How To Eat More Without Gaining Fat - 5 Steps Of Reverse Dieting
“Be flexible, but stick to your principles.”
Key Takeaways
Reverse dieting makes it possible to eat more calories and more food, get stronger, and gain more muscle, all while minimizing fat gain.
The primary principles you’ll want to follow when reverse dieting are:
Determine your tracking method
Eat the right amount of calories
Eat plenty of protein
Train hard and stay active
Adjust along the way
Signs that it’s time to stop reverse dieting include:
You’re not comfortable with gaining any more fat
Your hunger is back to a normal or sustainable level
You’ve been reverse dieting for 6+ months
After you have completed a successful reverse diet, you’ll have packed on more muscle, gained minimal fat, and your metabolism will be roaring.
If you’d like to learn how to reverse diet the right way, from someone who has been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale, you can fill out a coaching application here.
Full Story
What if I told you that you could eat more calories and more food, get stronger, and gain more muscle, all while minimizing fat gain? No quick fixes, secret hacks, or expensive supplements required. All you need is an understanding of how to reverse diet. Lucky for you, I’m going to tell you everything you need to know.
In part 1, we discussed:
Who should reverse diet - people that have lost a moderate amount of weight (5-25lbs) and now want to increase calorie intake while minimizing fat gain
Why we have unrealistic body standards, in the first place - Media, society, and ourselves
Warning signs of being too lean for too long - Poor mood and wellbeing, reproductive problems, hormonal dysregulation, reduced temperature regulation, risk of death
The benefits of reverse dieting - Faster metabolism, increased NEAT, higher work capacity, improved digestion, muscle gain
How not to reverse diet - Going back to your pre-diet calorie intake, continuing to eat very low calories, eating very little protein, eating a diet that consists primarily of ultra processed foods
Today, we’ll cover:
The 5 most important steps to reverse dieting
How to know when to stop your reverse diet
What to do after reverse dieting
Why mistakes are good and success isn’t a straight line
How I can help you create a personalized reverse dieting plan
Your 5 Step Plan
The primary principles you’ll want to follow when reverse dieting are:
Determine your tracking method
Eat the right amount of calories
Eat plenty of protein
Train hard and stay active
Adjust along the way
Let’s explore each point in detail.
Determine Your Tracking Method
Before you worry about how many calories and how much protein to eat, you need to first develop a method of tracking your food.
Trust me, it’s not that complicated.
Tracking food is just like keeping tabs on your finances. To be financially successful, you need to have a general idea of how much you earn, spend, and save. You don’t need to know your net worth down to the cent, but keeping track of your overall income, expenses, and patterns over time helps you save enough money to succeed and plan for the future. The same is true for calories.
To keep track of your food intake, you have two options:
Count calories - entering your food into an app, such as MyFitnessPal or Cronometer, and hitting specific protein and calorie targets.
Eyeball it - estimate your intake based on “hand sized” portion sizes (1).
Palm = portion of protein
Fist = portion of vegetables
Cupped hand = portion of carbs
Thumb = portion of added fats
Calorie counting is not a prerequisite to making progress, but it helps. Even though you don’t need to check your bank statement every day, keeping tabs on your cash flow makes it easier to have financial success over the long term.
As long as you develop a reliable and sustainable system of awareness around how much you’re eating, you will have success.
2. Eat Enough Calories
Priority numero dos of reverse dieting is to increase your calorie intake back to a healthy range. Again, consuming too few calories for too long can wreak havoc on your hormonal health, mood, and generally make life miserable. The first step to increasing your calorie intake - while also minimizing fat gain - is to find your new maintenance calories.
Allow me to explain. Your maintenance calorie range is the amount of calories you can eat that results in you maintaining your body weight over time. For instance, if I eat between 2700-2900 calories each day, I will maintain my body weight of 172-174lbs. If I eat significantly more or less than that over time, or my activity level changes, I will gain or lose weight.
Your bodyweight, activity levels, gender, age, and your amount of muscle mass all impact your maintenance calorie level. Generally, being younger, more active, male, and maintaining high amounts of muscle increase your maintenance calories. If you’re older, less active, female, or don’t have high amounts of lean mass, I have bad news…
Just kidding. If you’re not able to eat as many calories as others without gaining fat, it’s not because life is unfair (maybe a little bit), it’s just science. If you’re at a disadvantage right now - metabolically speaking - we have ways to change that. More on that later.
Your maintenance calories also change over time. If you lose weight and go from 170lbs to 150lbs in a few months, or if you age 20 years and lose 1lb of muscle mass/year, your maintenance calories will have decreased as a result of your body no longer needing to haul around that extra 20lbs.
To find your new, post-weight loss maintenance calorie level, check out this handy dandy calculator from Precision Nutrition (2).
Simply enter your information, select “improve health” as your goal, and viola! Out pops an estimation of your current maintenance calories. Start eating that amount of calories. If after a few weeks your weight spikes up 5lbs or you keep losing weight, something's off - either increase or decrease your intake by a few hundred calories. If you end up maintaining your weight (within about a +/- 2lbs range), you’re golden.
3. Eat Plenty Of Protein
Protein is the key to successful reverse dieting. If you want to cut out carbs or eat the minimum amount of fat, go right ahead. I don’t advise it, but eating a low carb or low fat diet won’t prevent you from making progress. Eating a very low protein diet, on the other hand, is an absolutely atrocious idea.
