should consume more protein when
in a deficit to help with maximum retention of muscle mass.13 We have also expressed these intakes as g/kg of LBM rather than total body weight. The reason for this is that lean tissues are the tissues that have protein requirements.
Body fat or adipose tissue has very little requirement for protein intake. Usually this is not a big deal as higher body weights typically mean more LBM, but
protein intakes can start to get weird when people have higher body fat levels.
For example, a really obese person who is 150 kg and consumes 2.4 g protein/
kg total body weight would end up with a protein intake of 360g per day which
is really high, even though their LBM might only be 90 kg. Their protein intake
10. “Influence of autonomic nervous system on nutrient-induced ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/8400596. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
11. “Effect of ethanol on energy expenditure. - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pubmed/8184963. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
12. “The effects of consuming a high protein diet (4.4 g/kg/d ... - NCBI.” 12 May. 2014, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4022420/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
13. “A systematic review of dietary protein during caloric ... - NCBI.” 2 Oct. 2013, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24092765. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
80
would be incredibly disproportionate to their LBM. For this reason, we prefer to
express protein as g/kg LBM.
0-30 Years
30-40 Years
40-50 Years
50-60 Years
60-70 Years
No
Deficit
1.8-2.0g/kg
LBM
2.0-2.3g/kg
LBM
2.3g-2.6g/kg
LBM
2.6-2.9g/kg
LBM
2.9-3.2g/kg
LBM
Deficit
2.2-2.4g/kg
LBM
2.4-2.8g/kg
LBM
2.8-3.1g/kg
LBM
3.1-3.5g/kg
LBM
3.5-3.8g/kg
LBM
Table 6.1: Protein recommendations based on lean body mass, age, and whether an individual
is in a deficit.
You’ll notice we’ve also included age as a variable here. As we age we become
less sensitive to the anabolic effects of protein and it takes MORE protein to
get the same anabolic response.14 15 16 Not only does age impact protein synthesis but so does energy intake. Eating in an energy surplus is protein sparing
and eating in an energy deficit increases protein catabolism, therefore protein intake should be adjusted according not only to age and body weight but
also energy intake.17 During a reverse diet, calories will be increasing so you
may wish to lower your protein intake slightly compared to your protein intake
during caloric restriction so that you can consume greater carbohydrates and
fats. Alternatively, if you find that you are still very hungry post diet, it may be
best to maintain a high protein intake until your hunger levels subside, as protein has been shown to have a greater ability to satisfy hunger, similar to a diet
rich in fiber. This boils down to personal preference.
14. “Aging Reduces the Activation of the mTORC1 Pathway ... - NCBI.” 15 Jan. 2016, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728660/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
15. “Aging impairs contraction-induced human ... - NCBI - NIH.” 2 Mar. 2011, https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156634/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
16. “Effect of age on basal muscle protein synthesis and mTORC1 ....” 28 Feb. 2015, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4397165/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
17. “Skeletal Muscle Responses to Negative Energy ... - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pmc/articles/PMC3648712/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
81
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates have gotten a bad rap in recent years with numerous influencers, health professionals, and celebrities speaking out against the ‘evils’ of carb
consumption. They have been blamed for the development of numerous diseases including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and numerous others.
Carbohydrates serve important functions in the body as they are sources of
glucose. Glucose is one of the main fuels for working muscles as well as other
organs including the brain. Anaerobic exercise in particular can only be fueled
by glucose and NOT fats and is therefore very important for optimal performance during intense exercise.18 Now carbohydrates are not NEEDED to survive which is something that low carbohydrate advocates use in order to justify
their low carb recommendations. The body is rather clever in that it can make
glucose from other non glucose containing molecules. In fact protein and dietary fats can be broken down and converted through various chemical reactions into glucose in order to ensure continued energy production. Further, in
cases of very low carbohydrate, we can also produce ketone bodies which can
be used as a secondary fuel source. In fact you may be familiar with the recently popularized ketogenic diet in which carbohydrates are very low and fats
very high. This produces ketones which the body can then use as an energy
substrate and is essentially why we can still survive on zero carbohydrate intake. This being said, just because carbohydrates are not essential in order to
survive, it doesn’t mean they aren’t helpful.
In fact, low carbohydrate diets may actually impair lean body mass accrual
during overfeeding.19 That said, it appears that in the context of fat loss a low
carbohydrate, high fat (LCHF) diet is similarly effective as a high carbohydrate
low fat diet (HCLF) for fat loss when both calories and protein are equated.20 In
18. “Carbohydrate Availability and Physical Performance - NCBI.” 16 May. 2019, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566225/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
19. “Efficacy of ketogenic diet on body composition during ... - NCBI.” 9 Jul. 2018, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6038311/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
20. “Obesity Energetics: Body Weight Regulation and ... - NCBI - NIH.” 11 Feb. 2017, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28193517. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
82
the context of reverse dieting, it appears that overfeeding either carbohydrate
or fat is equally fattening.21 That said, overfeeding carbohydrate seems to have
a more pronounced effect on leptin secretion in the short term, although we
aren’t sure how that relates to long term changes in BMR.22
It may be tempting to have a reverse diet which focuses on increasing carbohydrate relative to fat due to the effects of carbohydrates on leptin in the short
term. There is some data in animals which suggests that in the immediate post
diet period a higher ratio of carbohydrate to fat may be preferable to a high fat
diet for limiting fat regain, and this is believed to be due to the downregulation
of beta oxidation and fatty acid metabolism in fat tissue during a calorie deficit, but I wouldn’t exactly call this data extremely strong.23 That said, if you are
someone who has been on a really restrictive diet, lost a lot of body fat, and
likely experienced a lot of metabolic adaptation, it may be slightly preferable
to emphasize carbohydrate vs. fat during the initial reverse diet period but we
certainly can’t state that with any great degree of confidence. Overall, in a post
diet period and moving forward into a long term reverse diet, the most important factor will be your adherence. Despite possible small mechanistic advantages to consuming lower fat and higher carbohydrate, that is easily trumped
by using a macronutrient breakdown that is most easy to adhere to for the individual. If that means they consume a higher ratio of fats to carbohydrates but it
allows them to be consistent to their calorie target, that is far more important
than attempting to consume a high ratio of carbohydrate to fat if that is something that causes the individual to not be able to adhere to their overall plan.
21. “Effects of isoenergetic overfeeding of either carbohydrate or fat in ....” https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11029975. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
22. “Dietary intakes and leptin concentrations - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4251481/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
23. (2008, February 20). Weight regain after sustained weight reduction is ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18287221
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
83
Fats
Dietary fats are important as they are a source of essential fatty acids that cannot be produced by the body. Dietary fats are the most energy dense macronutrient we consume (over double what carbohydrate and protein contain at
9kcal/gram) and thus a high fat intake can lead to overconsumption of total calories. On the other hand, extremely low levels of dietary fat intake have been
demonstrated to lower testosterone and have a host of other undesirable side
effects.24 25 High fat diets on the other hand, seem to contribute to post diet
weight rebound.26 What is less clear is whether this post diet rebound is due
to the increased fat intake vs. carbohydrate (assuming calories are equated)
or simply because high fat diets also tend to be higher in calories, further, they
are often found in highly palatable, high reward food sources. We tend to agree
that high fat and high carb diets are probably both similarly fattening based
on the available human data.27 Our recommendations therefore focus on consuming a ratio of carbohydrate to fat that is sustainable for the individual and
best facilitates long term adherence. For the majority of people this will be a
reasonable balance of both carbohydrate and fat. Typically, if carbohydrates
are too restricted or fats are too restricted, adherence decreases. That said,
it is completely reasonable that certain individuals may feel better on a carb
restricted diet or a fat restricted diet, and in those cases, personal preference
should typically take precedence over proposed mechanistic differences between HFLC and LFHC diets.
24. (n.d.). Decrease of serum total and free testosterone during a low-fat .... Retrieved November 18, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6298507
25. (n.d.). Diet and serum sex hormones in healthy men. - NCBI. Retrieved November 18, 2019,
from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6538617
26. (n.d.). High fat diet causes rebound weight gain. - NCBI. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24199147
27. (n.d.). Effects of isoenergetic overfeeding of either carbohydrate or .... Retrieved November
18, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11029975
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
84
Interactions Between Carbohydrate and Fat Metabolism
Both carbohydrates and fats have been demonized over the last 30 years as the
cause of various diseases. First dietary fats were under fire for heart disease and
obesity. Now more recently the focus has shifted to carbohydrates. The simple
truth, however, is that carbohydrate and fat metabolism are always linked. Consuming more or less carbohydrates will inherently impact fat metabolism, especially when considered in the context of calories being equated between LCHF
and HCLF diets. You see, when carbohydrate intake increases, carbohydrate
oxidation increases and fat metabolism decreases. Conversely,when carbohydrate intake goes down, carbohydrate oxidation decreases and fat oxidation increases.28 Thus the two are intrinsically linked. This information has led many
low carbohydrate proponents to tout the superiority of low carbohydrate diets.
After all, decreasing carbohydrates increases fat oxidation, that must mean low
carb diets are better for fat loss and limiting fat gain right? Not really.
First off, we don’t see significant differences in fat loss in studies where calories and protein are equated and carbohydrates and fats are varied, in fact
we actually see a small fat loss benefit (16g per day extra fat loss) with low fat
diets.29 This is likely because overall body fat loss is the balance between the
amount of fat that you store vs. the amount of fat you burn (oxidize). On a LCHF
diet you indeed burn much more fat, but you also store much more fat because
you are eating more fat. On a HCLF diet you will burn much less fat, but you are
also consuming less fat so you store less fat. The net gain or loss of body fat will
depend upon your overall energy balance.
28. (n.d.). The Randle cycle revisited: a new head for an old ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved November
18, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19531645
29 .(2017, February 11). Obesity Energetics: Body Weight Regulation and ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28193517
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
LCHF
(Low Carb / High Fat)
HCLF
(High Carb / Low Fat)
100g
100g
100g
Stored
Stored
Stored
150g
150g
150g
Burned
Burned
Burned
10g
10g
10g
Stored
Stored
Stored
60g
60g
60g
Burned
Burned
Burned
85
-150g Fat Balance
-150g Fat Balance
Figure 6.1: Fat balance as a function of fat stored minus fat burned (oxidized). The difference
between stored and burned fat equals the net fat balance. In this example, a higher fat diet
causes greater fat burning, but also greater fat storage compared to a calorie equated low fat
diet that produces a lower rate of fat burning but also lower fat storage. The net fat balance
between the two diets is equal.
This may seem strange but it is how the body changes fuel selection and it’s
really quite elegant. The vast majority of the fat we store (>98%) is from dietary
fat and not carbohydrates.30 Carbohydrates tend to be oxidized or stored as glycogen while very few wind up in fat tissue through a process called de novo
lipogenesis. So while a HCLF diet will reduce fat oxidation, it also means that
there will not be many fats from the diet to be stored in fat tissue. Whereas a
HFLC diet will drastically increase fat oxidation, but will also lead to a greater
amount of fat storage due to the increased dietary fat consumption. In both
cases, the overall net gain or loss of body fat will depend on the individual’s
energy balance. This is likely why we do not see much difference with regards
to fat loss and energy expenditure when calories and protein are equated but
we vary the amount of carbohydrates and fats in the diet.31 In the context of
reverse dieting, this means that once we set our calories and protein, we can
30. (n.d.). De novo lipogenesis during controlled overfeeding ... - NCBI. Retrieved November 18,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11722954
31. (2017, February 11). Obesity Energetics: Body Weight Regulation and ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28193517
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
86
then choose a ratio of carbohydrate to fat that is desirable for our best adherence for our own lifestyle.
Based on the research and our 2000+ clients between us we have developed
the following method for determining macronutrients for determining initial fat
loss, muscle gain, maintenance, and reverse dieting:
Step 1: Determine starting calories
Step 2: Determine protein intake based on deficit vs. non-deficit
and age. Subtract calories allotted to protein from total calories to
get remaining calories from carbohydrate and fat
Step 3: Select carbohydrate and fat breakdown based on preference and what is best for your own adherence.
Setting Protein
We base protein requirements on a few things. Looking at the most current research on protein intake and body composition, we feel confident saying that a
high protein diet is likely superior for body composition and lean body mass compared to a normal or low protein diet with a recent systematic review concluding that an intake of 2.3-3.1g/kg of LBM is likely optimal for resistance trained
individuals during caloric restriction.32 33 34 Under non-calorie restricted condi32. (2016, February 15). Effects of dietary protein intake on body composition changes .... Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4892287/
33. (2013, June 27). Dietary protein intake is associated with lean body mass in .... Retrieved
November 20, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23890349
34. (2013, October 2). A systematic review of dietary protein during caloric ... - NCBI. Retrieved
November 20, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24092765
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
87
tions, protein needs seem to drop, likely due to the fact that carbohydrates and
fats are protein sparing. That is, increases in carbohydrates and fats provide
energy substrates to spare protein from oxidation (breakdown). When in energy
balance or surplus, protein needs decrease to approximately 1.8-2.6g/kg LBM
based on a recent review.35 For those who are reverse dieting, it means that you
will be in energy balance at minimum and possibly a small surplus at times. Age
can also factor into this as protein needs increase during aging, as mentioned
earlier due to a reduced anabolic response to protein.36 Here is a handy chart we
developed for determining protein intake based on our interpretations of the
research regarding protein intake in a deficit vs. not a deficit and age.
That said, you probably don’t need to worry about using the deficit protein ranges
as a reverse diet is at least at energy balance/maintenance calories, so if you’ve
been dieting and are planning to use a reverse diet to come out of a deficit phase,
you can certainly drop your protein a bit and still get all the anabolic benefits of
protein. That said, if you just really love protein like we do, there is probably no
reason for you to reduce it. Just understand that jacking it up beyond a certain
point will not increase anabolism further. There also doesn’t appear to be side
effects to consuming a disproportionately high amount of protein either as intakes of up to 4.4g/kg have not shown negative side effects.37 38 In short, do what
you enjoy most and what you feel is best for your adherence. I (Holly here) love
protein and always end up on the higher side of the recommendations because
over the years, I have found recipes and certain foods that are highly satisfying, and this suits me better than allocating those calories to carbohydrates and
fats. That said, if you are perfectly happy at the lower end of a range and would
rather allocate more calories to carbohydrates and fats you can do that as well.
Let’s take an example of a female who is 35 years old at 70 kg body weight and
35. (2018, February 7). Recent Perspectives Regarding the Role of Dietary Protein for .... Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29414855
36. (2016, January 15). Aging Reduces the Activation of the mTORC1 Pathway after .... Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728660/
37. “The effects of consuming a high protein diet (4.4 g/kg/d ... - NCBI.” 12 May. 2014, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4022420/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2019.
38. “The effects of a high protein diet on indices of health ... - NCBI.” 16 Jan. 2016, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4715299/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2019.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
88
15% body fat and decides she wants to run a semi conservative reverse starting
at maintenance calories + 5%. Let’s assume her TDEE is 1800. 1800 kcal x 0.05
= 90 kcal. 1800 kcal + 90 kcal = 1890 kcal to start her reverse. We can see based
on our chart that her protein intake will be recommended at 2.0-2.3g/kg LBM.
Her FM = 70 kg (TBW) x 0.15 = 10.5 kg. Her LBM = 70 kg - 10.5 kg = 59.5 kg LBM. If
she decides that she wants to err on the high end of the recommendations and
go with 2.3g/kg LBM we get 59.5 kg LBM x 2.3g/kg LBM = ~137g protein per day.
Remember, if she LOVES protein and decides to have more, that’s fine also but
there’s probably no need to go higher. Now that we know her protein we have to
remove those calories allocated to protein from her total calorie budget. 137g
protein x 4 kcal/g protein = 548 kcal. 1890 kcal - 548 kcal = 1342 kcal remaining
for carbohydrates and fats.
