Your diet is over... What now?

So your diet is finished. Now it's time to eat whatever you want again! :D

Well… Wait a minute, hear me out! I bet that sounds like a great idea to anyone coming to the end of a dieting phase. I am going to tell you why it is a bad idea and what to do instead; 

1. To not rebound & gain a load of body fat / undo everything you worked hard for.

2. Gain muscle mass and mitigate body fat gain

3. How to set yourself up for a good off-season 

4. Set yourself up for an easier time getting lean the next time around

First of all I am going to tell you a story about Jimmy. Jimmy approached me weighing 185Lbs. He was highly motivated to lose body fat for a summer holiday coming up in 13 weeks. I worked out that he was maintaining his weight on 2,350 calories per day, did some mathematics and set him new calories & macros to aim for, he also followed a new training protocol. Fast forward 13 weeks, things went to plan and we dieted Jimmy down to 167Lbs. He lost a total of 18Lbs and his calories finished around 1,950 at the peak of his diet. Jimmy was happy because he had abs for the first time since he can remember! Success story, right? 

.

I told Jimmy to enjoy his holiday and make sure not go too mad with calories initially!

.

Towards the end of the diet, Jimmy was talking about his cravings for pancakes with Nutella and peanut butter with icecream and more high fat, high sugar, hyperpalatable foods. I have heard this all before and knew the consequences. I explained the reasoning behind the cravings and why it is a good idea to reverse out of the diet, rather than eat everything in sight like it is all going to disappear into the abyss with no repercussions for his actions. My words of advice were falling on deaf ears tho. :/

6 weeks later I get a call from Jimmy telling me that he now weighs 187Lbs. 2Lbs heavier than he was before he started his dieting phase and needed my help to lose the fat that he had regained. Much to my amazement that he managed to gain it back so fast, I wasn’t completely surprised. 

So, what happened to Jimmy?

Over the 13 weeks of the diet, his metabolic rate had down-regulated to his new energy input (calories). From a psychological standpoint, Jimmy felt like he had worked so hard and restricted himself for so long, that he “deserved”  to eat a load of junk food. *treating himself like a dog by rewarding himself with food*

When he finished his diet, without giving his body time to up-regulate again, he began eating 30-40% more calories than his body was utilising, hence that extra energy is then stored. As he was still craving calorie dense foods, he spiralled out of control & routine, continuing this for 6 weeks, resulting in a substantial increase in adipose (fat) tissue. You have heard of this before, it is basically crash dieting. The reason why some people seem to be endlessly dieting and, "can’t lose weight”. 

So you have reached the end of a diet. What to do now?

1. If you want to improve your metabolic capacity (calories that you can get away with), you must build the calories back into your diet incrementally. If like Jimmy, you go straight from: ~1,950 to 3,500 calories you will most definitely gain unwanted body fat and potentially be worse off than you were before. Building your calories back into your diet will give you a greater caloric buffer to diet from next time you enter a fat loss phase. 

2. This one is a given to set yourself up for a good offseason from dieting, (as boring & obvious as it sounds) you must train hard. To drive positive adaptations, your body isn’t going to add muscle and improve shape if you are lifting within your comfort zone. The body doesn’t necessarily want to change. It needs to receive the appropriate stimulus, adequate recovery & nutrition to do so. The extent of these adaptations is equivalent to the demands placed on the body by your training; load, volume & frequency.

3. Incrementally add a few grams of carbs & fat. Wait for a week and see how things go. Chances are your body won’t respond by jumping up in weight. If this is the case, add another small amount. Keep doing this (reverse dieting). If you gain 1lbs, hold off and don’t add any extra calories for a few days. Listening to the feedback and slowly increase calories over time. This is giving your metabolic rate the time needed to up-regulate and become accustomed to your new input level. Done properly you could add 400–1,500+Kcals to your diet over a year while limiting the fat storage. 

4. If the reverse-diet is executed properly, this will set you up for a much easier time dieting in the future. Your body fat set point will be much lower than before / your metabolic capacity is much stronger and now you are dieting with an extra 500+ calories per day = Easier time dieting = Faster fat loss = Happy. If you decide to eat whatever you want without a plan of attack, the opposite equation is true also.

If you are wondering what happened to Jimmy, it turned out alright for him. We decided to transition into a 4 week aggressive mini-cut to dump some added body fat. He dropped a respectable 12 pounds bringing his weight back down to 175Lbs. 9 months later we have reversed him back up to 2,560 calories per day with a refeed day once per week. He now weighs 180Lbs (+5Lbs) with an improved body composition and a much stronger metabolic capacity. Now Jimmy knows how to lose fat & keep it off for the rest of his life.

I love a quality before / after transformation as much as the next person. Sometimes there is much more that goes on behind the scenes than what initially meets the eye.

*Image above shows my personal 48 week progress from 2,240 calories to 3,300 calories following this exact protocol. Definite muscle added, some body fat added also but now I can diet from 3,000+ calories and lose body fat*

Stay healthy & lift for life! :)

#physiquelab