Hello, my beautiful people, and welcome back to another episode of Hot Healthy Never Hungry. We're talking about a fun topic today that I, you know, I have to fact check the records. I have to get the record straight. I don't know if I've done a full episode dedicated to reverse dieting, but we're going to do that today. We're going to talk about it, especially because I'm not holding back. This isn't your typical Instagram information on reverse dieting, where every darn person and trainer is shoving it down your throat, telling you, you need to eat more food. When in reality, girl, like you've gained weight. Do we need to be eating more food? We're going to set the record straight here. But reverse dieting does have a place and purpose. So we're going to get into it before that. I have to give a shout out to Jessie Am. She said, hopeful. I found this podcast while looking for an alternative to murder podcast. Okay, honey, I love a good murder doc. So we are truly murder and like the mafia. Very interesting to me. We are in great company. Anyway, she said, I figured out I might as well listen to something positive and start listening to words about health since what we put into our minds is so important. I hate how my body has become and I want to get back to feeling good about myself again. These episodes give me hope by the recommendations of simple, easy changes as incremental changes are actually sustainable. I also just purchased the 30-day meal plan. Woohoo, girlfriend. Thank you for giving me hope. Oh, I love this for you. Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. And I also hope you love the recipes inside of that plan. That literally was like the first digital meal plan product I created, not like just custom for one client, but thinking about how I wanted to kind of offer you guys easy options that like this meal plan is $29. Get your hands on it. It's so fun and easy. and we help you customize the calories too and put the recipes to your goals. I cannot wait to hear in 30, 60, 90 days time how that's going for you. And I'm so glad you're part of this community. If you guys also like this podcast, the only thing I ever ask is leave a rating review so more women can see and hear and know that the show is really the real deal when it comes to helping you guys lose weight. I'm so excited you're here. Let's dive into today's episode. And we actually have a question submitted by Kayla. So Kayla, take it away. Hi Lauren, my name is Kayla. I'm a huge fan of your podcast. I listen to it every week at the gym and I've lost a total of 25 pounds so far by listening to your advice and following the podcast every week. I still have a long ways to go, but I like to plan ahead. And lately I've been seeing a lot of information on the internet about reverse dieting. And I was curious on what your thoughts are on that and what the point is of it versus just starting to eat your calculated maintenance calories when you reach your goal weight. So if there are any benefits, how would you recommend going about incorporating it into your routine when you reach a goal weight? Okay, my girl Kayla, I think that's what I caught as your name. I am first just wanting to take a step back for a moment and say you are 25 pounds down. I know you said you're really just feeling like at the beginning of your journey, you have a significant more amount of weight you want to lose. but I just want to take a moment and say like you are doing it. That is a lot of weight. Oh my gosh. And you have put your head down. You've committed to it. You've already begun to see incredible progress. The journey is going to keep going for you. And I'm so excited. You know, when it comes to reverse dieting, it can be a very complicated topic, especially because the context of where you're at in your journey, how much weight you want to lose, and really how you're going about weight loss really is going to influence if this is even something you need to immediately have on your radar. So this episode, I wanted to cover four main important points when it comes to reverse dieting to give you the information that you need so you can make an informed decision about it, so you can understand if it's the thing that you should be kind of focusing on and learning more about and doing, and just setting the record straight. Because I feel like this is a very confusing topic, even for my clients. Probably it's like the biggest question I get when clients are towards the end of their coaching time with me and they've lost weight and then they're kind of seeing this type of content and they're like, okay, like when do I need to care about this, Lauren? What does that look like? So I'm going to cover four things today. Those four things are what is reverse dieting and really what is the point? Answering Kayla's question. I then also want to talk about the biggest mistake I see when it comes to reverse dieting I want to talk about who reverse dieting is really for and then ultimately answer the question is this approach necessary So starting at the beginning what is reverse dieting and really what is the point here? So for you to understand what is reverse dieting and really, you know, what