3 Reasons Why Reverse Dieting Might Be The Answer For You...
You may not have come across it, but ‘reverse diet’ is a term used within the bodybuilding and competitive. weightlifting communities. It helps you take control of your gains without gaining excess fat.
Reverse dieting is pretty much what it sounds like: instead of cutting calories and increasing your gym time, you increase your metabolism gently by adding calories back into your diet whilst reducing cardio. It’s a powerful tool to help you focus through a period of diet management, and it can be broken down to 3 simple steps:
1) Do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting. This speeds up your metabolic rate in the short term by burning significant amount of post workout calories, and speeds it up in the long term by building muscle. Ideally, you need to be engaging in heavy resistance training 3 to 5 times per week for it to have a benefit for your metabolic rate.
2) Eat a high protein diet. When considering the first lighting, you need to pay close attention to your protein intake. It is said that you should eat 1g of protein per pound of body weight per day, and that should give you all the benefits of a high protein diet without having to live on a diet of huge amounts of chicken and protein shakes
3) Gradually increase your calorie intake, simply by eating more food. Reverse fighting does involve eating more food but it’s a bit more scientific than that. Simplest way of doing this is by increasing your daily intake by about 150 calories every 5 to 7 days. You can do this through any combination of protein, carbs and fat. You need to track your calories as you go.
There are some major benefits of reverse dieting, even if bodybuilding isn’t your thing:
You get to eat more
You have more energy
It changes your mindset about “dieting”
You enjoy working out again