When you’re trying to gain muscle without gaining fat, a high protein diet is essential for 5 reasons. Protein…
Sends a muscle building signal to your body
Prevents muscle breakdown
Improves recovery between workouts
Boosts your metabolism
Makes you feel full
Check out this article if you don’t know how much protein is enough or don’t know how to start including more protein in your diet. In general, .7-1g of protein/lb of bodyweight is a good place to start (i.e. if you weigh 100lbs, shoot for 70-100g of protein/day).
If you prefer to not consume animal products and think that the only good sources of protein have (had) eyes, check out these 2 articles (here and here). Spoiler alert - you can be very lean, muscular, and strong by eating a plant-based diet.
4. Train Hard And Stay Active
Once you’ve figured out how to track and how many calories/how much protein to eat, then comes the fun part - training. Exercise is not just a way to burn calories. If it was, 1000 burpees would be the best workout every time. I’m not sure about many things in this universe, but burpees not being the best is one of them).
In addition to burning calories, activity is a useful tool that we can wield in a number of different ways. When programmed correctly, exercise can help us:
Build muscle
Speed up metabolism
Burn fat
Improve insulin sensitivity (+ reduce risk of type 2 diabetes)
Support hormonal health
Want to know what all of these benefits have in common? They help you gain muscle while minimizing fat gain.
During a reverse diet, aim to resistance train for 30-60 minutes 3-5x/week and shoot for 8-12k steps/day. Unless you enjoy it or are under a time restraint, there is no need to perform HIIT while reverse dieting.
Performing HIIT has plenty of benefits, but it’s a more stressful form of cardio compared to low impact walking/biking/cycling/rowing. In fact, it may even interfere with your ability to push hard and progress during your resistance training workouts.
If you don’t know how to design your own program, don’t fret. You can check out this one that’s worked for me in the past or consult a professional coach (ahem) that will tailor-make a program based on your history, goals, and lifestyle.
5. Adjust Along The Way
Now that your plan is all set, it’s time to start. To determine if you’re moving in the right direction, here are some objective markers you can use to track your progress:
Bodyweight - Weigh yourself every day, every week, or every month. The day-to-day fluctuations don’t matter. The long term trends over the weeks and months do.
Performance - Getting stronger and/or feeling less fatigued are great signs of progress.
Waist/Hip Measurements (or belt size) - If you don’t own a scale or don’t like to weigh yourself measuring your hips and waist is an effective way to gage changes in body composition.
Progress Pictures - Just like weighing yourself, there is no need to snap a pic every day. Every week or month will work. Because your scale weight does not always reflect changes in body composition, pictures, how your clothes fit, and how you feel are more reliable indicators
Subjective markers of progress you can use include:
Energy Levels - Energy should be going up.
Hunger Levels - Hunger should be going down.
Mood - Personally, eating more calories always makes me a happier guy.
Digestion - If your digestion is off, you may want to adjust how many calories you’re eating or reconsider your food choices.
Be flexible but adjust when necessary. If you’re able to increase calories over time and keep fat gain at bay, keep it rolling. If you find that you’re gaining too much fat too quickly, dial down the calories or dial up the activity.
Now What?
Although it would be a dream to keep eating more and more calories every month until the end of eternity, that’s not in your best interest.
There are no hard and fast rules. In general, signs that it’s time to stop reverse dieting include:
You’re not comfortable with gaining any more fat
Your hunger is back to a normal or sustainable level
You’ve been reverse dieting for 6+ months
After completing a reverse diet, you may want to start:
A maintenance phase (eating the amount of calories that allows you to maintain your bodyweight)
A massing phase (eating even more to continue to gain muscle)
Another fat loss phase (not recommended under most circumstances)
After completing a successful reverse diet, you’ll have packed on more muscle, gained minimal fat, and your metabolism will be roaring. The world is your oyster, get to shuckin.
If You Make Mistakes, You’re Doing It Right
Reverse dieting isn’t an exact science.
Your success will be determined by many factors and one that should not be understated is your previous experience with dieting reverse dieting. If you…
Have tracked your macros for years
Understand the basic principles inside and out
Know how to fine tune your training and nutrition to keep progressing toward your goals
….you will have an easier time than someone in the same position that has never even heard of the term “macro” in their life.
If this is your first time reverse dieting, you will experience ups and downs. It may not go perfectly. You may end up putting on more weight than you intended or continue to eat too few calories for too long. When you make mistakes along the way, understand that it’s a good thing!
Wrap Up - The Winding Road To Success
Making mistakes is the best way to learn. Without trial and error, how else are you going to find the strategies that work best for you? Learning from mistakes provides the wisdom and experience that facilitate progress. Remember, progress is never linear.
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However, having a coach in your corner will help you navigate the twists and turns. In other words, a coach can straighten out some of the kinks in your path to success and reduce the wasted time and frustration many endure on the way towards achieving an important goal.
If you’d like to learn how to reverse diet the right way, from someone who has been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale, you can fill out a coaching application here. If you’d like to….
Prevent excess fat gain
Eliminate unnecessary hunger
Minimize your errors and miscalculations
Take out the guesswork, so you don’t waste your time and efforts
….you can join the hoards of people I’ve helped transform their bodies and redefine their approach to health and fitness.
You can learn more about my personalized, 1 on 1 coaching service HERE.
You can schedule your FREE consultation HERE.