Setting Carbohydrates and Fats
Once protein is set we now need to determine how we will allocate remaining
calories to carbohydrates and fats. As we stated previously, it does not appear
that the ratio of carbohydrate to fat in the diet makes a difference in terms
of fat loss or fat gain. One caveat that may be worth mentioning is that it appears that if we go to the extreme where fats are very high and carbohydrates
are very low to the point where the diet becomes ketogenic, there appears to
be somewhat of an inhibition on the accrual of lean mass.39 This could be due
to the increase in nitrogen excretion seen with a ketogenic diet and possibly
due to the reduction in insulin.40 In addition to insulin’s effects on lipolysis and
glucose uptake, it also decreases muscle protein breakdown, improving net
protein balance.41 Therefore, if increasing muscle mass is also a goal with reverse dieting, it may be more optimal to stay away from too low of a ratio of
carbohydrate to fat. Likewise, low fat diets (<25% calories from fat) have been
shown to reduce testosterone levels, so it may also be wise not to drop fat too
39 .“Efficacy of ketogenic diet on body composition during ... - NCBI.” 9 Jul. 2018, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6038311/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2019.
40. “Energy expenditure and body composition ... - NCBI - NIH.” 6 Jul. 2016, https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27385608. Accessed 21 Nov. 2019.
41. “Effect of carbohydrate intake on net muscle protein synthesis ....” 31 Oct. 2003, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14594866. Accessed 21 Nov. 2019.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
89
low either.42 43 That said, if gaining muscle is not important to you and your only
goal is to increase your caloric intake and minimize fat regain, do whatever ratio of carbohydrate to fat you prefer, though we find that most people prefer
somewhat of a balanced approach between 70/30 and 40/60 ratio of calories
remaining from carbohydrates/fat once protein calories have been excluded.
If we take our previous example of someone who is starting her reverse at 1890
kcal at 137g protein (548 kcal from protein), that leaves 1342 kcal left for carbohydrates and fats. If we choose a 60/40 ratio (a balance that we find works for
many people) of remaining calories allocated to carbs/fats respectively we get
the following amounts of carbohydrates and fats.
Carbohydrate: 1342 kcal x 0.60 = 805 kcal from carbohydrate. 805 kcal ÷ 4 kcal/g
= ~201g carbohydrate
Fats: 1342 kcal x 0.40 = 537 kcal from fat. 537 kcal ÷ 9 kcal/g = ~60g fat.
This would put her overall starting reverse macros at 137g protein, 201g carbohydrate, and 60g fat. What if she wanted to do 50/50?
Carbohydrate 1342 kcal x 0.50 = 671 kcal from carbohydrate. 671 kcal ÷ 4 kcal/g
= ~168g carbohydrate
Fats: 1342 kcal x 0.50 = 671 kcal from fat. 671 kcal ÷ 9 kcal/g = ~75g fat
So in this case her starting reverse diet macros would be at 137g protein, 168g
carbohydrate, and 75g fat.
If you hate math and would rather have an easy way to reference carbohydrate/
fat breakdown based on remaining calories from carbs and fats we created a
quick reference chart just for that reason.
42. “Decrease of serum total and free testosterone during a low-fat ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/6298507. Accessed 21 Nov. 2019.
43. “Diet and serum sex hormones in healthy men. - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pubmed/6538617. Accessed 21 Nov. 2019.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
90
CHO/
Fat %
10/90
20/80
30/70
40/60
50/50
60/40
70/30
80/20
2200
55/220
110/196
165/171
220/147
275/122
330/98
385/73
440/49
2100
53/210
105/187
158/163
210/140
263/117
315/93
368/70
420/47
2000
50/200
100/178
150/156
200/133
250/111
300/89
350/67
400/44
1900
48/190
95/169
143/148
190/127
238/106
285/84
333/63
380/42
1800
45/180
90/160
135/140
180/120
225/100
270/80
315/60
360/40
1700
43/170
85/151
128/132
170/113
213/94
255/76
298/57
340/38
1600
40/160
80/142
120/124
160/107
200/89
240/71
280/53
320/36
1500
38/150
75/133
113/117
150/100
188/83
225/67
263/50
300/33
1400
35/140
70/124
105/109
140/93
175/78
210/62
245/47
280/31
1300
33/130
65/116
98/101
130/87
163/72
195/58
228/43
260/29
1200
30/120
60/107
90/93
120/80
150/67
180/53
210/40
240/27
1100
28/110
55/98
83/86
110/73
138/61
165/49
193/37
220/24
1000
25/100
50/89
75/78
100/67
125/56
150/44
175/33
200/22
900
23/90
45/80
68/70
90/60
113/50
135/40
158/30
180/20
800
20/80
40/71
60/62
80/53
100/44
120/36
140/27
160/18
700
18/70
35/62
53/54
70/47
88/39
105/31
123/23
140/16
Table 6.2: Distribution of remaining calories from carbohydrate and fat after protein calories
have been subtracted. The column on the far left is the calories remaining to distribute to
carbohydrate and fat. Each column thereafter shows the breakdown of grams of carbohydrate/
fat each particular breakdown at each remaining calorie level would provide.
HOW TO SET UP A REVERSE DIET: MACROS
91
Try to remember not to get too hung up on individual starting macros. At the
end of the day the most important thing is your daily calorie intake, followed
by your calories and protein, followed by your macros. Even if you select an
amount of macros that are ‘off’ to start, there is no need to worry as we will discuss how to adjust them as you progress to optimize your response.
Summary
To determine starting macros for a reverse diet:
1. Set starting reverse diet calories (see chapter 5)
2. Set protein based on LBM, age, and deficit vs. non-deficit.
3. Subtract calories allocated to protein from total calorie intake
4. Distribute remaining calories to carbohydrates and fats as
per personal preference
7
92
CONTINUING THE REVERSE DIET
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ongratulations, you’ve made the commitment and you are on your way.
You’ve got your starting calories and macros figured out and you’ve begun the process, but this is only a small portion of the battle. It’s critically
important to assess your progress weekly during a reverse diet and determine
what adjustments, if any, should be made. There are a few different measures
we are going to use to assess progress including body weight, body fat (if available), pictures, waist circumference (if available), and your own subjective
feedback.
Tracking Your Progress
While it is popular to say things like “the scale doesn’t matter” the reality is that
it does. What we really should say is it’s not the only thing that matters, but it
is a pretty good indication of how things are generally going. It also is the most
objective out of all the measurement tools we use, meaning there is less room
for human error. As many of you already know, however, the scale can fluctuate dramatically from day to day. So how do we account for this? Our preferred
method is to weigh in everyday and then average the weights over the course
of a week to get the best idea of what your weight is really doing. While it’s not
uncommon for you to see big fluctuations from day to day, fluctuations due to
shifts in fluid are much less likely to make a big difference in the weekly average. Therefore, we recommend weighing in each day, first thing in the morning
after you wake up, after your morning trip to the bathroom, and taking the average of those weights.
Now if you are someone who really struggles with anxiety and the scale, there
are a few strategies you might be able to use to help reduce this. The first is if
you have a supportive friend, partner, or family member that you live with, you
can weigh in and not look at the scale and just have them record the weight for
you. Then you can have them average it at the end of the week and show you the
average. If you don’t have that option, another alternative would be to not look
CONTINUING THE REVERSE DIET
93
at the scale but point your phone at it and take a picture each day and wait until
the end of the week to look at the weigh ins and calculate the average weight for
the week. If you find all of that still too anxiety provoking, then perhaps weigh in
once per week, but just understand that since it is just a single measurement, it
will be much more prone to large fluctuations from week to week. For example,
maybe the morning you decided to take your weight, happens the day after you
ate significantly more dietary fiber than other days, or perhaps you ate higher
sodium meal. Both of those examples could lead to weight fluctuations. So as
you can see, there are some benefits of taking your weight regularly to ensure
your weight is not skewed.
Body fat is a little trickier. There are many ways to measure it but most of them
aren’t practical to have done weekly. Further, body fat measurements can fluctuate DRASTICALLY depending upon hydration status since fluid registers as
lean body mass. For example, let’s take someone who is 15% body fat at 80 kg.
That means they have 68 kg LBM and 12 kg FM. If they get a DXA (dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, considered the gold standard in research), showing
those values but then immediately chug 4 liters of water and don’t pee, that
means they would add 4 kg (1 L approximately equals 1 kg) of LBM instantly. Now
look what happens to their body composition: the 4L increase in fluid means
they increased their LBM to 72 kg and 12 kg FM and 84 kg body weight. Their
new body fat percentage = 100*(12 ÷ 84) = 14.3% body fat, almost a full percent
drop just from chugging 4 L of water. Food in your GI also registers as LBM. So
imagine if you got a DXA done in the afternoon after drinking and eating all day,
you could easily register several kg more LBM, then if you went back in the next
week in the morning and had a DXA done in a fasted state, you could register
as having several kg less LBM and by default, a greater body fat percentage.
As such, we recommend only using body fat assessments that can easily be
done at home, in the morning, after going to the bathroom.This leaves only calipers, hand held devices (like Omron), and scales that also measure body fat.
Are they as accurate as DXA? Probably not, however keep in mind even DXA
has very limited accuracy. All measures of body fat use equations, algorithms,
and various assumptions for their calculations. What is most important is that
you use the same measurement tool, the same way, at the same time, EVERY
TIME. For example, let’s say that you have your body fat assessed via calipers
CONTINUING THE REVERSE DIET
94
and it registers as 12% when in reality, you are really 15%. If a few weeks later
you consistently measure yourself at 9.5% body fat calipers, and maybe you
are really ~12%, you still can be pretty confident that you lost fat because the
relative change is likely still pretty accurate.
No matter how you choose to assess body fat (if you choose to, you can just use
the scale if you want), just make sure you are consistent with it. Take it once per
week, on the same day, after you wake up and use the bathroom, weigh in, and
then take body fat. We would measure it three times and then take the average
of the three readings. Other body measurement tools are similar to body fat.
There is probably less error. We would assess waist (around the belly button),
arm circumference at the largest point, and hips. Take three measures of each
to minimize error. With regards to pictures (if you choose to assess them), we
recommend taking them once per week on the day where you also do body fat
and circumference measures. Take front, side, and rear facing pictures, in the
same place, at the same time. We recommend turning the lights on and using a
flash on your camera just to protect against changes in lighting, as more or less
sunlight in the room you are taking your photos can change how your physique
looks. Taken together, we will use all these measures to assess progress.
If you don’t have a coach (which we will assume you don’t to be safe), you will
need to do weekly check ins to assess your progress. If you are within the allowable weight gain for your chosen reverse diet rate then you can continue adding calories at the respective rates for the reverse (discussed below). If you go
over your ‘maximum allowable weight gain’ for that week, then you need to also
assess body fat, pictures, and circumference measurements. If your weight increased above the max allowable gain, but your body fat hasn’t gone up, you
don’t appear to have gained body fat, your circumference measures (especially
waist) haven’t increased, and your clothes don’t feel tighter, then you can continue adding calories the next week if you wish. It’s absolutely possible that you
have simply gained lean body mass. If you prefer to remain more conservative,
you can choose to not add calories. Or for arguments sake, let’s say you didn’t
gain above the max allowable gain, but you were really close to it and you have
been really close to it for a few weeks without exceeding the threshold, you
could choose to not add calories for a week or two in order to make sure your
CONTINUING THE REVERSE DIET
95
weight stabilizes before adding more calories. Keep in mind that this is your reverse diet and you shouldn’t add calories more quickly than you are comfortable
with, but we think it’s important to give you guidelines. Remember that these
are not rules, simply guidelines (but we think they are pretty damned good).
Calorie Additions
Let’s talk about each type of reverse diet and what calorie additions we recommend based on your progress. Typically, we recommend increasing calories
from carbohydrates and fats, rather than from protein. This is because your
protein is already going to be more than enough to optimize body composition if you followed our protein guidelines and adding calories actually reduces
protein needs further. Therefore, if protein is already set within our suggested
ranges, we recommend keeping it the same during the reverse diet.
Conservative: Max allowable weekly gain ≤0.2% of body weight gained per
week. If this is not exceeded during your weekly check in we recommend adding a 1-3% increase in calories from carbohydrates and fats.
Moderate: Max allowable weekly gain of ≤0.5% of body weight gained per week.
If this is not exceeded during your weekly check in we recommend adding a
3-6% increase in calories from carbohydrates and fats.
Aggressive: Max allowable weekly gain of ≤0.8% of body weight gained per
week. If this is not exceeded during your weekly check in we recommend adding a 6-9% increase in calories from carbohydrates and fats.
If we use our example from the previous chapter of a 30 year old, 70 kg female
who is doing a conservative reverse at maintenance + 5% of calories to start.
Her starting calories were determined to be 1890 kcal coming from 137g protein, 201g carbs, and 61g fat (using the 60/40 breakdown of remaining calories
from carbohydrates/fats). Recall that her calories distributed to carbohydrates
and fats were 1342 kcal (once 548 calories allocated to protein were removed).
Let’s say during her first check in her weight increases by 0.2 kg. Her maximum
allowable weight increase should have been 0.14 kg. (70 * 0.002) = 0.14. Since
CONTINUING THE REVERSE DIET
96
0.2 kg is more than the allowable 0.2% increase, it is slightly more at .28%, (0.2
÷ 70)*100 = .28%, she should therefore hold her calories steady. During her next
update she doesn’t have a weight increase and stays at 70.2. In that case she
would then add 1-3% of calories from carbs and fats. If she chooses to stay
relatively conservative and add 2% calories, that would be 1890 kcal x 0.02 =
~38 kcal. Recall that previously, she had 1342 kcal remaining for carbs and fats.
1342 + 38 = 1380 kcal. If she wishes to use the same 60/40 macronutrient ratio,
60% of 1380 kcals is 828 kcal to carbohydrates. 828 ÷ 4g/kcal = 207g carbohydrate. 40% remaining calories can be used for dietary fats which is 552 kcal.
552 kcal ÷ 9 = 61.3g (rounded to 61g) fat, (a non-significant increase). Now her
macros are 137g protein, 207g carbohydrate, and 61g fat.
Now we know what you are thinking, that’s basically nothing! An extra bite of
food each day for a week, what’s the point? You are correct, it’s not much but the
important thing to remember is the summation of these additions over time. If
you did this every week for 6 weeks, 6 x 38 kcal = 228 kcal. That is a significant
increase. You can’t just jump up straight to a 228 kcal increase and expect your
body weight not to increase. You have to give it time to adapt. That is why the
rate of calorie additions are important. You are giving your ‘maintenance range’
calories (more on this later) time to shift and dissipate the increase in energy
rather than just loading up all the calories at once.
Now what would this look like if we took the same update but she was on a moderate reverse? Well in that case a 0.2 kg increase in body weight over her first
week (0.28% of her body weight) would NOT cause to her exceed her maximum
allowable weekly weight gain which we defined above as 0.5% per week. Then
if she decided to add 5% calories, based on our recommendations above, that
would equate to 1890 kcal x 0.05 = ~95 kcal. 1342 kcal remaining from carbs/fats
+ 95 kcal increase = 1437 kcal from carbs/fats. 1437 kcal x 0.60 = ~862 kcal from
carbohydrates. 862 kcal ÷ 4 kcal/g = 215g carbohydrate. 1437 kcal x 0.40 = ~575
kcal from fat. 575 kcal ÷ 9 kcal = ~64g fat. Now her macros are 137g protein, 215g
carbohydrate, and 63g fat.
CONTINUING THE REVERSE DIET
97
Simplifying the Increases
Now Layne and I like math and we don’t mind doing it, however, we understand
that it can be tedious for many of you. So we have broken it down into a nice
little table for you based on your ratio to Carbohydrate/Fat.
