Influencers on TikTok are claiming reverse dieting is a way to “train your metabolism” to eat more food without gaining weight.
Reverse dieting is known as “the diet after the diet”, says Healthline.
It includes bringing back calories into your eating plans after completing a calorie-restrictive diet, noted Health.com.
This method was first popularised by the bodybuilding community who use the regime to prevent increasing weight rapidly after a competition.
Once the competition is over, bodybuilders return to "sustainable, higher calorie eating styles." They do it in such as way as not to regain the weight or fat they lost earlier.
This diet varies from person to person depending on their sex, age, weight, and other factors.
If someone cut back their daily calorie intake to as low as 1,200 to lose weight. For them, this post-diet eating strategy would usually involve adding 50–150 daily calories per week for around four–10 weeks.
This means the person will start consuming 1,300 calories daily for one week, 1,400 calories daily the next week and so on. By the eighth week, the daily calorie count would have touched 2,000.
There is not much research on the benefits of reverse dieting. However, its propagators claim it has several advantages besides those related to weight.
When on a strict diet, metabolism falls and the body adapts to a low-calorie diet. Currently, there is no data to ascertain if reverse dieting can restore that lost metabolism.
Moreover, can reverse dieting prevent weight regain after dieting? This is also not yet known.