How Eating More Might Help You Lose Weight

When we want to see weight loss we need to reduce our energy intake by cutting calories, right?

Well, there IS actually such a thing as sabotaging your weight loss efforts by cutting too many calories or too many calories for too long. In some cases, you have to eat more first to help you lose weight later on. This is called REVERSE DIETING.

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Maybe you’re feeling ‘stuck’ not able to get over a plateau no matter what you do? Or maybe your health has taken a beating on super low calories and you don’t know how to get out of this hole?

The reality is, whether you want to lose weight or not, anybody who has reduced their calorie intake at some stage should know how to reverse diet in order to keep the metabolism healthy and be able to successfully lose weight again in the future.

What & Why - Can Increasing Calories Help Lose Weight?

It sounds very counterintuitive—the idea of increasing your calories to lose weight—but it is possible.

Reverse dieting is the process of SLOWLY and PROGRESSIVELY increasing your calories up to a maintenance level (same amount of calories going in than out) while aiming to maintain weight as best as possible.

Eating too low under your caloric maintenance for too long can cause your metabolism to adapt to this low energy intake (it’s main goal is survival), meaning that you will start to burn fewer calories. If this is the case for you, then restoring your metabolic health first before going into a calorie deficit will be the solution for you.

You may think, is it not just as easy as going back to how I was eating before I was dieting? That’s a clear ‘No’, unfortunately.

The reason is manifold:

• If you have already lost some weight, your new calorie maintenance will not be the same as before you lost weight.
• At the end or in the middle of a dieting phase, your body is SUPER susceptible to gaining the weight back. In fact, it WANTS you to gain the weight back. That is where it was comfortable. Therefore, it will send you all the signals to eat more than what your body needs.
• If you make a big jump in calories all in one, your body will mistake that message as “please store this for later in case of emergency” instead of learning how to increase the metabolism again.

When - Signs you might be in need of a Reverse Diet

Going too hard can mean having a miserable time, not seeing progress and finding yourself in a victorious cycle of eating too little and then eating too much.

It’s important to note that what is ‘too little’ is arbitrary. What is too little to one person may not be the same for the other, and even what was not too little for you a few years or months ago might be too little for you right now (more stress, different hormones, dieting fatigue…) So if you’re wondering whether you’re cutting too many calories to lose weight, then here are some signs that you need to eat more:

Always tired

Being tired is hungry. Suffering from prolonged fatigue is not. It may mean that your energy levels are very low due to lack of food and nutrients and that you’re not giving your body enough fuel.

Always Hungry

Being hungry when trying to lose weight is inevitable. After all, you’re deliberately giving your body less fuel than it needs to maintain your current size. However, if you’re finding yourself starving, with food constantly on your mind, then maybe you’re cutting a little too much and/or making the wrong food choices.

You might have to amp up the meals and make better food choices.

Never Hungry

Never being hungry is also a very clear sign that you are in need of a reverse diet and having your metabolism ramped up. Never being hungry usually means that your metabolism has down regulated due to prolonged calorie restriction.

Moody

“Hanger” is when you’re angry because you’re hungry.

So, imagine how hangry you’d be if you’re constantly hungry. It’ll mean more mood swings, less patience and shorter tempers. If you eat more to lose weight, then your body (and everyone around you) will thank you for it.

Poor mental performance or performance in gym

If your performance is consistently suffering—we’re not talking about a once-off bad day, which happens to everyone—and you’re unable to think properly or lift as much as you could previously or your endurance has taken a big hit, then you may need to eat more to get more energy.

Dizzy

If your body is very low on fuel, then don’t be surprised if you’re finding yourself suffering from constant dizzy spells or shakiness. It’s your body telling you that you need to feed it more.

Other health problems

Apart from dizzy spells, your body will find other ways to tell you that you’re underfeeding it and that you need to eat more food and nutrients. These signs can come in a variety of ways include:

• loss or irregularity of menstrual cycle
• brittle fingernails
• hair loss
• frequently sick, even if it’s ‘just’ a cold
• low sex drive

How - Increase Food Intake the Right Way

This part usually baffles people, because it is so against our natural instinct - How is it possible to eat more, but weigh the same? Doesn’t that automatically lead to weight gain? I am scared!! Those are things we often hear in nutrition coaching and these are totally valid questions and concerns!

In addition to that we often have our mind play tricks on us, so even if weight is staying the same sometimes we FEEL fluffier or we imagine we are gaining weight. This is where a coach can be super helpful, because they have a rational outside perspective and can compare progress pictures and measurements more accurately.

How do we go about it?

Obviously you first need to find out where your average calorie consumption is at right now (in case you don’t already know that). Why? Without a starting place any prescription from here would be a blind guess in the dark. So once you have determined your current baseline, increase your calorie target by about

~5 - 20 percent depending on your size and estimated maintenance calories (meaning if you are at 1200 calories and your estimated maintenance is 1900 just start by increasing about 100 calories; if your estimated maintenance is about 3000 because you are a larger individual then you can increase a bit more right away).

