Famously when dieting the recipient of meal plans, challenges and online/face-to-face transformation programs are aggressive calorie deficits that lack sustainability and adherence which leads to a life of demonising foods and yo-yo dieting from one juice diet to the next weekly meal plans delivered to your door and onto the next supposedly rapid weight loss trend that comes out.
Most commonly these would be a generic 1500-1800 calories for Males and 900-1200 calories for Females per day which is not enough fuel as we are all so different and no one size fits all when it comes to energy requirements.
Now there are hundreds of methods to losing weight that all point to one principle which is a calorie deficit which is indisputable and scientifically factual.
What you aren't told is how to reverse out of a calorie deficit to maintain your results for life.
Most of you out there get incredible results in the short term and 6 months later you have gained the weight all back … sound familiar?
Yes … now this is due to the simple fact you haven't been taught how to reverse out of your deficit (diet).
When reversing out of a car spot we generally don't just floor it do we …. We check our mirrors, look over our shoulders, watch out for pedestrians and slowly reverse out of our parking space and safely manoeuvre away out the car park.
The same applies to your diet.
We must slowly reverse out of our deficit towards our maintenance level of calories to guarantee we maintain our results for life.
Now the example is as follows;
Female X's Maintenance level of calories is 2000 a day.
Gets put on a 1200 calorie meal plan for 12 weeks - loses the weight and then goes back to what she was doing before (a calorie surplus that drove her initial weight gain) so over the 2000 mark.
With reverse dieting protocols as follows;
A more sustainable 1400 calories per day for weeks 1-12.
1600 calories per day weeks 13-24.
1800 calories per day weeks 25-36.
Now we would have to recalculate maintenance level of calories as her requirements have changed because she now has a little more lean muscle mass and less body fat.
But we have reversed out of that deficit slowly and more sustainably to prevent relapse and undoing all the initial hard work and courage to do it in the first place.
There you have reverse dieting.
*Disclaimer: Individual results vary based on agreed goals. Click here for details.