the point is, we have to understand what a reverse diet is. So reverse diet, there's no like concrete scientific definition for this, but essentially what we're and people online are referring to is the reverse of trying to intentionally cut calories and lose weight. So reverse diet means we're not actually cutting out calories. We're intentionally adding back calories for metabolic benefit. And that metabolic benefit is important and can only be understood when you understand what happens when you cut calories. So when you think of cutting calories in a calorie deficit, you think of fat loss. What happens in a calorie opposite is obviously losing fat. What's important to understand about your body as you lose weight is you're not just losing weight. There is a slew of metabolic processes that are happening in addition to the weight loss that you're experiencing, which is really the outcome. So as you're losing weight, your weight is changing. Thus, your nutritional needs are changing. And part of the reason why your nutritional needs change is you actually have less body weight and mass to continue to need to fuel, right? And that's why someone 50 pounds heavier, they're going to have a higher resting metabolic rate and they're going to have typically a higher amount of maintenance calories, not because they have more muscle necessarily, right? But because they actually just have more weight to sustain. So as you lose weight, because you have less body that you're really keeping alive, you're going to change the amount of calories you consume. But what also happens when you reduce calories is your body begins to adjust to the amount of calories it's consuming. And that's what actually leads to plateaus. But this is also a survival mechanism because if you don't have access to food from a survival like cavewoman, caveman perspective, your body is adapting to that. saying, hey, okay, you're not giving me this food. I'm going to slow this process down. It's going to be harder to warm your body. Maybe if you get to a very low body fat percentage, that ding ding is going to turn on in your body where it's like, oh, maybe we're going to stop your period. And that's obviously very drastic examples, but your body stops and changes things when it isn't getting not just not what it needs, but as it continues to lose weight. Now, obviously, I don't want you to lose your period. I don't want you to be constantly cold. I don't want you to be miserable. That's not the goal of this. And some of these things I'm actually talking about very lightheartedly are very serious things. But for the majority of women on a fat loss journey, as you are reducing your calories, your body is adjusting to that. So then over time, you need to reduce calories further to have the same benefit and effect. But what can happen when you've reduced calories for such a sustained period of time is you've kind of suppressed your metabolism and you're functioning and maintaining your weight off of a lower amount of calories. Now, we see through a lot of scientific research, and this is a really heavily debated topic, but your maintenance calories do change. But sometimes, I mean, and I've worked with eating disorder, ladies and gentlemen, like I've seen drastic metabolic adaptation. That's really what I'm referring to. That can happen, but I will say candidly, in a coaching environment, I've done this for the past decade, when I work with women one-on-one, There are many times where women may think they're eating a very, very low amount of calories and suppress their metabolism and bodies. And sometimes that actually is not the case because that's a very drastic example. I've seen it for sure. And in those situations, a reverse diet is really powerful to reinstate normalcy, get their body, as I like to say, going on all cylinders, getting your metabolism, quote unquote, revved up, not scientific, but I'm going to use that expression. You know, that can be very advantageous. But for many people, you really have to identify, did we actually significantly suppress your appetite? And is a reverse diet necessary? For some people, reverse diet means we're adding calories back, we might see some weight gain, but we need this for the betterment of the long term. for other people when they're referring to reverse diet it's like let's add back like 150 calories where i'm like okay this is not like a full-blown reverse diet like you're you're eating towards maintenance again like and we're in a deficit for a short period of time so no reverse diets i think when we're thinking about true metabolic adaptation that has happened for a very sustained period of time and you've been under eating and your body has adapted and you're really eating a low amount of food and calories and nutrition you know for those people yes structured refeeding over sustained period of time not thinking about what happening to your weight but like slowly and gradually doing this is very necessary And the point would be to once again get your body back running on all cylinders getting you to the place where you fueling it appropriately Your body is good at metabolizing It's metabolizing and using food as fuel, and