Reverse Dieting can Reverse Your Metabolism

Highlights:

• Reverse dieting is the new trend that social media users have picked up
• It is the idea that you consume more to lose weight
• But this diet comes with its demerits

Videos on social media are advocating a new method of eating that appears to turn diet — and weight maintenance - on its head. Reverse dieting is described by social media influencers as a strategy to ‘train your metabolism’ to eat more food while not gaining weight. Bodybuilders who drop weight before a competition and then employ this approach to gradually recover to their pre-competition size popularized it. The idea of eating more and maintaining a weight loss is certainly appealing, but does it work?

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All About Reverse Dieting

Here's everything you need to know about reverse dieting, including the science behind it and what professionals think about it.

What exactly is ‘reverse dieting’? Dr. Lilian de Jonge, an associate professor at George Mason University's Department of Nutrition and Food Studies, says that reverse dieting frequently requires adding back 50 to 100 calories each day — usually in the form of protein — in weekly chunks.

To put it in context, that's roughly the number of calories in a quarter-cup of cottage cheese or a large hard boiled egg, so it's not a significant increase in food. Continue in this pattern, adding 50 to 100 calories the following week, and so on, until you reach a calorie level where your weight grows, at which point you'd cease putting food back to stabilize your weight.

The benefit of relying on protein is that it fills you up and helps grow and maintain muscles, both of which help you keep a stable weight. Others conceive of reverse dieting in a broader sense, so you could add one-half to a whole piece of fruit or around one-quarter cup of cooked whole grains for the same number of calories as the protein options.

In theory, reverse dieting can help you gradually liberalize your diet and reach the calorie level at which you can maintain your weight comfortably. Unfortunately, there is currently no scientific evidence that reverse dieting has any effect on your metabolism, and the practice has several disadvantages.

As you lose weight, what happens to your metabolism? Your metabolism adjusts to a smaller physique when you lose weight. This is known as metabolic adaptation, and data suggests that your body applies a variety of adaptive strategies (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete

Go to source).

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Here is how it Works

As you cut calories, your body perceives that you are providing less fuel, so your metabolism slows to conserve energy. According to De Jong, this is an evolutionary response left over from a time when food was scarce all year. Yet, because food is now readily available 24 hours a day, this provides a disadvantage.

Because a smaller body burns fewer calories, your metabolism naturally slows as you lose weight. If you've started a tough exercise regimen, you may conserve energy while you're not exercising, which is known as limited energy expenditure. When you burn fewer calories outside of your workout, your overall calorie burn remains pretty consistent. Hence, for example, on days when you exercise, you may inadvertently spend more time sitting.

These factors make losing weight difficult (but not impossible), which is why the concept of reverse dieting is so enticing.

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Does Reverse Dieting help you Lose Weight?

There is no evidence to support this. Gradually reintroducing food following weight reduction is a sensible and common technique utilized in both research studies and clinical practice, according to Dr. Robert Kushner, medical director of the Center for Lifestyle Medicine at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. But, the objective for doing so is to gradually increase your meals while keeping an eye on the scale to ensure you're maintaining rather than gaining weight.

What About Fooling your Metabolism?

That's a catchy spin, he argues, without providing any proof.

Can reverse dieting help you avoid gaining weight once you've lost it? Maybe. According to Keith-Thomas Ayoob, associate clinical professor emeritus in the Department of Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a clinical investigation is now underway.

There’s no scientific evidence for reverse dieting. "It doesn’t mean it won’t work, but finding out takes sound studies and time," he says. According to Kushner, "slowly reintroducing more food after a period of dieting makes sense because it enables you to expand the range of things you eat and feel more in control while also analyzing any weight changes." Thus, if you notice a jump on the scale when you eat more, you can decide whether to reduce your intake or work on maintaining your current weight.

Ayoob concurs, noting that maintaining weight requires a commitment to a lifestyle change. "If you treat things as though the 'diet is done' and restart old eating habits, you will, without a doubt, regain the weight," he warns.

Are there any Advantages to Reverse Dieting?

If you're on a tight diet to lose weight, relaxing the rules may decrease the emotional impact by making your food choices feel less restrictive. At the same time, it may assist you in identifying a more manageable calorie amount as you focus on weight stabilization.

That's because when people strive to lose weight, they frequently engage in unsustainable activities, and after a while, deprivation sets in — as do old eating patterns. In this instance, reverse dieting may assist you in establishing a more realistic and enjoyable eating routine while also assisting you in maintaining a lower weight.

In Conclusion

It is beneficial to continue the habits that helped you lose weight to avoid weight regain, but this is easier to do when you build and practice healthy weight reduction techniques. If your diet is excessively restrictive, gradually increasing your calorie intake can be a beneficial (though time-consuming) technique, but not always because it hacks your metabolism. Instead, it's more likely that it's assisting you in identifying a sustainable balance between an eating and workout regimen.

Meanwhile, keep in mind that weight fluctuates due to a variety of factors, such as a large meal, water retention, hormones, and more. Yet intensive calorie counting and scale checking can be unpleasant and distressing. If this harms your emotional well-being, that is not a beneficial practice. Those with a history of disordered eating or eating disorders, on the other hand, should avoid purposeful weight loss and reverse dieting.

Finally, keep in mind that losing weight is more than just a matter of calorie in-calorie out. Your body is complex, and it is more than that. Furthermore, pursuing thinness is neither obligatory nor advantageous; healthy bodies come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Reference:

1. Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943438/)

Source-Medindia