Why You Should "Reverse Diet" or Take A Diet Break - I did!

This will be as short and sweet as I can make it ;) Cause I know we're all busy and reading can be quite torturous for some! Myself included lol

Keep in mind I did do a Reverse Diet about 6 months into my new discovery of Intermittent Fasting and IIFYM back in early 2014.

How many diets have you been on? If you're the typical American you likely have hopped from one diet to the next, one fad to another, one form of calorie restriction to the other. You may have seen some great success with following one of those plans! Eventually though, weight loss slows down or stops altogether. So you decide to cut your calories further and put more time in your workouts, and while that works for a little while, your progress plateaus yet again.

This cycle is repeated until you are likely eating an absurdly low amount of calories and still spending a lot of time working out. On some days you may feel worn down, hungry, achy, and have little energy. But now, both your workout progress and weight loss have really stalled! The thought of cutting calories even further sounds like a nightmare. But you still have quite a bit of weight to lose. None of this makes sense to you because eating less and exercising is supposed to result in weight loss. So then, why is all this hard work not getting you results? The reason for your stalled progress is quite simple, actually. When you cut calories, however small your deficit might be, your metabolism begins to down-regulate. In an effort to conserve its energy for survival, your body begins to manufacture less metabolism-friendly hormones like thyroid, testosterone, and leptin so that your body can reach homeostasis. We'll talk about homeostasis a little later.

Now this bill doesn't fit for everyone. You may not have much of an appetite which is also a sign of a teeny metabolic rate. A revving metabolism demands food. And it's like a Ferrari. A lot of gas doesn't get it very far, it burns right through it. It's not very efficient when it comes to fuel, or your wallet for that matter ;) The same holds true for our metabolism. Instead of having a Ferrari for a metabolism, do you feel like you are the owner of a Prius? Where a little bit of food will last you all day? You can eat a moderate breakfast or lunch and do some light snacking throughout the day and you find you really aren't that hungry. This is not the sign of a floored metabolism. And this will kill you in the gym if your goals are building lean muscle and wanting to lose weight.

Now here's another scenario for someone who should consider a dieting break. And I'm going to use my recent experience with doing one. I didn't really plan on doing a dieting break, it just sort of happened. I had been sick with a cough for 2 weeks and still kept up working out, holding fast to my macros and my routine. About 2 1/2 weeks into being sick and many many interrupted nights from sleep , I was physically worn out from so much coughing and fighting the cold, and slowly I was losing energy and feeling just so worn out. I went to the doctor to see if it was anything other than a cold, he checked me out and said I was just battling a bad cold and nothing more. OK - Whatever. I was spent. I had no desire to "stick to a plan" and eat anymore like I had been doing for almost 2 years. Yeah, in two years I had only taken 1 diet break where I upped my calories. Ever since then, I've been eating in a slight deficit (about springtime in 2014 I did an extreme deficit where I followed The Alternate Day Diet for a little over 2 months) with 1-2 scheduled refeeds a week. Never a break of 1-2 weeks as most experts and good coaches encourage people who are chronic dieters to do. To be honest I never felt the need for one. I loved the results I was getting, and I never felt deprived, really. Buuuuut this time around with everything going in with me physically I was caring less and less. Far less motivation to follow any plan and far less desire to track. So, the next day I woke up and the first thing I did was have coffee and ate pancakes with my kids. I sipped on coffee with cream for the next few hours and had more food I wouldn't normally eat, in the amounts I wouldn't normally do! This continued on for the next four days. I didn't follow a fasting window, I just lived. I ate, I relieved myself of workouts, I sipped coffee to my hearts content and I was feeling great! Emotionally and psychologically. I didn't even bother stepping on the scale as I knew that was just going to mess with me on this short term excursion. When I got back on track after feeling a little better and about 4 days had passed I had renewed everything! I just felt better, all over and ready to get back to it!

Taking dieting breaks if you're a chronic dieter (like myself) or putting yourself on a reverse diet is GOOD. It's good for your metabolism, it's good for your emotions, your mental state and your future progress.

You should seriously consider a reverse diet if you are not seeing any results anymore or if you've reached your goal weight/look. "A short period of regular eating has the potential to reverse some of this metabolic adaptation giving the hormones time to recover to normal levels". Andy Morgan from Rippedbody. When we eat less, our metabolism down-regulates to whatever intake amount we are eating. Go from a 2000 calorie diet to a 1600 calorie diet and your metabolism does, too. Reduce your calorie intake from 1600 to 1400 and so does your metabolic rate, and so on and so forth (read "What is Homeostasis?"). The same thing happens when we increase calories. Our metabolisms are adjustable in either direction (yay for more food and fat loss!!). No, you don't have to be stuck eating 1300-1500 calories for the rest of your life, especially if you want to reach health and fitness goals. Not if you take care of your metabolism.

I hope this was helpful in some way, I almost didn't write it given that we just got over the holiday mayhem where I'm sure a lot of people were not following any plans or diets :) But, I did have an experience with a dieting break and loved it, wanted to write about it and hopefully help other chronic dieters out there continue to reach their goals. I'm actually looking forward to my next scheduled week-long dieting break in the future!

Until next time, ladies -XOXO

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to comment!

*I know you've done probably more reading than you'd like, but here's a site I want you to look at to see even more if you are a candidate for reverse dieting and what that entails, or you can always just take a few days for a dieting break (not an all out binge fest, just a break) from your diet, just like I did.

*What is Homeostasis? Whenever we go on a diet or cut calories it is normal for our metabolic rate to slow down. This is "Metabolic Adaptation". If we were eating 2,500 calories per day at one point then little by little reduce calories to eventually to a point where we are eating around 1,200 calories in our attempts to diet and lose unwanted body fat, and our body did not have these metabolic adaptation abilities, we would lose weight continually without stopping until we eventually die. Luckily, nobody starves to death on 1,200 calories per day—even though it may feel like it sometimes. These metabolic adaptations are necessary for survival otherwise our 2,500 calorie a day metabolic rate would consume our 1,200 calories a day intake and then turn to eating muscle then fat, etc, until there's nothing left of us.

The human body is an amazing adaptive machine that always strives for homeostasis. Whatever condition the body is put in, it will strive to survive within that new norm.