Kcal Increase
Vs. CHO/Fat
10/90
20/80
30/70
40/60
50/50
60/40
70/30
80/20
15 kcal
0/2
1/1
1/1
2/1
2/1
2/1
3/0
4/0
30 kcal
1/3
2/3
2/2
3/2
4/2
5/1
5/1
6/1
45 kcal
1/5
2/4
3/4
5/3
6/3
7/2
8/1
9/1
60 kcal
2/6
3/5
5/5
6/4
8/3
9/3
11/2
12/1
75 kcal
2/8
4/7
6/6
8/5
9/4
11/3
13/2
15/2
90 kcal
2/9
5/8
7/7
9/6
11/5
14/4
16/3
15/2
105 kcal
3/11
5/9
8/8
11/7
13/6
16/5
18/3
21/2
120 kcal
3/12
6/11
9/9
12/8
15/7
18/5
21/4
24/3
135 kcal
3/14
7/12
10/11
14/9
17/8
20/6
24/4
27/3
150 kcal
4/15
8/13
11/12
15/10
19/8
23/7
26/5
30/3
165 kcal
4/17
8/15
12/3
17/11
21/9
25/7
29/5
33/4
180 kcal
5/18
9/16
14/14
18/12
23/10
27/8
32/6
36/4
195 kcal
5/20
10/17
15/15
20/13
24/11
29/9
34/6
39/4
210 kcal
5/21
11/19
16/16
21/14
26/12
32/9
37/7
42/5
CONTINUING THE REVERSE DIET
98
225 kcal
6/23
11/20
17/18
23/15
28/13
34/10
39/7
45/5
240 kcal
6/24
12/21
18/19
24/16
30/13
36/11
42/8
48/5
255 kcal
6/26
13/23
19/20
26/17
32/14
38/11
45/8
51/6
270 kcal
7/27
14/24
20/21
27/18
34/15
41/12
47/9
54/6
285 kcal
7/29
14/25
21/22
29/19
36/16
43/13
50/9
57/6
300 kcal
8/30
15/27
23/23
30/20
38/17
45/13
53/10
60/7
315 kcal
8/32
16/28
24/25
32/21
39/18
47/14
55/10
63/7
330 kcal
8/33
17/29
25/26
33/22
41/18
50/15
58/11
66/7
345 kcal
9/35
17/31
26/27
35/23
43/19
52/15
60/11
69/8
360 kcal
9/36
18/32
27/28
36/24
45/20
54/16
63/12
72/8
Table 7.1: Carbohydrate/Fat amounts corresponding to various calorie increase amounts at
various different Carbohydrate/Fat dietary breakdowns.
Another Option
If you don’t want to mess with as much math or the table, another option is to
simply increase by a certain percentage of your current carbohydrate and fat
intake, rather than total calories. Since protein is typically held steady during
a reverse diet and the increases are coming from carbohydrate and fat, you
could choose to just increase by a certain percentage of carbohydrate and fat.
The only caveat to this is that if your protein is set really high, your increases
in carbs/fats may be disproportionately lower at first compared to using the
total calorie method we discussed first. For example, if you were on 2010 calories per day on a conservative reverse consuming a hefty amount of protein
i.e.250g per day, with remaining calories being 150g from carbohydrates, and
45g fat (60/40 ratio of CHO/Fat) and you applied a 5% increase from carbs and
CONTINUING THE REVERSE DIET
99
fats (the upper end of our suggested range for a conservative increase, see
below), you would only end up increasing by 8g carbs and 2g fat (50 calories)
whereas if you were using the upper end of the caloric increase (3% increase
in calories from carbs and fats) that would be 60 calories, 9g carbohydrate and
3g fat (2.6g but rounded up to 3g). Thus it’s a slightly smaller increase, so if you
prefer the method of simply increasing carbs and fats as a percentage of your
total intake, that will work great for most people and only really becomes ‘off’ if
your protein is set relatively high and your carbs/fats are low.
Conservative: Max allowable weekly gain ≤0.2% of body weight gained per
week. If this is not exceeded during your weekly check in we recommend adding a 2-5% increase in grams of carbohydrates and fats.
Moderate: Max allowable weekly gain of ≤0.5% of body weight gained per week.
If this is not exceeded during your weekly check in we recommend adding a
5-8% increase in grams of carbohydrates and fats.
Aggressive: Max allowable weekly gain of ≤0.8% of body weight gained per
week. If this is not exceeded during your weekly check in we recommend adding an 8-12% increase in grams of carbohydrates and fats.
Just to provide another example, let’s take our previous case study of our female consuming 137g protein, 201g carbohydrates, and 61g fat. If she was within her allowable weight gain for a conservative reverse and decided to add 4%
carbohydrates and fats, she would increase by 8g carbs (201 x 0.04 = 8.04) and
2g fat (61 x 0.04 = 2.44).
This method is much simpler as you can see and not quite as complicated as
determining calorie increases then converting to grams of carbohydrates and
fats. That said, it’s not quite as accurate, but we thought it was important to
give you both options.
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100
Trust the Process
Many of you (ladies especially) may struggle with adding calories if you have a
history of yo-yo dieting or chronic dieting. It will get even tougher if you start to
see the scale going up. That is why it is so important to COMMIT to the process.
If you want to get out of the yo-yo mindset, you have to try something different.
If you keep doing the same things you’ve always done, you will keep getting the
same results you’ve always gotten. If you want a different result, you have to
make different choices. It’s difficult to predict how your body will respond to
a reverse diet, largely due to variations in NEAT between individuals. In fact,
during overfeeding studies, many people gain weight but some people end up
losing weight even when overfeeding by a predicted 1000 kcal over maintenance!1 This suggests that some people have extremely high NEAT adaptability, in that the increase in incidental movement, often due to increased energy
availability outweigh the increases in calories. Some individuals on the other
hand may not see proportionate increases in NEAT. It is likely that some of you
will add some weight during a reverse diet and that is OK! Especially if the increase in weight is offset by a disproportionate increase in energy expenditure.
For example, if you add 2 kg over the course of 16 weeks, but you are also able
to add 500 kcal to your maintenance calories, it’s a pretty good trade because
it’s likely you will take it off quickly when you begin dieting! Some of you will gain
more than this, some of you will gain less, some of you may even lose weight
while reverse dieting. The most important thing is that you stay committed to
the process. If you reverse diet for 4 weeks and add 2 kg and bail on your reverse diet only to go back to yo-yo dieting, nothing is going to change. If you are
gaining weight on low calories then that just emphasizes how much MORE important that you stay out of a deficit for a while to restore your energy expenditure to a more normal level. For a quick reference guide as to what constitutes
a ‘normal’ maintenance calorie level, we have put this into Table 9.1 in chapter 9.
Most of you reading this book will likely choose a conservative or moderate reverse diet approach. It’s very important to note that while we can try to predict
1. (n.d.). Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved November 25,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9880251
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how much weight you should gain or should lose while on a diet, it’s really impossible to know how much is going to change week to week. Many people become
distressed while dieting when they notice that they will seemingly lose weight
sporadically. That is, they will lose a lot in one week, then nothing the next, then
lose another chunk the following week, etc. That is normal! Let us state it again
so it sinks in, THAT IS NORMAL. It’s also normal while reverse dieting to not gain
any weight for several weeks in a row and then BOOM, you gain a kg. This is also
normal and we don’t have a great way to explain why things happen like this.
One obvious reason is fluid fluctuations, but typically fluid fluctuations normalize back to a regular weight after a few days. We have certainly seen hundreds
of instances with clients where they gain a chunk of weight and it doesn’t come
off during a reverse diet, and likewise during dieting they lose a big chunk of
weight and it stays off, even though the caloric surplus/deficit they were on in
no way predicted that much change in weight. A possible explanation for some
of this erratic weight loss and weight gain during these situations may be explained by a concept that Layne and Peter discussed in Fat Loss Forever called
‘maintenance calorie range.’
Maintenance Calorie Range
where you think maintenance is
2350 cals
2650 cals
2500 cals
Weight Loss
Maintain Weight
Weight Gain
Figure 7.1: Maintenance calorie range illustrating the range at which you would maintain your
weight. In order to see weight gain or loss, you must get outside of this range.
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The concept of a maintenance calorie range is that we have a range of calories
where we will maintain our weight and the buffering of that range is likely due
to changes in NEAT/BMR. When we explain this to people we typically use the
example of having someone cut 50 calories out of their diet. If they did that,
theoretically they should lose ~0.1 kg per week. We promise that if you have
someone cut 50 calories out of their diet you will not see any meaningful change
in weight other than normal day to day fluctuations. In fact, some people have
quite a wide maintenance range, where cutting 100-200 calories out of their
diet does not produce significant weight loss even though they are maintaining their weight. Likewise, we’ve observed people not increase in weight even
though adding decent amounts of calories. What is likely happening is that
they are modifying calories within this buffering range. We estimate that most
people have a maintenance range of calories between 150-300 calories where
their weight doesn’t shift. For example let’s take the case of someone reverse
dieting who has been adding 50-100 calories per week for several weeks with
no gain in weight, but after they cross a certain point all of the sudden they add
1 kg. It’s likely that during the time they were adding calories, their energy expenditure was going up as they stayed within their maintenance range, so they
were pushing the upper end of this range until one week they finally moved outside of the range and their weight moved. Now let’s take the case of this same
person who had been reverse dieting a while, pushing the upper end of their
maintenance range. If they decided they wanted to do a slow approach to a fat
loss and only lose weight slowly and they start by cutting only 300 calories per
day from their diet, they might not lose anything because they simply shifted
from one end of their maintenance range to the other.
Many of you have likely observed this phenomenon when attempting to lose
fat during a dieting phase. You lose weight on a certain amount of calories
for a while until eventually your TDEE adapts and those calories become your
new maintenance where you aren’t losing weight. So if you want to keep losing
weight at the same pace (say ~0.5 kg per week) do you then need to drop another 500 calories to continue weight loss at the same level? Not typically, in fact
we’ve found with our clients that just a ~3-8% reduction in calories will often be
more than sufficient to restart weight loss. If Layne’s theory on maintenance
calorie range is correct, then it’s likely as someone is losing fat and they pla-
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teau, they are plateauing at the lower end of their maintenance range. Thus, a
small drop in calories may likely be sufficient to get them back into a significant
deficit and continue losing weight.
Now we aren’t saying that this concept is supported by empirical data, because
it’s not. If you look on pubmed for maintenance range studies, you won’t find
them, this is highly nuanced, however we do have data that suggests this based
on some of the overfeeding studies that fail to produce weight gain even though
they should. It also fits with the 20+ years of coaching experience between the
two of us. So don’t get discouraged if you see some bumps in weight here and
there that seem strange, that’s normal.
Continuing the Reverse Diet
Reverse diets are typically long endeavors, or at least they should be. If you are
recovering from a previous diet or chronic dieting or yo-yo dieting, then the
should be even longer. In fact, some data suggests that the length of post diet
recovery needs to be at least as long as the actual diet itself in order to properly recover metabolic rate as well as normal hormonal profiles.2 For those of
you who fall into this category, keep in mind reverse dieting may be even more
difficult than fat loss phases. Sure you get to eat more, but fat loss diets are
the short term gratification of the nutrition world. You get to see relatively fast
changes compared to trying to gain muscle. In the case of trying to increase
your energy expenditure, the changes are even more subtle because you can’t
actually see them.
These changes are happening endogenously to your metabolic rate and energy expenditure. This leads many people to get discouraged and quit because
they aren’t seeing the positive physical changes they want right now. If you are
a chronic/yo-yo dieter you need to listen to what we are going to tell you: do
not sacrifice what you want most for what you want right now! Recall that one
of the main predictors of LONG TERM fat loss success is low recency and the
2. (2017, August 3). Case Study: Unfavorable But Transient Physiological ... - NCBI. Retrieved
November 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28770669
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ability to delay gratification. If you keep jumping from one fat loss diet to the
next constantly searching for a quick fix just ‘one last time’ you are basically
addicted to dieting. How is that working out for you? If you want a different
result, it’s time to make a different choice. We know eating more and seeing
occasional increases on the scale might be a daunting experience for you, but
try to look at the plus side. Now that you are eating more, your training isn’t going to be garbage. Now you can actually put in some real effort at the gym and
even if you were putting in effort before, imagine what you’ll be able to do now
that you are fueling your body properly. Further, focus on the improvements in
your strength and performance, and the fact that a good portion of the weight
you add likely won’t be fat, there is a good chance if you continue training hard
(more on this in the next chapter) that you will be adding lean body mass which
will make you look better in the long run and improve your metabolic rate.
Adherence
If you find that you are gaining much more weight than you should be on a reverse, we suggest dialing it back in terms of the aggressiveness of the reverse.
If you are already on a conservative reverse diet and finding you are gaining
weight too fast, don’t increase your calories for a few weeks, but also take a
real accounting of what you are eating. If you are finding that you are gaining
more weight than you should, are you REALLY being accountable for the foods
you are eating? Are you eating out multiple times per week? Are you consuming
alcohol and not tracking it? Are you being really lax on the weekends? Are you
tracking licks, bites, and foods you might be snacking on? Are you eating entire
packages of gum each day? Are you consuming a lot of diet products that claim
to be low in calories (hint: many times they aren’t when you do the math).
If you can answer yes to any one of those then before you claim that ‘my reverse
diet isn’t working’ make sure you do a thorough accounting of your behaviors
and what you are REALLY consuming each day. It’s likely you are eating more
calories than you think. That’s not a knock either, the vast majority of people do,
even dietitians, like me (Holly speaking) have been shown to underreport their
daily calorie intake by 223 calories per day on average (non-dietitians under
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reported by 429 calories per day)!3 Is it possible that you really are nailing your
calories and macros and gaining more weight than you want on a reverse diet?
Sure, it’s entirely possible. In our experience however, consistent weight gain
can often be traced back to a lack of adherence. We aren’t even talking about
people going on huge food benders. Often it’s simply people who forget to track
a few snacks here and there, or they were simply less active without realizing it.
Perhaps they don’t track the pack of sugar free gum they are chewing. They eat
food earlier in the day and don’t track it then forget everything they ate when
they go to enter it in. We have both done that. Or you eat often and simply can’t
control how things are cooked and and what goes in, thus you can only take a
guess at the macros, and this can be way off. We aren’t saying never go out to
eat. We also aren’t saying you need to weigh out all your food down to the gram
every meal for the rest of your life. What we are saying is that if it’s not going
how you want, then dial down the reigns for a week and make sure you are being
accurate with your intakes. If you are, then perhaps it’s time to back off on the
calories by 10% and let things stabilize for a few weeks. If not, then at least you
know what to do moving forward to improve your results. Adherence = results.
Adherence can be tricky on a reverse diet, especially during the initial phases of
the process. Many people have success in adhering to a fat loss diet, but then
struggle during a reverse diet when their calories still aren’t high but now they
no longer have the immediate positive feedback of losing weight to provide additional motivation. Some people also make the choice to pursue a conservative
reverse diet when it is not appropriate for their situation. We see this time and
time again in competitors who want to stay show lean for extended periods of
time. They choose a conservative reverse and then consistently fall short in the
adherence category by overeating their targeted macros and calories. Not only
that, but many of them struggle with binge eating because they are not able to
hit their targets which causes them to enter ‘fuck it mode’ and binge.
Instead of staying in this unhealthy cycle of attempting to hit calorie targets
that are obviously too low for them, what we recommend for people who absolutely want to minimize fat gain but are struggling with adherence is to increase
3. (n.d.). Energy intake and energy expenditure: a controlled study .... Retrieved November 25,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12396160
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their calories to the minimum level that they honestly feel like they can adhere
to. Even if they get some weight, it’s usually a very small amount and they often
gain less weight than if we would have kept them trying to hit those targets that
were too low for them. Once they are able to start feeling like they are getting
some ‘wins’ in the adherence column, things typically improve quickly. As a side
note, on any reverse diet, regardless of goal or situation, you should be on a
level of calories that you can consistently adhere to. If you are not able to consistently adhere to them because they are too low, then it is not appropriate for
you. If you choose a conservative reverse and calculate how many calories and
macros you should be on for a conservative reverse and know that it will be very
difficult for you to hit those, you probably should raise them to a level you know
that you can consistently adhere to.
Summary
Where you start with a reverse is a small part of the success of a
proper reverse diet. Monitoring your progress each week and being
consistent with your own check ins and self assessment is a critical part of success. Select a reverse diet pace (conservative, moderate, aggressive) that fits with your goals and individual situation.
If you are struggling with compliance, you may need to consider
increasing calories to a level that is easier to consistently hit. If you
are gaining weight faster than you would like, then keep calories
steady for a few weeks until your weight has stabilized or slightly
back off your caloric intake for a few weeks and then try resuming
the reverse diet. As with all things fitness, adherence and consistency are the number one driver of success.
