The diet after the diet: reverse dieting

What is a reverse diet? When working towards dropping body fat we must be in a calorie deficit. This means we are utilising and our body is burning through more calories for energy than we are consuming from our food. This is the basic principle of fat loss. 

The problem for many of us is that we can lose the weight/drop body fat but we can't maintain being on restricted calories forever and we then go back to our old habits and before we know it we've gained the weight back but even double fold! 

This is where reverse dieting comes in and it isn't very complex. With Aleigh we increased her calories in increments by 200 - 300 calories every 2 weeks until she landed back at maintenance calories. She has only gained 2kg since she got up on stage last 6 weeks ago and is eating more than she was at the start of her prep when she was 8kg heavier (left pic above). 

Reverse dieting, if done properly, can help to prevent substantial weight gain post dieting because we are slowly drip feeding the body more calories over a period of time which upregulates all the metabolic processes that get down-regulated and negatively impacted by dieting and the calories consumed are less likely to be stored as body fat because the body prioritises signalling  for these metabolic processes first. 

---