The important part is MONITORING your AVERAGE WEEKLY WEIGHT from here. Not day to day fluctuations. It is normal for weight to go up initially for a couple of days, even just because there will be more food in your stomach or water retention through carbs etc, but this should balance out rather quickly.

If your average weight stays about the same, increase calories again in the following week or the week after that. Whether you increase your calories through carbs or fats depends on where you started from, protein however normally stays the same.

How do you determine what’s best to increase?

A large contributing factor should be personal preference (most people know whether they enjoy carbs or fats more.

The second consideration should be whether your fats are currently at a healthy level or on the lower end and whether your hormones could use a little love (for example if your cycle is a bit irregular).

The third consideration should be your activity level. If you engage a lot in glycolytic sports, sports that are explosive or high intensity and if one of your main goals is to build lean muscle, then it is likely a good idea to increase a good amount of your calories through carbs. If you are more of a sedentary individual you are likely better off with a larger increase through fats.

Other things that you can take into consideration would be stress levels (carbs) or menopause (fats) or thyroid health and insulin sensitivity.

An example for an increase would be to add 20g of carbs and 3-5g of fats.

You can continue increasing your calories that way until your average weekly weight starts going up, that likely means you have surpassed your maintenance calories. In that case, wait for a couple of weeks and see if your weight comes back down and if not drop back down to the previous set of calories you were on before weight went up.

A reverse diet can take several weeks. As mentioned above, increasing your calories more quickly often increases the chances of adding a bit of body fat in the process. Sometimes however that might be necessary, for example after a bodybuilding show. This is referred to as a RECOVERY DIET, in order to restore hormonal health and overall well being quicker.

What to expect?

Of course, the ideal outcome is that the individual does not gain any weight in the process. An even more ideal setting is when people LOSE WEIGHT throughout the reverse diet. However, this is the exception and not the rule.

Why does this happen? In some individuals the body is just so grateful for the extra food that it starts ramping up the metabolism right away. But for most individuals we first need to gain the metabolism’s trust back slowly before it believes us that we will take better care of it in the future. That means we need to be patient and “endure” the fact that we will not lose weight right away and rather only after several weeks of reverse dieting and staying at maintenance for a bit.

In a few cases the metabolism is so distrusting that it still wants to store some of the food we are giving it for later, because it believes the next dieting phase is just around the corner, even if we are increasing food slowly. This is unfortunate, but we can’t pick our genetics or metabolism, so all we can do is focus our thinking on the long term vision and know that it will be worth it in the end. Going back to dieting prematurely is only going to make matters worse.

Generally speaking, the more patient we are with the reverse diet and the longer we hang out at maintenance after, the easier it will be to lose weight in the future.

Just how long do you have to stay at maintenance for minimum? This is hard to say. Sometimes 2-3 months is enough. Sometimes it takes a year or so, especially if we were Yo-yo dieting for years before that.

Hunger

Hunger cues and cravings in a reverse diet also vary a lot. Some people notice INCREASED hunger signals as they INCREASE FOOD, which sounds odd, but makes sense if we consider what I mentioned earlier - you body would actually like for you to gain weight, because it believes the next hunger period is just around the corner and some extra cushion would be a good insurance policy for survival, it can tell that there is more food around now, so let’s stock up! This is something to really be aware of, because if we are not being careful and listening to our hunger signals in this case we WILL GAIN WEIGHT!

In other cases it takes a while for the hunger to kick back in if the metabolism was in a bit of a sleep mode, but usually after several weeks of increasing food intake we will see healthy hunger levels again (never being hungry is NOT good).

Mindset

I also mentioned earlier that your mind will start playing tricks on you. In fact, I would argue that mindset during a reverse diet can be even more challenging than mindset in a dieting phase.

Why? Because all you want is to lose weight and you’re being told to eat more and on top of that you might feel fluffier, feel like your clothes are tighter, feel like you’re too full and as if that wasn’t enough, you might bring some other underlying food issues with you, like being afraid of carbs or foods higher in calories (I know I certainly used to be!).

So all of this can be tough and for most people there comes a time in the reverse diet when they just want to diet again, when they want to cut the reverse diet short and change directions.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT to stick with your original plan in this case!!! Going back to a dieting phase is not going to help you at all! On the contrary it will slow you down even more. Dropping calories again will likely mean you see a tiny drop in the scale for a couple of days before it stagnates again and that is it. And you are back to square one. STICK IT THROUGH, you will not regret it and your body will reward you for it!

External guidance and having someone who prevents you from falling victim to your own mind can be a life saver in this case!!

To sum it up, reverse dieting, the process of increasing your food intake strategically, may be a necessary tool for you to start losing weight again, if your metabolism has taken a bit of a hit.

Reverse dieting can be scary, but if done right it is a great tool that helps us restore health and wellbeing throughout weight loss journeys.

Stay patient, focus on your long term goal, and trust in the process.