8
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TRAINING AND CARDIO
T
hus far we have only discussed the nutritional components of reverse dieting, but it’s very obvious that training is important. As we already mentioned, exercise is an extremely important component of weight loss maintenance and energy expenditure. In fact, it has been shown that of those people
who keep the weight off for 9 years, they averaged over 200 kcals more energy
expenditure from physical activity per day than normal weight controls who didn’t
exercise.1 The purpose of this chapter is not to provide you with training and cardio programs, as that would be way beyond the scope of this book. We know the
popular move in books is to throw in a bunch of workout routines, and yes we
will write books in the future for this, but to be quite frank, anything we throw in
would simply be a cookie cutter program that isn’t tailored to you. Training needs
to be tailored to your specific needs. In fact it’s much more than simply wanting
to lose fat, reverse diet, or gain muscle. Effective programming stays the same
regardless of nutritional goal. Whatever builds muscle best will maintain it best
during a deficit. So reverse dieting is not cause to necessarily change your programming. Further, any programs we could list here would not take into account
your current training status, current volume of training, and various other crucial
training parameters. If you are someone who needs help with programming then
we highly recommend the BioLayne Workout Builder as it can be customized to
your goal, training status, weak points, and various other parameters.2
1. (n.d.). Physical Activity Energy Expenditure and Total Daily Energy .... Retrieved November 25,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30801984
2. (n.d.). Workout Builder | Biolayne. Retrieved November 25, 2019, from https://www.biolayne.
com/members/workout-builder/
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With that disclaimer out of the way, it is important to give you some guidelines
with regards to exercise. Many of you are likely performing a combination of
resistance training and cardiovascular exercise (aka cardio). It’s important to
note that there is no single best way to resistance train or do cardio. As with
diet, there are many ways to skin a cat. Many forms of resistance training and
cardio will ‘work’ but we can determine from practical research that some general guidelines will work better than others. Our goal with this chapter is to provide you with general guidelines to follow for training and cardio as they relate
to your experience with reverse dieting.
For those of you who don’t exercise currently, we don’t want to tell you how to
live your life, but you really should exercise. Exercise will drastically improve
your health, even if it’s just a small amount, independent of weight loss.3 We
realize that resistance training in particular has a lot of stigma that surrounds
it about it making you ‘big and bulky’ or ‘muscle bound.’ That is all nonsense. Resistance training will make you better at any other skill so long as you continue
said skill. 50 years ago many professional sports teams advise their athletes
against doing resistance exercise. Now, every single one of those same organizations has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars devoted towards
their resistance training programming. If you follow Layne and me, you know
that we are big fans of resistance training. There are very few absolutes but
we believe virtually anyone who doesn’t have a heavy labor job should be resistance training. Resistance training not only improves body composition, it
reduces body fat setpoint, improves insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular disease
risk, type 2 diabetes risk, mortality, bone mineral density, and so much more.4 5
3. (n.d.). Exercise and diet, independent of weight loss, improve - NCBI. Retrieved November 25,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21673488
4. (n.d.). Influence of Resistance Exercise on Lean Body ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved November 25,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2995836/
5. (2018, January 24). Resistance Training Combined With Diet Decreases Body Fat .... Retrieved
November 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28871849
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If this doesn’t sell you on resistance training, nothing will.
With regards to reverse dieting specifically, resistance training is extremely
important. First off, it will increase energy expenditure and improve lean body
mass which can help lower body fat setpoint and increase BMR.10 Greater LBM
means more metabolically active tissue and greater energy expenditure per
day. If you relate this to nutrition, it then gives you the added benefit of being
able to consume more calories from food. Having greater energy expenditure
and more metabolically active tissue are huge benefits for minimizing post diet
body fat regain and fat gain in general. The goal is to raise our total TDEE, so resistance training will assist across multiple facets with this. From the calories
you burn during your workout, to lowering your body fat setpoint, and from the
LBM you accrue, if you aren’t resistance training, there is no better time than
now to start and the rewards will be far reaching.
Where to Start - Resistance Training
If you haven’t been resistance training, a reverse diet is the perfect time to start
for all the reasons we detailed in the previous paragraph. That said, there may
be some unique challenges if you have just started resistance training due to
the effect it may have on your body weight and how you manage your check ins
during your reverse. You may end up gaining some weight, but not necessarily
from body fat due to the nutrient partitioning effects of resistance training (directing nutrients towards building new muscle and away from fat) . For these
6. (n.d.). Effects of resistance training on insulin sensitivity ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved November
25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16826016
7. (2019, January 7). Comparative effectiveness of aerobic, resistance, and .... Retrieved November 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6322789/
8. (2019, May 19). The association of resistance training with mortality: A ... - NCBI. Retrieved
November 25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31104484
9 (n.d.). Maximal strength training improves bone mineral density and .... Retrieved November
25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24736773
10. (n.d.). Effect of resistance training on resting metabolic rate ... - NCBI. Retrieved November
25, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25293431
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individuals, it will be even more important to utilize other measures of progress other than just the weight scale like body fat, pictures, and circumference
measures. As we stated previously, if your weight is going up faster than the
‘allowable’ weight gain but you don’t look like you’ve gained fat looking at your
pictures, your body fat measurements aren’t increasing, and your waist measurement isn’t going up, it’s likely that you haven’t gained fat and don’t need to
delay taking an increase in calories for the next week.
Most of you reading this book likely do not fall into this ‘newbie’ category however, as most of you discovered the joys of resistance training some time ago.
For you, the advice is quite simple. If you are already on an effective resistance
training program, there’s no reason to change. If you are on a proper training
program then you are practicing the principles of progressive overload, effective volume, and periodization. Progressive overload is exactly what it sounds
like. In order to get a muscle to adapt to a stressor you must impose stress on
the muscle. When you first start weight lifting, the threshold for imposing a
stress on your muscles was quite low. As you get stronger you become better at lifting those original loads to the point where it no longer stresses your
muscles and you have to add more weight in order to continue to impose stress
onto that muscle and force it to continue to adapt with more hypertrophy. This
sort of ‘add more weight to the bar to keep making gains’ works for a while, but
eventually your rate of strength gains will drastically slow and eventually stop.
The Principles of Progressive Overload
Just because your strength gains reaches the point of plateau, does NOT mean
however, that you cannot impose more progressive overload. Progressive overload is just referring to overloading the muscle with a stressor and you can do
that through multiple means. If you can’t lift more weight, you can add more
effective volume. What is effective volume? Well quite simply, it’s the number
of ‘hard sets’ that you perform per week. We say ‘hard sets’ because it’s unlikely
that low effort sets create much of a stress on muscle tissue and thus don’t require the muscle to adapt. While there is some debate in the research community, the general consensus is that a set needs to be taken close to complete
muscular failure (within ~5 reps) in order to be an effective set. On the repeti-
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Hypertrophic Potential
tions in reserve (RIR) scale this would be expressed as an RIR of 0-5. Before you
jump at the chance to take a bunch of sets to complete muscular failure, you
should realize that training consistently to failure will induce a lot of fatigue and
be more likely to elicit overreaching, whereby the muscle is accumulating so
much fatigue from performing the sets to failure that it cannot recover in time
for the next exercise bout. Therefore, it may be prudent to perform most sets
within the RIR 1-3 range (1-3 reps shy of failure) and only taking a few sparse
sets to absolute failure here and there. Sets at RIR 1-3 are likely intense enough
to elicit an adaptive response from the muscle (assuming enough total hard
sets are performed) but not so fatiguing that their impair long term recovery
and performance.
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Reps in Reserve (RIR)
Figure 8.1: Effective reps concept adpated from James Krieger of Weightology. Training closer
to failure (0-5 RIR) is thought to provide increased training adaptations.
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Another form of progressive overload is simply adding more hard sets of RIR 0-5
(mostly in the RIR 1-3 range) and using that as a method to force your muscles to
adapt. That said, many of you will read this and immediately orchestrate some
sort of resistance training program that involves 100 hard sets per week for each
body part. We don’t recommend doing that at all. Increases in effective volume
should be progressed appropriately. If you add in tons of volume before you are
appropriately adapted you will simply overreach, burn out, and likely get sore, or
worse, lead to injury. If you are still making strength gains, or adding more repetitions to your sets at the same weights then there is no reason to add more
sets (unless you are doing that as part of a controlled, periodized program). Increases in effective volume need to be planned out correctly and should only be
added after a relatively lengthy plateau. If you are plateaued on your strength
and hypertrophy progress, first ask yourself the following questions:
1. Am I eating enough? If you have just finished a long 20 week diet and
lost a good amount of weight, it’s probably not surprising that you haven’t added a ton of weight to the bar. In fact, it’s likely the opposite, you’ll
have seen a decrease in strength as you near the end of your diet. This is
another great reason to start a reverse diet, you are going to feel better
eating more calories and hopefully perform better with your training.
2. Am I sleeping enough? This seems like obvious advice but many people
who believe they have encountered a plateau are simply under-recovered from lack of sleep. Sleep deprivation, be it extended time falling
asleep, frequent sleep disruption, or reduced total sleep duration has a
sizable effect on decreasing strength and performance when it occurs
over multiple nights.11 12 13 Further, less sleep when dieting led to greater
loss of LBM and less loss of fat mass as well as greater hunger ratings
11. “Inadequate sleep and muscle strength: Implications for ... - NCBI.” 2 Feb. 2018, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29422383. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
12. “The effect of partial sleep deprivation on weight-lifting ... - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pubmed/8112265. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
13. “Relationship between sleep and muscle strength ... - NCBI.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pmc/articles/PMC5749041/. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
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through reductions to the hormone leptin and lower TDEE.14 15 16 Practice
good bedtime habits, stop scrolling the gram, and get more sleep!
3. Am I truly training hard enough? We can’t tell you how many people tell
us they train hard. They work up a good sweat and think that is sufficient
to cause muscles to adapt. If you want your muscles to adapt you must
CHALLENGE them. Some of you may have even thought that keeping
sets at an RIR of 1-3 is too easy. We can tell you that if you think a set of
RIR 2 on a compound lift is ‘easy’ then you’ve likely never truly taken a
compound lift like a squat to complete muscular failure. If you are consistently training in an RIR 1-3 range it should be VERY difficult. Layne
and I can both attest, we get nervous before we train because we know
the effort required to achieve said RIR.
4. Am I doing TOO MUCH volume? Often times we see people not making
progress who are already ahead of their adaptation curve. That is, they
are already doing too much volume that their body can’t recover. Throwing more volume on top of this is not going to fix the problem and will
likely make it worse. So how do you know if you are doing too much volume? You will likely feel beat up, with quite a few aches and pains, decreased motivation to train, decreased strength, decreased exercise
performance, and you will likely feel pretty sore on a regular basis. If this
is the case, it might be time to take a deload or a taper week in order to
allow your body some active recovery. Then ease back into training at
an effective volume that you can recover from. Layne and I both like to
use a reactive type approach to training deloads. We plan for periods of
progressive overload in order to build muscle, and we listen to our body
cues. If a deload seems like the right thing then that’s what we’ll do.
5. Am I eating enough protein? If you are following the methods in this book
the answer to this is likely a resounding ‘yes’ but if you aren’t, it could be
14. “Association between sleep duration, fat mass, lean ... - NCBI.” 21 Feb. 2017, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28220551. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
15. “Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity..” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/20921542. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
16. “Impact of insufficient sleep on total daily energy ... - NCBI - NIH.” 11 Mar. 2013, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3619301/. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
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impairing your recovery and is another factor to consider.
6. Am I under significant life stress? People don’t talk about this as much
but if you are under a lot of stress that adds to your burden to recover
from. Adding more training stress on top of general life stress is probably
not the best idea. Better off focusing on resolving what you can from the
life stress so that you can then move forward in your training.
If you answered ‘no’ to all those questions then it may be time to increase your
effective volume and do more hard sets. If you answered no to any of them you
probably need to focus on those first before making adjustments to your training. As you reverse diet it is likely you will get stronger as you increase calories
which means progressive overload will likely happen on it’s own for a good while
before you ever plateau and need to increase volume.
Should I Lift Heavy or Light
Whether you choose to lift heavy weights for low reps or lighter weights for
higher reps or a combination of both (they aren’t mutually exclusive you), it
doesn’t appear that one is necessarily better than the other for building muscle. Indeed, studies comparing light weights (as low as 30% of an individual’s 1
rep maximum) to heavy weights seem to produce the same increases in muscle mass when sets are taken close to failure.17 18 Once again, this aligns with
the concept of the ‘effective reps’ or ‘hard set’s’ model of effective training volume. That said, training with heavy weights (>80% of a 1RM) produces superior strength gains compared to volume equated lower intensity programs.19
If heavy training produces the same hypertrophy and greater strength gains,
then why not just do all heavy training? There are a few reasons, the first being
that heavy training tends to be more fatiguing on the central nervous system,
17. “Resistance exercise load does not determine training ... - NCBI.” 19 Apr. 2012, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404827/. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
18. “Neither load nor systemic hormones determine resistance ....” 12 May. 2016, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27174923. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
19. “Strength and Hypertrophy Adaptations Between Low- vs. High ....” https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pubmed/28834797. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
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especially when performed with compound lifts such as the deadlift, squat and
bench press. Further, in order to continue using heavy weights during subsequent sets, rest periods will need to be longer compared to using lighter loads
for higher reps..This is likely why the optimal ‘hypertrophy rep range’ has typically been defined as 6-15 reps amongst ‘bro’ circles. Sure, you can do 50+ reps
to near failure at 30% of your 1 RM, but that’s going to take a long time for each
set. Likewise, just trying to accumulate volume by doing super heavy sets of
singles and doubles will be centrally fatiguing and also require a lot of time between sets, as well as a possible increased injury risk. Keeping reps between
6-15 likely evolved as a standard in bodybuilding because it allows individuals to
use heavy enough weights to reach fatigue relatively quickly during sets, but it
wasn’t so heavy that they produced a ton of central fatigue.
We aren’t saying to ONLY lift in the 6-15 rep range, we are just providing scientific rationale for what the bros might have known all along. If you want to
lift in a rep range greater than this? Great, you can do so and still grow a lot of
muscle. Want to lift heavy weights in a rep range lower than this? Great, you
can do so and still grow a lot of muscle and get a lot stronger. You can also
use a multitude of rep ranges to get the benefits of varied repetition schemes
while simultaneously providing a training stimulus that is likely less boring due
to increased variety. We like variety in nutrition and we certainly like variety for
training as well. Regardless of how you choose to train, realize that it probably
shouldn’t change just because you are reverse dieting, bulking, dieting for fat
loss, etc. It should change as part of a properly constructed program that employs progressive overload appropriately.
How Often Should I Train?
This is another hotly debated topic in scientific circles. In general, it appears
that the frequency of training is less important than the total amount of effective volume or hard sets that you do during a week. So could you go in one day
per week and simply hammer your entire body for 8 hours and get the same
gains as spreading this out over 4 sessions at 2 hours each spread over the
course of a week? This is unlikely. The first reason is that performance will likely begin to decline as you become more centrally fatigued. Training a massive
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amount for one day then having the rest of the week off might sound appealing
to a lot of people, until they get through a few hard sets on a compound leg exercises and are now struggling to walk to their next exercise. Further, there is
evidence that there is an ‘anabolic cap’ to set number for a body part in a workout, probably around 10-15 sets per body part per session, however the total anabolic set number has not yet been established as several studies have shown
that up to 27-45 hard sets per week produces superior hypertrophy compared
to lower set number per week.20 21 22 In order to maximize hypertrophy, it may
be superior to perform multiple sessions per week, per body part, in order to
better distribute volume. If you do 20 sets in a workout for example, you likely
haven’t gotten superior gains compared to say 10-15 sets, but if you want to get
to around 27-45 sets per week, you’d need to do multiple sessions of 10-15 sets
per week. Your frequency of training will therefore be determined by your total
set number for the week. Recommendations being that you should probably
cap your daily volume at 10-15 sets per body part.
Now before you go out and start doing 45 sets per week for each body part,
keep in mind that these high volume recommendations are for advanced trainees. If you start out at 45 hard sets per body part per week you will easily overtrain and likely get injured. You should try to make progress on the minimum
amount of hard sets you can per week for several reasons.
1. It will require less time in the gym. If you get to the point where you are
doing 40+ hard sets per body part per week in the gym, you will likely be in
the gym over 2 hours per day, virtually every day. The more sets you add
the more opportunity there is for aches, pains, and possible injuries.
