• Author / Uploaded
• Marco Senzolo

• Categories
• Dieta
• Restricción de calorías
• Pérdida de peso
• Homeostasis energética
• Obesidad

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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

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INTRODUCTION

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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

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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

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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

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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 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

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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

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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.

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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 (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

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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.

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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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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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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