you're not so much in fight or flight mode anymore. And so this kind of leads me to point number two, which is the biggest mistake I see when it comes to reverse dieting. The biggest mistake that I consistently see when it comes to reverse dieting is this protocol being recommended to every single woman before a fat loss phase, which oftentimes is not necessary. And I see this working with women one-on-one. I mean, I think sometimes people talk about this, but it's like, are you actually consistently working with women and seeing how they eat? And I don't say this like, everyone's gluttonous, everyone's overeating. I'm right with you girls. I'm one of you. I'm part of this clan. We're together. But when we're thinking about after we've gained weight, for the majority of us, it's not coming from a place of I've restricted for a long period of time. You may have mentally restricted, but mental restriction is very different than actual physical. I've literally always stuck to a thousand calories no matter what for months on end. That's really under-eating, tremendously under-eating. I can be honest, like I felt restricted at times, but like by no means was I literally always eating like a thousand calories a day. Like I was binging, I was overeating. I was having these little things add up. And so, you know, I know for myself, especially after phases where I've gained weight, what really pisses me off when I have clients come to me is when they have been like, you know what, my trainer told me for six months, I really needed this reverse diet. It was gonna make such a difference for me. And, you know, the biggest mistake within this that I see, there's two mistakes actually within this, is one, the trainer putting you on this reverse diet and not explaining that you might gain weight because literally you're adding in more calories. And they're not really explaining the purpose of it. And I think when you can't explain the purpose of it and really why you need it, it becomes confusing for the client, aka you, because then you're doing this reverse diet thinking, oh, when I eat more, I'm gonna begin to eat less. But then you don't have expectations on the time this is gonna take and how you're gonna feel and what's the purpose of it. And when are you gonna go back into fat loss? because eating more calories only works for fat loss when you're not reverse dieting, but you're actually eating more so then you're actually able to consistently hit your weekly calorie deficit. See the difference there? It's very different. When I talk about eating more for fat loss, I'm referring to this. I'm referring to actually hitting your calorie deficits. You're allowing more food, the proper portions, actually eating a bigger volume of food versus maybe what you had before. So you're able to actually hit your deficit where I feel like a lot of people use reverse dieting and they're using it as this like marketing tool. That's like, I'm gonna have you eat more food and lose weight. and you're going to go from eating 1,200 calories to 2,000 calories a day, 2,500 calories a day. And it's like, girl, if you were not losing weight eating 1,200 calories, it's because you actually weren't eating at 1,200 calories because you were trying to eat that, but then you were binging your face off. So I think there's a lot of mismarketing and confusion for people. But the biggest mistake I see is, you know, trainers recommending this to women who actually just don't need it. If you're coming off of a weight gain phase, I'm all for taking a moment to lay the foundations, get your basic meals right, not focus immediately on fat loss, like do the basic shit, right? Like I love that, but that's not a reverse diet. That's laying a strong foundation, which is very different here. Reverse dieting is intentionally adding calories back for the goal of it boosting up and nourishing your metabolism and your body and all these factors of what you need. The third thing I want to talk about with you guys is who reverse dieting is for. Because this is going to further clarify this for you. Reverse dieting is for women who have severely suppressed their appetite and their body's nutritional needs. They are eating far below their energy needs and actually sticking to it to the extent at which their body has truly adapted. You can see how women who suffer from disordered eating and eating disorders and various eating struggles can really potentially be candidates for this over time because they have severely suppressed their metabolic rate. For some women, this appetite suppression maybe came through very intense dieting phases. Women who do bodybuilding shows, women who have for a very significant period of time really just have dieted for a long amount of time and they really have stuck to their calories and they've suppressed it over time. It wasn't that it was like disordered eating necessarily. it was like, hey, I've just lost a lot of wheat. It would be really great to kind of reverse you back up, get you more towards maintenance again, be there for a little bit, and then pursue fat loss. And the goal here is once again to slowly increase calories back to improve your metabolism Alongside who