2. Even if you do make good progress on more volume than you need to progress, eventually you will plateau and need to add even MORE volume. Bet-
20. (2018, September 11). Effects of Graded Whey Supplementation During Extreme .... Retrieved November 26, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6141782/
21. (n.d.). Dose-response of 1, 3, and 5 sets of resistance exercise on .... Retrieved November
27, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25546444
22. (n.d.). Resistance Training Volume Enhances Muscle Hypertrophy .... Retrieved November
27, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30153194
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ter to plateau at a lower volume and have room to move up rather than be
plateaued when you are already spending 15+ hours in the gym per week.
There is also evidence that if you do too much volume before you are advanced
enough for the appropriate increase in training volume, it can actually HURT your
strength and hypertrophy gains.23 24 25 So be smart about how you dose volume
and make sure that your plateaus aren’t for one of the other reasons we covered
before you decide to increase volume. We aren’t going to give you straight up
programs but perhaps we can help you determine how to split up your training.
If you are brand new to resistance training, we recommend you start out on
the conservative end of the range listed and work your way up. If you are an advanced lifter like we are, take a look at your current total weekly set number per
muscle group and progressively add more. For beginners who don’t need much
volume or frequency, you could follow splits like the following:
Sample 1
Day 1: Upper Body
Day 2: Rest
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Lower Body
Day 5: Rest
Day 6: Rest
Day 7: Rest
Sample 2
Day 1: Upper Body Push
Day 2: Lower Body Quad Focus
23. (n.d.). Moderate volume of high relative training intensity produces .... Retrieved November
27, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16503695
24. (n.d.). Effects of a Modified German Volume Training Program ... - NCBI. Retrieved November 27, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27941492
25. (2019, September 18). Reducing resistance training volume during Ramadan ... - NCBI. Retrieved November 27, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24048913
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Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Upper Body Pull
Day 5: Lower Body Posterior (Hamstrings, Glutes, Calves) Focus
Day 6: Rest
Day 7: Rest
Sample 3
Day 1: Chest
Day 2: Quads
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Back
Day 5: Hamstrings & Calves
Day 6: Arms
Day 7: Rest
For Intermediates who need more volume and frequency you could use the following samples:
Sample 1
Day 1: Upper Body
Day 2: Lower Body
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Upper Body
Day 5: Lower Body
Day 6: Rest
Day 7: Rest
Sample 2:
Day 1: Upper Body
Day 2: Lower Body
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Upper Body Push
Day 5: Lower Body
Day 6: Upper Body Pull
Day 7: Rest
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Sample 3:
Day 1: Upper Body
Day 2: Lower Body
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Upper Body
Day 5: Quads
Day 6: Hamstrings and Calves
Day 7: Rest
For advanced trainees who need even more volume and frequency:
Sample 1
Day 1: Full Body
Day 2: Rest
Day 3: Full Body
Day 4: Rest
Day 5: Full Body
Day 6: Rest
Day 7: Rest
Sample 2
Day 1: Upper Body
Day 2: Lower Body
Day 3: Upper Body
Day 4: Lower Body
Day 5: Upper Body
Day 6: Lower Body
Day 7: Rest
Sample 3
Day 1: Upper Body
Day 2: Lower Body
Day 3: Upper Body
Day 4: Lower body
Day 5: Upper Body
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Day 6: Lower Body
Day 7: Weak Point Training/Rest day (If needed)
There are THOUSANDS of ways to program these combinations so please do
not become dogmatic about these. The number of sets on each day is also going to vary depending on your training status. This is simply a guide to give you
some ideas on how to split your training up. You should try different things out
and figure out what works best for you. Keep in mind that your weekly effective
training volume is the most important number to hit. After that you can worry
about frequency and distribution of your number of hard sets.
What About Cardio?
Now here is where it gets fun. How much cardio you will perform during your reverse will depend on multiple factors including how much you were doing at the
end of your diet (if you are starting a reverse diet after your fat loss diet), how aggressively you wish to reverse and recover your metabolic rate, and how much
purposeful cardio you’d ideally like to include, as some people just simply enjoy
this. Don’t get us wrong, we want you to be active and for your NEAT to increase,
but that increase is a non-purposeful endogenous increase in activity. That is,
as you increase your energy intake you should get spontaneously more active.
We don’t mean that you’ll suddenly feel compelled to go run a marathon, what
we mean is that you will likely start unconsciously moving more during the day,
taking extra steps, fidgeting more, training harder, etc. This is one of the ways
that reverse dieting likely increases your TDEE other than increasing your BMR
through positive metabolic adaptation. So let’s get into it. Where do we start
with cardio? Well if you’ve been doing zero purposeful cardio then congratulations, you don’t need to make any changes. You can continue doing zero cardio.
If you have been doing purposeful cardio during a diet phase to facilitate weight
loss, but you would now like to phase it out completely or down to a more manageable level, then we need to approach it the same way we would increasing
calories, we need to cut it down in a slow and controlled manner. At what rate
should we cut it? Great question, let’s examine what it looks like.
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Conservative: If you stay within your allowable weight gain range (0.2% of total
body weight per week) then you can reduce purposeful cardio by 2.5-7.5% duration. Since you are also increasing calories, we recommend staying towards
the lower end of the cardio reduction range if you are taking the higher end of
the caloric increase. If you take a more conservative increase in calories, then
you can decrease cardio more aggressively. For example, if you decide to take
the full 3% increase in calories, the upper calorie recommendation for a conservative reverse diet, then perhaps lean closer towards the 2.5-5% reduction
in cardio duration. If you only take a 1-2% increase in calories, then perhaps
drop cardio by 5-7.5%. Alternatively, if you decide you hate cardio and would
rather reduce it faster compared to just increasing calories, you could take no
calorie increase and reduce cardio duration by 10-15% in any given week.
Moderate: If you stay within your allowable weight gain range (0.5% of total
body weight per week) then you can reduce purposeful cardio duration by up
to 7.5-15%. Since you are also increasing calories, we recommend staying towards the lower end of the cardio reduction range if you are taking the higher
end of the caloric increase. If you take a more conservative increase in calories, then you can more aggressively decrease cardio duration. For example, if
you decide to take the 5-6% increase in calories, perhaps lean closer towards
the 7.5-10% reduction in cardio. If you only take a 3-4% increase in calories,
then perhaps drop cardio by 12.5-15%%. Alternatively, if you decide you hate
cardio and would rather reduce it faster compared to just increasing calories,
you could take no calorie increase and reduce cardio by 20-27.5%.
Aggressive: If you stay within your allowable weight gain range (0.8% of total
body weight per week) then you can reduce purposeful cardio by 17.5-25%. Since
you are also increasing calories, we recommend staying towards the lower end
of the cardio reduction range if you are taking the higher end of the caloric increase. If you take a more conservative increase in calories, then you can more
aggressively decrease cardio. For example, if you decide to take the full 8-9%
increase in calories for a more aggressive reverse diet approach, perhaps lean
closer towards the 17.5-20% reduction in cardio. If you only take a 6-7% increase
in calories, then perhaps drop cardio by 22.5-25%. Alternatively, if you decide
you hate cardio and would rather reduce it faster compared to just increasing
calories, you could take no calorie increase and reduce cardio by 30-35%.
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Now I’m sure you’ve probably gone ahead and done the math based on your own
weekly cardio and you’re thinking it’s going to take you forever to remove your
cardio. Keep in mind you have to use common sense with these percentages and
not get dogmatic about them. If you are only doing 30 minutes of purposeful cardio per week and you want to get rid of it and you are on an aggressive reverse
where you could take a 300 calorie increase but decide you are just going to cut
out 30% of your cardio instead, you are only cutting out 9 minutes of cardio and
NOT taking a 300 calorie increase, that is probably ridiculous. Instead we’d recommend simply cutting out the cardio completely if you want to and take a more
modest increase in calories. These percentages are really only valid for people
who are at least 100 minutes of purposeful cardio per week. For those of you who
are below that number, but would like to slowly cut out your cardio, we would
simply recommend cutting it out slowly over a 6-12 week period and just take
more modest calorie increases, staying on the conservative side of your ranges.
Another thing to consider, and this is where things become tricky, is the intensity of your cardio. If you are undertaking 100 + minutes per week of high intensity interval training, you are going to be expending a much greater amount of
calories than you would if you were performing all your cardio in the form of low
intensity steady state such as walking. So we also need to consider the likely
energy expenditure of the cardio being performed.
Let’s take a practical example, I’ll use myself (Holly speaking) to explain. I currently perform 6 resistance training sessions, 120 mins of cardio at a modest to
high intensity in the form of a spin class or on the stairmaster, plus an additional 70 minutes of low intensity cardio in the form of walking. When I begin my reverse diet, I personally prefer to take a conservative approach to minimize body
fat regain, however in the initial stages of the reverse diet I would much rather
take a larger percentage decrease to my cardio to help free up my time, and a
much smaller percentage increase in my calories. Once I have determined by
new post show maintenance calories, I will forgo an initial calorie increase and
instead reduce my cardio duration by the maximum recommended 15%, bringing my total time down to 160 minutes.
So how do I know which modality of cardio to reduce first? Well it depends on
how aggressive you want to be with your reverse diet and what you as an indi-
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vidual values most. I personally opt to reduce my high intensity cardio first as
this more physically and mentaly fatiguing, and after a long drawn out competition season, I am all about getting back to a place of balance. Furthermore, we
know that high intensity training can impede recovery from resistance training, so this is another reason why I would personally prefer to reduce my high
intensity cardio to help my body recover better from workouts, and hopefully
result in less muscle soreness, something that becomes increasingly more notable towards the end of prep. On the contrary, many of you may place greater
value on overall time and would prefer to reduce your cardio in the form that
gives you back the most amount of time. For you, reducing your cardio in the
from of 70 mins of walking might be the preferred option, as you’re getting back
70 minutes of time rather than 30 minutes.
Now I mentioned earlier that the intensity makes a difference, so consider this.
In theory, if all your cardio was in the form of lower intensity steady state, you
could potentially afford to reduce your cardio by double the amount of the percentages listed. For example, 120 minutes of moderate to high intensity cardio
on the stair master yields ~1600 calories using my Apple Watch as a measuring
tool, while 70 minutes of low intensity walking yields a much lower ~ 400 kcals.
Now before you jump out of your seat and tell me these are inaccurate, yes, I
realize an Apple Watch has its limitations, like any tool that uses equations. No
matter how inaccurate these values may be in absolute terms however, they
are likely going to be relative for me if I am exercising at a set intensity and
tracking them on a consistent basis. I wanted to increase my weekly energy
balance by 533 kcals from cardio (76 kcals per day), I could do this by removing
40 minutes of my moderate to high intensity cardio.
For example, 533 kcals / 1600 kcals = 0.33. (33%) x 120 mins = 40 mins.
I could also remove 100% of my low intensity walking, since this accrues 400
kcals and have 133 kcals remaining. I could then remove a further 10 minutes of
moderate to high intensity cardio.
133 kcals / 1600 kcals = 0.08. (8%) X 120 mins = 9.9 mins (rounded to 10).
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Purposeful Cardio - A More Accurate/Simple Approach?
Over the last 5 years, step counting has become much more popular, partly because of the emphasis on the importance of NEAT in the evidence based community and partly because of the availability of smart watches and devices that
making tracking them conveniently. Now don’t get us wrong, you don’t want to
rely on the watch to tell you what your daily energy expenditure and exercise
expenditure is, as they have been shown to be inaccurate.26 The good news is,
these watches do appear to be accurate for measuring step counts! Therefore,
we can get a relatively accurate assessment of part of our TDEE. For those of
you who have been doing purposeful cardio and tracking your step counts, you
could simply decide what the minimum number of steps per day you’d like to
get to and work back from there. For example, if you are doing 15,000+ steps
per day during your diet but you are also doing over an hour of purposeful cardio per day and you would like to reduce that to a more manageable level or
perhaps nothing, you’d simply need to determine how many steps you do when
you are performing cardio and subtract those from your daily step count to give
yourself a target. For example, if your hour of cardio requires 9000 steps and
you are averaging 15000 steps per and you want to get it down to 9000 steps
per day total, then you are looking at reducing 6000 steps out of your day.
You can still use the percentage reductions from earlier to reduce your step
counts. For example, if you were on a conservative reverse and you were within
your allowable weight gain and decided to make a 5% reduction in your cardio
steps, that’s 300 steps you’d reduce. So your minimum would go from 15000
steps per day to 14700 steps per day. Why do we say a minimum? As you increase calories you may find that your step count starts to go up because you
have more energy and your body begins to move more in order to dissipate energy. In fact you may find that you can cut more cardio out than you thought
because you are getting such a spontaneous increase in movement. For example, those 300 steps may only equated to a few minutes of walking on the
treadmill, but you find that you are consistently going over 15000 steps anyway
26. (2018, April 12). Evaluating the Validity of Current Mainstream ... - NCBI. Retrieved November 27, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5920198/
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even though you reduced your purposeful cardio. If you are, that means you can
actually reduce it further. We do want to make sure we hit our minimum step
counts, however. The reason being that we don’t want to be dropping energy
expenditure too quickly. That’s why we call it a minimum. Once you have reduced your steps counts down to a level that you find is sustainable for you and
that you enjoy, then you simply keep it there and make sure you hit that, but you
don’t limit yourself from doing more.
For example, let’s say that your goal was to eventually get to 9000 steps per day
but even after cutting out all of your cardio you find that you are doing well over
9000 steps per day, that is perfectly fine! In fact it’s actually excellent because
it means that your NEAT is going way up because you are doing a lot of non-purposeful movement and energy expenditure. What we want to avoid is dropping
below those minimum step counts as we know that some people don’t increase
spontaneous energy expenditure during overfeeding as much as others. Therefore in order for some of you to hit your step counts, you may need to do more
purposeful exercise. For example, I (Layne here) average nearly 9000 steps per
day with zero purposeful cardio. On the occasion that I am extremely sedentary for the day and I’m significantly below that, I might add in a stroll around
the neighborhood to make sure I hit my minimum, but typically I don’t have to.
I (Holly here), on the other hand, only average about 3000-4000 steps per day
without purposeful cardio and for me to keep my calories at a more ‘fun’ level
during the offseason I will typically add in cardio to get around 8000-9000 steps
per day. Therefore, when I’m reverse dieting, my goal is to get myself down to
about 8000 steps per day by slowly reducing my purposeful cardio and then I
maintain it at an 8000 step minimum for the duration of my reverse diet.
Don’t ‘Cheat’ Reverse Dieting
We aren’t referring to ‘cheat’ meals here. Rather we are referring to purposefully
doing excessive exercise so that you can simply eat more calories. While it’s not
the worst thing in the world to have high activity, it should not feel forced. You
should be on an effective resistance training program, and any cardio on top of
that should be what you enjoy (eventually, with the caveat that if you ended a
diet on very high cardio, it may take some time to bring it back down to a normal
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sustainable level). Remember, the goal is to enhance your endogenous energy
expenditure. That is we want to raise your BMR and NEAT. If you are doing an
extra 2 hours per day purposefully walking, that isn’t NEAT, that’s just exercise.
At that point you are just trading extra purposeful energy expenditure for more
calories, which you can do to a certain extent, but the goal of reverse dieting is
not to have to exercise your way to more calories. If you become spontaneously more active due to increased calories that is fabulous, but we don’t want to
force it because then it no longer falls under the endogenous category and is
now just extra exercise.
Summary
Exercise should be an integral part of any good reverse diet. If you
are already on an effective resistance training regiment then there
is no need to do anything crazy or different just based on reverse
dieting. Simply continue the good principles of progressive overload with appropriate volume and frequency for your training status. If you are doing purposeful cardio and wish to reduce it, you
can do so by reducing it slowly over time as you increase your calories in a controlled manner over time. If you track steps it may be
a more accurate way to standardize your energy expenditure. You
should hit your step count minimums but if you become spontaneously more active there is no reason to limit your steps to the
minimum, especially if you are doing an amount of cardio that you
enjoy or you are doing no purposeful cardio at all.
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ENDING A REVERSE DIET
AND BEGINNING A NEW FAT LOSS PHASE
A
fter reading the previous chapters you have been armed with the knowledge to understand, construct, and execute your own reverse diet. However, this chapter is where the rubber truly meets the road. Many people
start reverse diets with good intentions only to derail them by cutting too soon
before they are truly ready to do so. Whether it’s a mini-cut of a few weeks or a
full blown cut of several months, we need to make sure that you are in a good
place to begin another fat loss phase. We want to be very clear about starting
another fat loss phase BEFORE you are truly ready, it is the best way to fuck up
a decent reverse diet. We’ve seen so many people beg us to ‘just do a short mini
cut’ or ‘just get 5-10 lbs off real fast’ and then they try it and hardly lose anything
and set their reverse diet back by quite a lot. In order for you to be ready to enter into a fat loss phase, there need to be 3 basic principles satisfied:
1. You need to be mentally ready to enter into a fat loss phase, meaning you
are in a good place with your relationship with food and you are excited to
enter a fat loss phase, not dreading it.
2. You are going to take the fat loss phase seriously. This isn’t the time to
fuck around. If you can’t commit to going hard in a fat loss phase then it
isn’t the time to do it. Better to wait until you can truly commit to it while
continuing to reverse and improve your metabolism
3. You need to be physically ready to enter a fat loss phase
How Do I Know if I’m Physically Ready for a Fat Loss Phase?
This is the question we get most often regarding ending a reverse diet. “How
do I know when I’m ready?” The easiest way to determine this is simple; do your
ACTUAL current maintenance calories at least match your predicted maintenance calories? Meaning that if we plug your metrics into the Müller or similar equation and apply the appropriate activity factor, how does that number
compare to your current maintenance calories? If your current maintenance
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calories are the same or greater, then it could be time to consider a fat loss
phase. If your current maintenance calories are less than your predicted maintenance calories however, don’t even think about it. Full stop, end of story. In
reality your current maintenance should actually be about 5-10% greater than
your predicted maintenance. The reasoning for this goes back to our theory
of maintenance calorie ranges and metabolic adaptation. It’s quite likely that
you are sitting on the upper end of your maintenance calories if you are a good
ways into a reverse diet. For example, if you are currently maintaining your body
weight on 2100 calories and your predicted maintenance is 2050, you might be
thinking that you are free and clear, but that may not be the case. If your maintenance calorie range was 220 calories from low end to high end for example,
that means the median (middle) would put you at or just under 2000 calories. In
this situation we would encourage someone to at least get up to 2200 or 2300
calories and be maintaining their weight before we encourage them to enter
into a fat loss phase. We have simplified this into a quick and dirty reference
table to determine if you are at a ‘normal’ level. Please keep in mind this table is
not nearly as precise as something like the Müller equation or the Aragon formula so it is simply to be used as a quick rough estimate guide. We still recommend making a more precise calculation before determining that you are back
up to a normal maintenance calorie range.
Calorie Ranges
Maintenance Calorie Ranges for people with an Activity Factor < 1.5
Age 18 - 40 / kg LBM
Age 40 - 60 / kg LBM
Below Normal
25 -35
22 -32
Normal
35 -45
32 - 42
Above Normal
45 - 55
42 - 52
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Maintenance Calorie Ranges for People with an Activity Factor > 1.5
Age 18 - 40 / kg LBM
Age 40 - 60 / kg LBM
Below Normal
28 - 38
25 - 35
Normal
38 - 48
35 - 45
Above Normal
48 - 58
45 - 55
Table 9.1: Approximate maintenance calorie ranges for people with different activity levels
based on LBM. These have been separated into low, normal, and above normal.
This also gets into the question of staying at maintenance for a period of time
post reverse/pre-fat loss phase. Several individuals have recommended spending the end of a reverse diet simply staying at maintenance for several weeks
or months. Typically what we have seen recommended is spending the same
amount of time at maintenance as you do in a reverse diet. We don’t think that’s
necessarily a bad idea but the numbers seem a bit arbitrary. We think this strategy probably works best for individuals in specific circumstances where they
have reached the absolute limit of what they are willing to accept in terms of
fat gain, but they also have a long history of dieting and probably need to spend
more time out of a deficit before entering a fat loss phase. For these individuals, spending time at maintenance might make sense at the end of a reverse
diet. There is nothing magical about staying at maintenance however, some
people have made it seem like if you don’t spend as much time at maintenance
as you did in a reverse, the entire thing will be ineffective. That is very unlikely,
especially if you’ve managed to raise your maintenance calories significantly
above your predicted maintenance calories. For example, if someone is humming along and increasing their calories pretty much every week with really
minimal weight gain and their actual maintenance is well above their predicted
maintenance after 20 weeks of reverse dieting, do they then need to spend
another 20 weeks at maintenance if they’d like to do a cut? NO. They can simply
continue reverse dieting until they are ready to do a fat loss phase. However, if
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you are at a caloric level that is at or beyond your predicted TDEE and you really
don’t want to possibly gain any more weight but you want to give the reverse a
longer period of time then holding steady for a few weeks or months at maintenance is perfectly fine, but realize that if you’ve done a long enough reverse
and your TDEE is high enough, holding at maintenance calories for a certain
duration isn’t necessary.
How Long Should a Reverse Diet Be?
This is a tough one to answer because we simply have almost zero data on
this. What we will say is that it should likely be proportionate to the magnitude
and duration of the energy deficit you are coming out of. That is, if you just did
a moderate 12 week cut and lost 5 kg, you probably should spend at least 12
weeks reverse dieting before you think about another at loss phase, assuming
that at the end of 12 weeks your actual maintenance calories are greater than
your predicted maintenance calories. If you are someone who has been yo-yo
dieting for years then this may require much more patience on your part during
this process. You’ve spent a long period of time beating the crap out of your
body and metabolism while you consistently activated your body’s self defense
system without long periods of sustained, controlled, overfeeding, so it’s probably going to take a good period of time staying out of a deficit to undo some of
those metabolic adaptations.
For many of you, the concept of taking a step back so that you can move forward
is probably going to be very difficult. For those of you who have been wrapped
in ‘diet culture’ and have felt like you have been perpetually on a diet and moreover, felt the need to be perpetually on a diet, it might be absolutely terrifying
to consider the idea of increasing calories if you still have more fat you want to
lose. Consider this however, what you have been doing thus far and the behaviors you have adopted have taken you to where you are now. You will continue to
get the same results if you continue the same behaviors. If you want a different
outcome, then you have to do something different. If you’ve been yo-yo dieting
for years, now is the time to BREAK THE CYCLE. It’s going to be difficult and
scary as those of you fully immersed in diet culture may feel some comfort in
being able to say you are on a diet. It may not be as comfortable to say ‘I’m work-
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ing on increasing my calories so I can improve my energy expenditure.’ Consider
reverse dieting an investment. When you make a monetary investment you are
taking money away from short term reward purchases with the understanding
that one day that investment will pay off in more overall money in the long term.
Investing in a solid reverse diet is investing in a metabolism that will allow you
to lose more fat in the long run. That is the goal. We have seen so many people
over the years who simply could not get out of their own way. They would ‘commit’ to a reverse diet for a few weeks and at the first sign of gaining any weight
they would panic and try to diet again with the same results, rather lack of results. If this sounds like you, write this down and repeat it to yourself: If you do
what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten!
Ending The Reverse
Ok, you’ve done it. You slowly added calories and raised your TDEE to a solid level. If you are happy with your current body fat then CONGRATULATIONS,
you’ve done it! Just chill here and be happy! You might have some minor weight
fluctuations here and there and maybe even a small amount of fat gain during
holidays or events but nothing that can’t be fixed by a short mini-cut. If you
went through a proper reverse, gave it enough time, got your TDEE up to a good
level and you are ready to enter into another fat loss phase because you aren’t
quite at your body fat goal yet, then there are some things you should know.
First off, don’t do what we see quite a few people do, which is YOLO (you’re only
lean once)1 the end of your reverse by eating whatever the hell you want because you know there is a fat loss phase coming up and you might as well have
all the foods you want. If you have done a proper reverse and your TDEE is high
enough, you should be able to fit many of those foods into a reasonable diet if
you plan things out correctly so you don’t need to binge on them at the end of
a reverse. Remember that if you gain quite a bit of fat at the end of a reverse
it’s just more fat that you have to take off during the fat loss phase. Why make
things more difficult for yourself? Stay the course and treat the end of your reverse like the rest of the reverse.
1. (n.d.). YOLO Shirt – BioLayne Store. Retrieved November 29, 2019, from https://biolaynestore.
com/products/yolo-shirt
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Second, don’t try to reverse diet in the opposite direction for fat loss. For some
reason we see many people think this is a good idea, it’s not. The entire point
of increasing calories in a controlled manner is to limit fat gain while slowly
adding calories so that your body’s endogenous TDEE has a chance to keep
pace with your calorie increases. If you attempt to do that for fat loss what
will happen is very similar to what happened on the reverse, you will slowly decrease calories and your body will simply decrease your TDEE proportionately
and your weight loss will be minimal. Remember that based on our theory of a
maintenance calorie range, it’s important to create a big enough initial drop to
get you out of that maintenance range buffer zone. For this reason, we recommend at minimum a 20% reduction in calories from the end of your reverse. We
have seen too many people try to do a small calorie reduction from the end of
their reverse to transition into fat loss only to see them lose absolutely nothing.
Consider the following: If someone finishes their reverse diet at 2400 calories
and they have a 10% maintenance range, they are likely sitting at the upper end
of their maintenance calories already with a range of ~240 calories for their
maintenance range. If they try to make a 200-250 kcal reduction in calories it
is likely that they won’t lose hardly anything. Whereas if they dropped by 20%,
that’s a reduction of 480 calories and should be sufficient to get them outside
their maintenance range. Please keep in mind that this is simply an example,
we have observed people who could get away with being less aggressive and
people who needed to be more aggressive. It’s important to keep data on yourself and have an idea of what kind of individual you are more likely to be based
on your progressions.
Preventing Unintentional Declines in Energy Expenditure
It’s not just a buffering maintenance range that can frustrate people when they
first stop trying to drop weight after a reverse diet. Many people get spontaneously less active without even realizing it. They fidget less, don’t train quite
as hard, and don’t take as many steps during the day. I have personally tested
this on myself (Layne speaking here) and I will spontaneously drop from around
9500-10000 steps per day while overfeeding to around 8000-8500 just from
going into a deficit. One of our BioLayne coaches (Noah Lee) had a client who
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spontaneously dropped from 8000 steps per day during her reverse to around
4300 within ONE WEEK of a deficit! This is what is what often confuses people
who oppose the concept of ‘calories in vs. calories out’ (CICO). They will say
things like “I ate in a calorie deficit and didn’t lose weight.” What they don’t understand is while they ate in what SHOULD have been a caloric deficit, they
unconsciously decreased their energy expenditure. This is why we think step
tracking can be so helpful. If you know what your average steps are during your
reverse diet, you can simply set a target to match them when you begin your
reverse. This means that you may get to the end of the day and need to add in
some purposeful walks in order to reach your step goal for the day and that’s
fine. We wouldn’t necessarily recommend adding in a bunch of purposeful cardio at the beginning of a fat loss phase, but a good goal is to simply maintain
your current resistance exercise volume and your daily steps. If you are truly
maintaining your weight at the end of a reverse and drop your calories by at
least 20% and maintain your steps, you should see some nice progress initially.
This book is not a fat loss book so we won’t go further in depth in terms of
setting up a fat loss diet, if you want more information on the ins and outs of
setting up an optimal fat loss program, we recommend checking out Fat Loss
Forever, in our opinion, the single greatest fat loss resource ever created (ok
we are biased but we wouldn’t promote it if we didn’t believe in it). If you would
rather not buy another book, that’s ok, we get it. In that case we’d recommend
checking out our YouTube series on how to set up fat loss diets.2 3
One thing we would caution against is the expectation of enormous changes in
the amount of calories you will be able to diet on after one reverse. We do typically see people improve in terms of being able to diet on more calories after
reverse dieting, but they aren’t huge improvements typically, but if you reverse
properly multiple times and diet properly as well, we do see people getting to
levels of leanness they previously attained at >100 calories greater than pre2. (2018, January 4). How Fat Loss Works - Part 1: Energy Balance | Biolayne. Retrieved November 29, 2019, from https://www.biolayne.com/media/videos/video-log/fat-loss-works-part-1-energy-balance/
3. (2018, July 19). How to Set up for a Contest Prep Diet - WEEK 1 - YouTube. Retrieved November 29, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TshYwcR84TE
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vious fat loss phases with no changes in amounts of purposeful cardio. We’ve
also seen people who have been able to get to levels of leanness that they were
not previously able to attain after having gone through a proper reverse diet.
Keep in mind also that the more times you properly diet and reverse diet, the
better your results will likely be. For example, let’s take someone who starts
a diet at 20% body fat and diets to 10% body fat. In the process they go from
maintenance calories of 2300 to 1900. Then they reverse diet and go up to 17%
body fat, but are maintaining on 2350 calories. That is a net improvement because even though their maintenance calories are similar to previous, they are
leaner now. Then the next time they diet they are able to get to 9% going from
maintenance calories of 2350 to 1900. Then they reverse diet again and get up
to 2400 calorie maintenance but at 15% body fat. Then they go through another
fat loss phase to get to 8% body fat and are able to get there with their end diet
maintenance being around 1900. Each time they are getting progressively better. Keep in mind, this example would likely be taking place over the course of
YEARS. That’s right, we are sorry to say that reverse dieting and proper fat loss
phases take time. There is no quick fix, especially for those of you with long
diet histories of yo-yo dieting. If you are tenacious, consistent, and persistent
however, you can make huge improvements. Or maybe they just reverse back
up to the same weight as previous, but on more calories and then diet down
to the same body fat, but on more calories each time, those would also be examples of improvements. Since some of you are more visual, we’ve turned the
previous example into a table.
Phase of diet
End of Reverse/Beginning
of Fat Loss Maintenance
Calories/Body Fat %
End of Fat Loss/Start of
Reverse Maintenance
Calories/Body Fat %
1
2300 kcal/20% BF
1900 kcal/10% BF
2
2350 kcal/17% BF
1900 kcal/9% BF
3
2400 kcal/15% BF
1900 kcal/8% BF
Table 9.2: Hypothetical person undergoing 3 fat loss and reverse diet phases and the corresponding changes in maintenance calories and body fat.
ENDING A REVERSE DIET
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This example also highlights how you don’t need to necessarily be perfect in
keeping weight off in order to have a successful reverse. Sometimes when
people gain any weight back after a fat loss phase and feel like they’ve failed,
but that’s not necessarily true. Obviously we want to avoid massive fat regain
in the initial phases of the post fat loss phase because there is increased risk
of regaining large amounts of body fat and possibly adding more fat cells, but
as long as you don’t go crazy binge eating after your diet for days at a time, you
will likely be fine. If you are consistent with your reverse and COMMIT to the
process, even if you do gain some weight back, this will likely be offset by the
increases in your TDEE from controlled overfeeding over time. This period of
sustained time in reverse diets will also dampen the body’s ‘self defense system’ since you will essentially be sending a signal that food is no longer scarce
and the body can afford to be a bit more ‘wasteful’ with calories.
Summary
Remember, reverse dieting isn’t magical and if you have expectations of magical results you will be disappointed, but that is the
case for any dietary strategy. Rather, if you work hard, are committed, consistent, and reverse properly, you will likely see significant
benefits. Make sure you reverse long enough and get your TDEE at
LEAST back to your predicted maintenance calories before you decide to initiate another fat loss phase. You should also make sure
that you are in the right mental space to execute another fat loss
phase as well before you commit to it.
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REVERSE DIETING FAQ
S
ince reverse dieting is a new (within the last decade) concept, people
have many questions. We don’t have all the answers, but we will do our
best to clear up some of the myths and misconceptions in this chapter.
Alternatively, if you have any questions we don’t cover, feel free to ask us on
social media or you can ask us in the Team BioLayne Facebook page.1
Now onto the FAQ
“How do I know whether I should reverse diet or try to lose
fat?”
Chapter 9 addresses this question in a roundabout way but we will take it
more head on here. If you are someone who is not comfortable with your
current body fat and your energy expenditure is good and your maintenance calorie level is reasonable (that is, at or greater than your predicted
maintenance calorie level) then by all means do a fat loss phase. If you
have more fat than you’d like but you feel like you are spinning your wheels,
your calories are unsustainably low, your energy is constantly low, you feel
lethargic, unmotivated, and are really having a hard time adhering to fat
loss calories, then a reverse diet might be the best option for you to raise
your energy expenditure and maintenance calorie level so that in the future you can more effectively lose fat on more sustainable calorie levels.