it for I think this goes with who it not for and is this really necessary So when I think about is this necessary it is only necessary to do a reverse diet. If you have genuinely suppressed your metabolic rate, you've genuinely restricted calories for a long amount of time. And when we are estimating your nutritional needs and seeing your food choices, seeing how you're eating, seeing a lot of maybe the physical and symptoms that are manifesting in your body. When we're seeing all this together, that determines if you're a good candidate, not just because you're on a diet. For so many women I work with, when they ask me about reverse dieting, I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. I don't think you're a good candidate for it. And you know why? For so many women I work with, I think a lot of you will resonate with this. You are having trouble getting in a deficit. It's not every week. And if you're not even in a deficit every week, you're almost preserving your metabolism and protecting it in a weird F-ed up way, which I know you're not happy about because you want to lose weight every week. But actually, going about this slower, you're even less of a good candidate for a reverse diet because you're losing weight some weeks in a deficit, but then other weeks you're just towards maintenance again. But then you're getting back in a deficit. And so for you especially, you're already oscillating between maintenance and a deficit. And there's no need to like drastically reverse diet because you're seeing how like some weeks you're in maintenance, which is just a few hundred calories difference, by the way, not very, very significant. And then some weeks you're actually in a deficit and you're seeing the fat loss and it's over time producing results and like the 10, 15 pounds down you want to lose. But, you know, you really have to answer the question like, have you really suppressed your metabolism and you're really, really under eating for a period of time. And I just really think in the culture and environment and life that many of us live, it really is not as many people as social media perceives it to be and proclaims it to be. For some, it's very necessary, but for some, it is not. And that's why you'll see a lot of the content I share on here is not about reverse dieting. And it's really about understanding your dieting tendencies because I do see another mistake that many people make is thinking because you fad dieted and you have a very all or nothing mindset with food, that immediately means you're a candidate for reverse dieting. When reverse dieting is less about just your mindset and actually about the behaviors that you have. And I think many women who are very all or nothing, you're very all or nothing and you might be all in on under eating for a period of time, but there's all of these other periods where you're overeating, hence what has led to the weight gain. And so actually, like, you need a mental reverse diet, not like a food reverse diet necessarily to eat more. And we need to establish just a lot more consistency. So hopefully this clarifies and really explains very clearly who reverse dieting is for, what is the point. Obviously, the biggest mistake I do see when you, you know, maybe observe this content on social media. I know I clarified very clearly really who this is for when women are eating so far below their energy needs? And of course, you know, is this necessary? And you know, I think the answer really depends on your unique circumstance. If there's a question that you want me to answer on the show, we have a Q&A segment for this reason. It's a little real talk with me. So I will post a link in the show notes for you to submit a question just like the lovely Kayla did today. And if you are looking for more support when it comes to achieving your fat loss goals, the two options I want to remind you of is you can start with the 30-day meal plan just like Jessie Am did, who wrote the lovely review today. And then of course, if you are looking to expedite your progress and see progress faster, you can join the Hot and Healthy Membership, which is affordable coaching, or you can apply for 90 Day Fitbit Body, which is one-to-one coaching with me to get direct feedback and direct guidance on your food logs and progress trackers through me and my team support. Get excited. Another fun episode is coming your way soon, and I will see you on Thursday. Hey, girlfriend, thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you'd like to learn more about eating right for fat loss and never gaining weight back, I'll be continuing this party on Instagram where you can find me at sorority.nutritionist posting inspiration every single day. Also, if you're wondering where to get started on your journey, be sure to head to the sorority nutritionist.com backslash quiz to take my free quiz that will tell you why you aren't losing weight and what you can begin to do about it. So you can see progress faster. You can also find any other links and resources mentioned in the show at the sorority nutritionist.com under free resources. I hope you have such a beautiful day and I will see you next time, girlfriend. Thank you.