“Someone said reverse dieting is BS and not science based,
is this true?”
It would depend upon the context of the claim of reverse dieting. Are
there any scientific studies specifically done on reverse dieting? No, not
specifically. There are some overfeeding studies that we have drawn
1. (n.d.). Team BioLayne: Science • Nutrition • Training ... - Facebook. Retrieved November 30,
2019, from https://www.facebook.com/groups/335868740332383/
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data from, but we’ve also never claimed that. We have based much of
our recommendations on what we’ve done with coaching over 2000 clients in the past decade between the two of us. We have absolutely seen
people run the gamut of results from those who are able to significantly
increase their calories while maintaining or even losing weight to those
who do gain some weight during a reverse.
“Aren’t you claiming that people can violate the laws of
thermodynamics (calories in vs. calories out) if they are
adding calories and losing weight?”
Of course not. Energy balance always applies, but as we have stated many
times, calories in vs. calories out are not independent variables. Calories in
affects calories out. What must be happening in these particular cases of
people adding calories and losing weight is the increase in calories causes
an increase in energy expenditure that is disproportionately greater than
the calories that were added, thus producing weight loss. Even researchers have observed this in individual subjects during overfeeding studies.2
“I put on a lot of weight after I finished my fat loss phase
and now I’m having trouble losing it again, is my metabolism damaged or broken?”
No, your metabolism isn’t broken or damaged. This arises from a video
series I (Layne here) started in 2013 that was a series of videos with “Metabolic Damage” in the title.3 I regret using that term. The reason I used
that term was it was the popular term at the time to describe the symptoms that people were reporting of rapid weight gain post diet and the
inability to drop body fat despite eating in what should be a caloric defi2. (n.d.). Role of nonexercise activity thermogenesis in ... - NCBI - NIH. Retrieved November 30,
2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9880251
3. (n.d.). metabolic damage - Biolayne. Retrieved November 30, 2019, from https://www.biolayne.com/media/media-search-results/?media=metabolic+damage
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cit. No matter how many times that I said it wasn’t really ‘damage,’ that
title stuck with me for a long time. No, your metabolism isn’t damaged.
Now, you may have a history of yo-yo dieting that has produced a situation where you are at a higher body fat than you would like and have low
energy expenditure, but you are not resistant to weight loss, it may just
be much more difficult for you due to low energy expenditure.
“How do I know if I need to reverse diet?”
No one ‘needs’ to reverse diet. In chapter 4 we described the different
populations who may benefit from reverse dieting but no one ‘needs’ to
do it. Anyone who would like to increase their calories while limiting fat
gain could benefit from reverse dieting, but your specific scenario will
dictate if, when, and how you implement it.
“If I do a 2 week mini-cut, do I need to reverse diet?”
As we stated previously, no one ‘needs’ to reverse diet. In general, we don’t
feel a reverse diet is really that necessary for short deficits unless they
are extremely severe. If you do a 2-4 week moderate deficit, when you
are finished it’s probably fine to go back to your previous maintenance or
perhaps slightly lower if you want to be on the safe side.
“I’ve been reverse dieting for a few weeks and I’m hungrier
now than when I was in a fat loss phase eating fewer calories. Is this normal?”
We have definitely seen this in clients and experienced it at times ourselves. We think this is probably due to both physiological and psychological reasons. If you are adding calories and energy expenditure is going up, then it’s normal that you might start feeling hungrier, especially
if energy expenditure is going up disproportionate to the increase in
calories. We also don’t want to understate the psychological aspect of
things. When you are dieting and focussed on an end goal, sometimes
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the drive to that goal may override some of the desire to eat. Once you
are ‘finished’ with the fat loss phase however, many people suddenly feel
compelled to eat like they never had before. This is why it’s so important
to practice mindfulness and good habits in the post diet period.
“Isn’t a reverse diet just a lean bulk?”
Kind of, depending on the reverse diet you use (conservative, moderate,
aggressive). The difference is in the check ins. On a ‘lean bulk’ you are
making small increases in calories with the goal of gaining weight but a
controlled amount. On a reverse diet, the goal isn’t to necessarily gain
weight, rather there is a maximum allowable weekly weight gain. Therein
lies the difference.
“After a cut, shouldn’t I just go straight to maintenance
calories?”
It depends on which maintenance we are talking about. If you are referring to your ACTUAL maintenance at that time where you will maintain
your body weight, then absolutely, that should be your minimum. If we
are talking about your ‘predicted’ maintenance or your pre-fat loss phase
maintenance then that’s another argument entirely. Remember that as
we lose fat our BMR and NEAT drop significantly, so your ‘old’ maintenance will no longer be your real maintenance at the end of a fat loss
phase. You can go straight back to that if you want, but you would need
to be ok with more fat gain.
“Can I still reverse diet if I gained more weight than I wanted to post diet or is it too late?”
Sure, reverse dieting can still be effective for improving your energy
expenditure. It’s not like a reverse diet only works in a ‘post diet’ state.
Increasing your energy intake in a controlled manner will increase your
energy expenditure regardless of whether you are in a post diet/lean set-
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ting or not. That said, it depends on if you are ok with your current body
composition, but if you regained this weight quickly, we would recommend at least staying at maintenance or reverse dieting for a reasonable
amount of time before attempting another fat loss phase.
“Why should I reverse diet to a certain caloric intake? Why
shouldn’t I just jump straight there? What is the difference?”
The difference is reverse dieting gives your metabolic rate enough time
to adapt to controlled calorie increases so that you get to that same calorie intake with much less body fat gain, albeit a slower process to get
to that calorie intake. Slow, controlled increases in calories are often
adapted for and compensated for by proportionate or disproportionate
increases in energy expenditure. For example, in one study, overfeeding
by 20% above maintenance calories did NOT increase fat gain, but overfeeding by 40% and 60% produced significantly more fat gain, way disproportionate compared to the 20% increase.4 This also adds strength
to our concept of a maintenance range of calories.
“Should I be losing weight during a reverse diet?”
We don’t expect weight loss, but we do see it in various cases. If it occurs
it is likely due to an increase in NEAT or BMR increasing your total energy
expenditure in excess of the increase in calories. We wouldn’t say this is
rare, but it’s also not the majority of people. If it does happen, you can either be more aggressive with your caloric increases to get your calories
up more quickly since your energy expenditure is going up, or you can
continue to increase slowly and enjoy the weight loss but raise calories
more slowly.
4. (2007, November 27). Efficiency of autoregulatory homeostatic responses to ... - NCBI. Retrieved December 1, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18042669
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“What if I am reverse dieting and gain weight but my calories are still low?”
It depends on how much weight you gained. If it’s within the allowable
range of the reverse diet that you’ve selected, continue the course as
planned. If it’s more than the allowable weight gain, do not increase calories until it stabilizes and then continue. Also try not to get freaked out
by short term rises and falls in weight as they are often due to fluid shifts
rather than fat gain if it’s a fast change in weight.
“Can I increase my protein? Or just my carbohydrates and
fats?”
This boils down to personal preference. There is no need to increase your
protein if you are already consuming enough, but there are a few instances where it might make sense. If you are starting a reverse diet and still
very hungry, it may make sense to increase some of your calories from
protein as well as carbs and fats. Also, if you’ve been able to get your calories up very high after a long reverse diet, you may reach a point where
your carbs and fats are so high you might just like some more protein
as personal preference to balance your diet, this is also fine. We’ve had
people who were maintaining their body weight on over 500g of carbohydrates and over 100g fats per day but were under 200g protein and would
request more protein just to have a bit more balance.
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CONCLUSION AND CASE STUDIES
T
hank you for reading our book. We hope that you have a good grasp of
what reverse dieting is and what it is not. We do not want you to think
that reverse dieting is some kind of magic fix. It’s not. It is a useful tool
that we have seen people make good progress with when implemented appropriately as part of an overall long term focused strategy. Sadly, we see many
people make false claims about reverse dieting, either to sell their own reverse
dieting materials or as an attempt to completely discredit it. We are fully aware
and acknowledge that there are no specific studies on reverse dieting. That is
absolutely a shortcoming but hopefully there will be more data coming in the
future. Fortunately, we do have some data on overfeeding that seems to line up
with some of the hypotheses we have proposed.
This wasn’t an easy book to write for us. As scientists, we are discouraged from
making strong claims when there isn’t appropriate empirical evidence. As such
we tried to make sure we were responsible with how we spoke regarding reverse dieting and that much of what we spoke about was from the perspective
of case studies with our own clients. As such, we thought it might be pertinent
to include data we have gleaned from clients over the years. We have included
a large body of data as well as selected case studies to highlight differential responses to reverse dieting so that you may better understand why you respond
the way you do during this process.
The first thing we have done is show you data from 55 clients from the last 18 months
who have worked with us on reverse dieting. These clients fit our inclusion criteria:
1. Needed to have worked with us in the last 12 months (this is approximately how long we have been using our most current methodology and
system for reverse dieting)
2. Must have reverse dieted for a minimum of 8 weeks
3. Must have been compliance level of at least 97%. Meaning of their target
calories they were given, they must have been within 3% of those calo-
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ries. So if their calorie level on a given week was 2000, they must have
been within 60 calories (1940 - 2060). As we discussed earlier, tracking
errors can occur but we educate our clients in depth on this and try to
make sure that it is minimized.
4. None of the clients were on an aggressive reverse. The vast majority
were on a conservative reverse
5. While not inclusion criteria, it’s worth noting that of the 55 subjects, only
4 were men and 51 were women. Additionally, 1 subject is entered 3 times
as she underwent 3 reverse diets during the period assessed, and another client was used twice as she underwent 2 reverse diets during that
time. All data was tested for outliers with regards to weight change and
increase in calories and no outliers were identified.
6. All subjects resistance trained. Most of them did some form of cardiovascular exercise as well. However, we did not increase their cardiovascular exercise and in fact, we decreased it progressively in the majority of subjects.
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
Their average starting calories were 1493 calories per day.
Their average starting body weights were 64.5 kg. We sadly didn’t have
enough body fat measures to include that data.
The average length of reverse diets was 16.1 weeks.
Their average ending calories were 2220 calories per day
Their average ending body weights were 66.1 kg.
That means on average they increased their calories by 727 calories per day
Their body weight only increased on average by 1.6 kg.
We ran various statistical analysis on the data but probably the one that is most
worth reporting is the test of a Pearson Correlation Coefficient. This test examines whether or not two variables have a significant relationship with each other.
We compared the increase in calories during the reverse diet to the change in
weight amongst our 55 subjects undergoing reverse diets. We returned an r=0.051
with a p value of 0.714. This means that it is highly unlikely that these two variables
were associated with each other. For reference, a perfect association is an r=1.0.
That is, as you increase one variable, the other increases in exactly the same proportion. A large correlation coefficient is considered to be greater than an r>0.50,
a moderate r=0.30-0.49, and an r<0.29 is considered a small correlation. The r val-
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ue for calories increased vs. weight increase was 0.051 which is extremely small,
indicating that it is highly unlikely the increase in calories was predictive of the
change in weight. Further, the p value was very large, confirming that it is very
unlikely that the extremely small correlation was statistically significant.
If calories in versus calories out were independent variables you would expect
to see a good correlation between calories in vs. weight gain. We did not observe that. What that means is it appears we were able to increase their calories quite disproportionate to any small gain in weight on average. But weight
and calories are different units and perhaps we aren’t examining it the right
way. That is weight is ultimately smaller in units compared to something like
calories, so comparing the absolute change may not tell the whole story (nevermind that running a pearson correlation actually corrects for this)? So we
re-analyzed the data looking at the percent change of body weight vs. the percent change in calories. On average, our subjects increased their calories by
50.5% over their starting calories. Their body weight however, only increased
by 2.7%. Just based on the eyeball test, by increasing calories in a controlled
manner, it appeared we were able to avoid large increases in body weight, but
were still able to increase TDEE by a large amount.
kcal Intake
PERCENT INCREASE
Body Weight
TIME
Figure 11.1: Calorie intake and corresponding body weight values from reverse dieting.
CONCLUSION AND CASE STUDIES
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Just to provide perspective on the range of responses, the largest increase in
body weight amongst all subjects was a 12.3% increase in body weight over a
20 week reverse diet. This was actually my (Holly here) reverse and it’s important to note that of the weight I gained (7.5 kg), The largest decrease in weight
was a -4.75% decrease in body weight over a 14 week reverse and this person
actually increased their caloric intake by 80% during that time! The largest increase in calories was in a subject who increased their caloric intake by 92.6%
over 14 weeks and their body weight only increased by 0.57%! This person also
had the largest weekly average increase in calories of 6.6% increase in calories
per week. The smallest increase in calories was 9.4% over 11 weeks and this
person gained 3.7% in body weight. We have shown these extremes to demonstrate that while averages may predict what will happen over a range of data,
individuals may respond differently.
Now, it’s possible that they just gained so little weight because we added in calories very slowly. However, if we had added 726 kcal right away when they started with us, we suspect the weight gain would have been significantly greater
over time as the body’s energy dissipation systems would not have been given time to gradually adapt and it’s likely they may have gained more weight.
Indeed, in studies where subjects have been immediately overfed by approximately 50% of calories, the average (weighted) increase in weight has been
2.8 kg.1 Therefore, our subjects gained 43% less weight than would have been
predicted based on scientific research. HOWEVER, it’s important to note, our
data is not scientific research and it was in free living subjects. We have simply included the scientific data for speculation and tenuous analysis of what
could explain what we have observed. Could what we observed end up not being meaningful? It’s possible, but unlikely in our opinion. Others may disagree
and that’s completely fine. We want to emphasize that we do not think reverse
dieting is magic, it is merely a tool in the tool box. Whether or not you choose to
implement it and how you choose to implement it is up to you.
1. (2017, December 1). The Effects of Overfeeding on Body Composition: The Role of .... Retrieved December 4, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29399253
CONCLUSION AND CASE STUDIES
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Individual Case Studies
Aria Adamy
Aria came to me (Layne) in early 2014 and was a bit of a wreck. She had been
improperly coached by a major US competition bikini team and had been very
restricted for well over a year (under 1200 kcal/day) but was beginning to binge
eat and then over-restrict in response to the binges in order to try to keep her
weight down and keep competing. She had originally competed under 105 lbs
and was now above 120 lbs and climbing. She wanted to do a conservative reverse which I was skeptical of based on her current situation. We started her at
135 protein, 105 carbohydrate, and 40 fat and 1320 calories. For the first month
she struggled with compliance so we kept raising her macros until after a few
months she was starting to get consistent with compliance.
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Aria really struggled with the reverse and at first, I was having to talk her off a
ledge nearly every week, especially when she started putting on weight. But
I assured her that this is what she needed in order to recover, normalize her
metabolic rate, and that continuing to restrict was only going to lead to more
binges and weight gain. It was a slow grind, but over the course of 10 months
we were able to bring Aria’s carbs over 300g and fats over 70g. She gained a
little bit less than 10 lbs during that process, but keep in mind that much of that
weight gain came early in the process when she was still struggling with binging. Looking back and knowing what I know now, I probably would have been
a bit more aggressive with her at the start, but I suppose that’s how even as
coaches, we learn and improve. She started her contest prep just under 130 lbs
and ended up competing around 107-108 if I recall correctly. It was a relatively
easy prep. She never felt like she was killing herself to get in shape and never
had to do excessive cardio. After it was over, she never regained a bunch of
weight, in fact she never got over 115 lbs, even though we got her macros up
to around 135g protein, 250g carbohydrate and 65g fat. The following year we
dieted her for another series of shows and it was even easier. In fact, we got to
the point where Aria was able to maintain within ~5 lbs of her stage weight year
round and still eat over 135g protein, 200g carbs, and 60g of fat per day. Aria
went on to win an IFBB Pro Card in bikini and place top 5 at her first pro show.
We worked together for several years until late 2017 when Aria decided she
wanted a change in direction. In all fairness, I was going through a lot of personal issues and wasn’t able to devote my full attention to coaching at that time.
So we parted ways with no hard feelings. Aria worked with a coach who had
quite a different approach to post show weight management than I did, and I’m
not saying that coach’s method of doing things was wrong, but in my opinion,
it wasn’t right for Aria. This coach was much more aggressive with increasing
Aria’s calories and she put on much more weight than she liked. When it came
time to take it off, she found that she had to be more restrictive and didn’t enjoy
the process as much. We began working together again about a year after Aria
left. She was at the end of a prep and her macros were very low, her carbs were
at 75g and fats were about 30g at a body weight of around 105. We reverse dieted her up to 115 lbs and got her macros to around 260g carbs and 65g fats then
brought her back in for the 2019 season. She got back into first callouts and
never had to drop her carbs under 100g per day or her fats under 40g per day.
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Aria is the perfect example of how multiple reverses that are done correctly
tend to accumulate and results in better and better results each time. I have
seen this happen time and time again with clients. If they diet properly, then
handle the diet after the diet properly, things end to get better and better. If
they diet improperly, then handle the post diet period improperly, things can
become worse and worse as this is repeated.
Here is what Aria had to say about the process: “I have done multiple reverse
diets since 2014, after every competition prep and even during prep between
competitions. My most successful reverses have been under the guidance of
Dr Layne Norton. I am so excited for this book! Many times the reverse is more
difficult than the actual diet itself but it is worth it! Trust me, my 2017-2018
post show was proof! You’ve worked so hard to achieve your fat loss goals, the
last thing you want is to regain it all back. It doesn’t matter if you are a compet-
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itive physique athlete or someone who wants to love how you look. A proper
reverse diet can help you get back to a sustainable caloric intake AND maintain
your fat loss goals. It is a wise investment in your metabolic future.”
Shelley Beaty
Shelley is a 47 year old mum of 2, who came to me (Holly) in February of 2019,
and was eager to begin a diet in the lead up to her and her husband’s 20th wedding anniversary. Shelley has a background in endurance sports events, with a
career spanning some 12 years, competing in multiple triathlons and Ironman
events, for those of you who don’t know what this involves, an Ironman event
includes a 3.8km swim, 180km bike ride and a 42km run. These events require
some serious preparation and an absolute commitment to training.
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In the first images you see above, Shelley weighs 138.6 lbs, and she is in a really
great place physique wise, and her calorie intake were also in a great place if
compare her reported intake to Table 9.1 from chapter 9 regarding normal calorie intake. At the time she contacted me, Shelley was consuming on average
2100 kcals per day and we estimated body fat being ~17%. She had just begun
a new resistance training program which included 5 days per week with about
120 mins of LISS cardio.
Shelley’s wedding anniversary as 14 weeks away, so we planned to diet her for
12 weeks, allowing for 2 weeks post diet to make a start on a reverse to help get
her calories back up for a more enjoyable anniversary with less food restriction,
rather than dieting her right into this special occasion and having very little
dietary flexibility.
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Shelley hoped to lose approx. 8-10 lbs over the 12 weeks and we also wanted to
incorporate diet breaks, (as discussed in the previous chapters, diet breaks are
periods of time out of a deficit, where one eats at their maintenance). These
were included not only to make the dieting process more enjoyable, but also
help minimize lean body mass loss and unnecessary reductions in resting metabolic rate which have been shown in the literature to occur more readily in
continuous style of dietary interventions. We targeted a weekly rate of weight
loss of around 1.1 lbs per week. That is, 10 lbs of targeted weight loss / 9 weeks
of time in a deficit. We added diet breaks at weeks 3, 7 and 10.
Based on these time constraints, Shelley would be losing approximately 0.07%
body weight per week, which falls within our moderate fat loss definition. More
explanation of this can be found in our book ‘Fat Loss Forever’ and ‘The Complete Contest Prep Guide’.
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By the end of the 12 weeks, Shelley achieved her all time best physique and weighed
129.2 lbs. Here is a quick and dirty table detailing her fat loss intervention.
Week
Weight (lbs)
Calories
Pro (g)
Carbs (g)
Fat (g)
Week 1
138.6
1717
127
174
57
Week 2
137.0
1663
127
165
55
Week 3
136.7
1576
127
150
52
Week 4
136.7
1906
127
210
62
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Week 5*
135.4
1491
127
140
47
Week 6*
135.2
1348
127
120
40
Week 7
133.9
1763
127
190
55
Week 8*
133.3
1348
127
120
40
Week 9*
131.6
1348
127
120
40
Week 10*
131.1
1618
127
165
50
Week 11*
130.8
1348
127
120
40
Week 12
129.2
1348
127
120
40
Week 13
129
1513
127
150
45
Table 11.1: Macronutrient targets, total calories and weight throughout 12 week diet intervention.
As you can see, Shelley looks absolutely awesome by the end of her diet, and
keep in mind she is not a competitor, so I want to emphasise that great things
can be achieved by non competitors when you start in a good place and apply
optimal dieting strategies.
Since this time, Shelley has undertaken a reverse diet, and now at the present
time of writing this book (December 2019), has completed some 31 weeks of reverse dieting and will continue to maintain and / or make small calorie increases
while exerting her efforts towards growing her glutes for a show in August 2020.
Shelley’s weight has indeed increased from a very lean 129.2 lbs up to 135.4 in
the present photo shown above.
Interestingly, you will note she has not yet returned to her original starting
weight, and her calorie intake is now sitting at a very manageable 2438 kcals
per day 150g Protein, 270g carbs and 82g Fat. Just to make this clear, she is
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154
now 3.2 lbs lighter than when she began working with me, and is now consuming 338 kcals more than her previous reported intake every day.
Shelley has maintained her resistance training at 5 – 6 sessions per week, and
we have been able to reduce her planned LISS to an average of 80 -100 min
which is less than when she started. Now Shelley has obviously gained some
lean body mass which some might say completely accounts for her increased
caloric intake as muscle is more metabolically active tissue. We estimate she
gained 3 lbs of lean body mass, now not all of that is muscle but let’s assume it
is. Muscle is estimated to only burn an additional 6 kcal/lb per day at rest. So
this would equate to an additional 18 calories per day for Shelley. This is not
nearly enough to account for her increased caloric intake while maintaining her
current weight. Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that quite a bit of the increase in her TDEE is via a combination of BMR & NEAT adaptation.
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Jack Dakin
Jack is a 29 year old male who came to work with me in October 2018 initially
for fat loss, but with the long term goal of improving his physique while doing so
on higher calories. His starting body weight was 203 lbs and wished to lose 20
lbs over a 16 week period. His reported maintenance calories at this time were
~2600 kcals per day.
During the 16 weeks we included 4 diet breaks, so he spent a total of 12 weeks in
a calorie deficit, and therefore his weekly target rate of loss was approximately
1.6 lbs which falls within our modest rate of weight loss 0.08%. Again this was
to make the diet process overall more enjoyable, while minimising an excessive
amount of lean body mass or significant decreases in his resting metabolic
rate. Jack ended his diet 16 weeks later at 182 lbs which was an excellent outcome. See images and a table detailing his fat loss intervention. Note that diet
breaks were included at weeks 8, 11 and 14. You may also notice that the calorie
increase indicated as diet breaks are not at Jacks calculated maintenance as
evidence by his continued weight loss during this time. Insea, these planned
breaks were still keeping Jack in a slight deficit as we wanted to accelerate the
fat loss, while still being able to provide him with some relief from dieting and
calorie restriction.
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Week
Weight
Calories
Protein
Carb
Fat
Week 1
203
2109
165
225
61
Week 2
202
2057
172
205
61
Week 3
200
2057
172
205
61
Week 4
199
1837
172
150
61
Week 5
199
1743
172
140
55
Week 6
198
1640
172
130
48
Week 7
196
1640
172
130
48
Week 8*
196
1783
172
150
55
Week 9
194
1538
172
118
42
Week 10
193
1538
172
118
42
Week 11*
192
1783
172
150
55
Week 12
190
1537
168
115
45
Week 13
187
1537
168
115
45
Week 14*
186
1720
168
145
52
Week 15
184
1624
168
130
48
Week 16
182
1624
168
130
48
REVERSE
182
1796
168
155
56
Table 11.2: Jack Dakin's fat loss intervention. * Indicates a diet break.
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From here, Jack went on to complete a 30 week Reverse diet with the goal of
increasing his lean body mass and helping increase his resting metabolic rate.
During this time Jack did increase his weight back up to 199 lbs, however he
was also able to increase his calories up to very sustainable amount of 3155 per
day, 190g protein, 285g carbs, and 95g fat. This is a 555 kcal increase in calories
from when he started with me, and to further add to this, he was able to do so
while maintaining his total body weight some 4 lbs below his starting weight.
Jack has continued to work with me and is currently 10 weeks into his second fat
loss program at the time of writing this book. He will be aiming to achieve an even
leaner physique with greater amount of lean body mass than his previous fat loss
efforts, and ideally achieve a similar, if not slightly higher end of diet calorie intake.
Jacks body composition has improved significantly since beginning,
Rasmus Hansen
Rasmus was a contest prep client of mine who started with me in 2013 and I
worked on and off with for many years. He was someone who we were able to
get his energy expenditure pretty darn high in the offseason (over 4000 kcal
per day) and maintain his weight. Interestingly, he would need constant adjustments during his dieting phase as he would plateau quite often. During his first
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prep with me, by the end of the fat loss phase at his last show he was eating
2295 calories (275/175/55) per day on his low calorie days and around 3000 calories on his 2 weekly high days (250/360/60 if I recall correctly). This was his
condition after his final show.
Then we began to reverse diet him at what I would consider to be in between a
conservative & moderate reverse and crazy stuff started happening. He began
dropping more weight and body fat. After 8 weeks he was up to 3365 calories
(250/400/85) per day and got LEANER by quite a bit.
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This is where it gets really interesting. Even though Rasmus’ caloric intake was
up by quite a bit, he still felt awful. He had low energy, low libido, and felt ‘down’
a lot indicating he was not nearly recovered from the diet. We decided to make
more aggressive jumps in calories and after about 12 weeks he had put on some
body fat, but was feeling much better and happily traded the increase in body
fat for feeling better. This is something important to note especially for competitors. Just because you can get your calories up higher and maintain leanness, doesn’t mean you should. It also doesn’t mean you won’t feel like trash
even if your calories get pretty high. This is why we advocate for more aggressive reverse diets in a post show setting at least for the first few weeks.
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Lauren Standbridge
Lauren might be my (Layne) most favorite reverse diet case study of all. Lauren
is a great example of why not to give up on a reverse just because some weight
is gained initially. When Lauren came to me she was maintaining her body
weight on just over 1200 calories per day. Now I know what you are thinking “she
must be underreporting.” It is possible, but I had her do dietary recalls and food
logs with me and whenever she screwed up even a little bit (I’m talking overeating by 10-20g of carbs on one day) she would immediately notify me. I am
inclined to believe someone like her who was so forthcoming when she would
make mistakes. Lauren was in the difficult position of being on low calories but
also having more body fat than she wanted. Lauren did not want to increase
her calories, she wanted to lose fat NOW. I was able to convince her that what
she was doing wasn’t working and she needed to try another approach and so
we began a conservative reverse. So in August of 2017, Lauren began a reverse
with me at 1260 calories: 125g protein, 100g carbs, and 40g fat weighing 144 lbs.
Over the course of the next 35 weeks, she gained 26 lbs, taking her to 170 lbs
and her calories were at 1793 (130/190/57). That is a lot of weight to gain for only
having increased her calories by 500. This would lead some people to say she’s
a ‘non-responder’ and she should give up on it. I know MANY people that would
have. I told Lauren to trust me and if she was gaining that much weight on such
low calories, what was dieting going to be like? Lauren was not comfortable
with her body fat but I told her to focus on lifting heavy and reminded her that
delaying gratification is what makes all the difference in the world. Thankfully,
she listened. She peaked at 175 lbs and was eating 2190 calories (130/260/70) at
week 54.
Then, the unthinkable happened. Lauren started losing weight. From week 54
to week 77 she lost 6 lbs, dropping to 169 lbs, while her calories climbed to 2880
(130/400/85)! Now think about where she was at week 35 (1793 calories) at 170
lbs versus where she went to by week 77 (2880 calories) and lost a pound overall.
She added over a THOUSAND calories and didn’t gain weight (overall, it did go up
but came back down)! Yes she built significant lean body mass which helped a
ton, but we did not increase her training volume enough to account for the difference in the calorie increases vs. weight loss that we observed. Even though
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she was already at a level of calories that would have likely been conducive to
weight loss when she hit 2300-2400 calories, I convinced her to keep going. I
kept reminding her to keep her eyes on the prize. “Don’t sacrifice what you want
most for what you want right now.” She listened and she kept pushing forward.
After week 77 came the fun part, we started dieting her. I went with the strategy of having her do 2 aggressive deficit weeks (with 2 higher calorie days each
of those weeks slightly below maintenance calories, so a total of only 10 days in
an aggressive deficit out of 14), followed by a 1 week diet break at maintenance
calories. Her deficit days during the 2 weeks started at 1775 kcal (150/170/55)
for 5 days per week, with 2 high days per week at 2370 (135/300/70). This gave
her a weekly average calorie intake of 1860 during her deficit weeks. Her diet
break weeks were set at 2510 calories (145/325/70). This may have been slightly
below her maintenance but I wanted to make sure we stayed in the middle to
low end of her maintenance calorie range. She had worked so hard for so long
I wanted to make sure she saw some really good initial weight loss to motivate
her, and boy did she. She never lost a ton of weight in any one week, but we
have been repeating this 2 week diet, 1 week break from week 77 to week 124
(current) and she is down to 148 lbs and looks significantly better than she did
at 144 lbs when we started. We have reduced her calories modestly since she
has been dieting she has incurred some metabolic adaptation (which is normal). Her calories during her deficit weeks are averaging 1656 and during her
diet break weeks she is consuming 2354 calories. She is losing weight on MORE
calories now than she was gaining weight on when we started! Think about that
for a moment and consider the ramifications. She put in over a YEAR of work
reverse dieting to EARN the right to enter a fat loss phase the CORRECT way.
She could have continued yo-yo dieting and getting the same results she had
been getting. She made the decision and COMMITTED TO THE PROCESS. Now
she is reaping the rewards and because she did it the right way, she will get to
keep them for the long term.
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I’ve been proud of many clients, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had one I’m more proud
of than Lauren. I’m convinced 99% of people would have quit within the first
12 weeks. She put in over 2 years of work and now is on her way towards her
goal physique and making awesome progress. This is the type of commitment
it takes. If you want to believe in unicorns and fairy dust, go try a 4, 8, 12 week
challenge off some fitspo on Instagram. Let me know if you keep it off for any
reasonable period of time. If you want lasting results, you will have to put in a
LOT of work over a LONG period of time!
Lauren said about the process:
“Reverse dieting was probably one of the hardest but equally rewarding processes I’ve ever undertook. When I contacted Layne I was in a position where
due to the post competition diet I was given I had gained over 45lbs in a matter
of a couple of months. I was unhappy with my body image and looking for a
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quick fix and I found it hard to adjust to the idea of increasing my calorie intake
through the fear of gaining more weight. I also found it hard to accept that I
wasn’t in a situation where I could lose the weight I had gained and I would have
to remain at this body weight for potentially a long time. However in the end I
trusted Layne as my coach and followed the reverse diet plan for a year and
a half. By the end of my reverse diet I was able to maintain my bodyweight on
near to 3000 calories, I was mentally and physically healthier, more energetic
and much stronger. I was in a position where I was then able to diet again in
a healthier and sustainable way, and I am now losing weight consuming over
500 calories more than the calorie intake that caused me to gain such a vast
amount of weight. Reverse dieting was at first a very difficult and prolonged
process but it has definitely been worth being patient and sticking at it. I am so
unbelievably thankful for Layne’s help and knowledge on reverse dieting and I
am looking forward to another short reverse diet before dieting again to further
reduce my body fat.”
We hope you’ve enjoyed this book. If you choose to undertake a reverse diet, for
many of you it will be more difficult than any fat loss phase you’ve ever done, especially if you have a long history of yo-yo dieting, but the only way to break that
cycle is to BREAK THE CYCLE! As the back cover of Fat Loss Forever states:
Be tenacious
Be persistent
Be patient
Be consistent
Be committed
NEVER QUIT
Thank you,
Layne and Holly