Sal DeStefano (2:32)

Probably one of the most misunderstood and controversial way to diet is the reverse diet. This is where you actually increase your calories over time many times in an attempt to get leaner. What's going on with this? We're going to break it down. We're actually going to teach you about it, how to do it properly. This is one of the most common things we get questioned on here on the podcast. So here's the episode.

Adam Schafer (2:53)

This can't be possible.

Sal DeStefano (2:54)

I know.

Adam Schafer (2:55)

Add calories, lose body fat. What.

Sal DeStefano (2:59)

So reverse diet's just like it sounds, right? So typically what you do is you cut calories out. But with the reverse diet, you introduce more. The origins of the reverse diet actually come from the competitive space, the bikini or bodybuilder or physique competitive space. This is the stage presentation space, right where people are trying to get on stage, present a physique, typically extremely lean, past the point of healthy, like they're unhealthy lean. And a reverse diet was introduced to get these people from when they would get hit the stage to how to get back to normal afterwards. Because what would happen oftentimes with these athletes, it was not unheard of for a young lady to do a bikini competition at 11% body fat and then gain 25 to 30 pounds in the, you know, month and a half, two months, not even following weeks sometimes. Oh yeah, crazy.

Adam Schafer (3:58)

More often weeks. That's why it was, this was such a phenomenon and why it needed to be talked about because it was, it was very common to see somebody come off stage, male or female, and put 20 to 30 pounds on initially. And you, you can make the argument that 10 of that is water or so and another 10 of that is they probably needed. But to. For it to come on that hard and that fast is not healthy. It's not ideal. And so, you know, in comes the reverse diet is how do we slowly step somebody up? I, I also think part of what made it get popular too was there's this, this interesting thing that happens if you've ever done this before. And some of my best gains came post show. So when I'm cutting for a show and take out, I'm getting ready for a show, just cutting, period. If you're cutting for an extended Period of time, you're low calorie, you're below maintenance consistently. You're not building during that time. This is, you're. You're reducing body fat. You're not building any or very little, if at all muscle during that period of time because you're cutting. But. And you would do that for six, eight, 12 weeks, some people even longer. And then post show or post diet, and you go back to reintroducing, man, that first couple weeks, the, the gains come on faster than you. Even if for a person who's been lifting for a long time, all of a sudden you start hitting pr, you feel stronger, you. I mean, it just, it's incredible when you start feeding the body properly and what it wants and needs to grow, it responds. And I think coming from being deprived for extended periods of time like that, it's almost like the body, like, really responds. Like it was, it was, it was dying for that. And you finally gave it to me.

Sal DeStefano (5:40)

Yeah. And so that was, you know, kind of like the history and the origins of it, and then it move into the kind of coaching and training space. Because we saw applications and many of us who trained people for years and years and years started applying these strategies. We didn't really call it a reverse diet. We just recognized that many times clients would come to us who had weight to lose and their caloric intake was already kind of low. You know, it's like someone wants to lose 30 pounds. The Avatar looks like this. It would be, let's say, the woman coming to hire me, Sal, I need to lose, let's say, £20. I'm already strength training or working out. Oftentimes it's classes four days a week. I'm taking this many steps a day. You know, I'm watching my diet. I still have £25 to lose or £20 to lose. What do I do then? I'd say, well, let me see your food logs. Uh, let's, let's talk about how much you're eating. And I'd look at their calories, and they were low. Low. Yeah. Like, oh, my God, you're consuming 1700 calories a day. With that much activity, you still have £25 to lose. Where do you go? Right? Like the law of thermodynamics says you got to take in less than you're burning right now. You're consuming 1700 calories, you're not losing any weight, which means you're at what's called maintenance, meaning you're burning as much as you're taking in. So I. I guess my strategy is to cut your calories even lower. But where's that going to put you 1200 calories? And so as an early trainer, this is what you're taught to do. You take with what they're currently eating. They want to lose weight. Well, then you got to eat less. And so I would do this and.

Adam Schafer (7:21)

And. Or add activity. So you.

Sal DeStefano (7:23)

And. Or activity.

Adam Schafer (7:25)

Yeah, Getting them to do more cardio and you're cutting their calories.

Sal DeStefano (7:28)

I tell you what, it was so frustrating as a trainer to the point where I thought people were lying. Yeah. Because then I would cut their calories. Now they're eating 1200 calories. And we would see some initial weight loss on the scale, but then they'd plateau, and then I'd be in this really weird place, like, what do I do now? We can't go any lower. You know, my. My certification courses wouldn't even allow me to go below 1200 calories. You're already doing a lot of activity. And in fact, it's hard for you to be consistent with this activity because you're a normal person. You're not living in the gym. Oh, my God. What do we do? And when you would run into these clients, because, of course, you get the typical client who's eating a ton of food, and then it's really easy to get them to lose body fat. Right. But you'd run into people like this. And it was a conundrum. It was mysterious. What do I do? To the point where you thought that they were not tracking properly.

Justin Andrews (8:21)

It defied science, somehow.

Sal DeStefano (8:23)

It did. And then you start to realize, like, oh, gosh, they're maybe what's happened? And I remember it took me a while to really accept this. Maybe what's happened is their metabolism's adapted. You know, is Mrs. Johnson being honest? She's taking a lot of steps per day. She's taking two classes a week. She's working out. Me, two days a week. She's doing additional cardio. She's eating, you know, 12 or 1300 calories a day. We've plateaued for six weeks. She's hungry. I see her strength is suffering in the gym. She doesn't feel good. Oh, what do we do here? This got even more solidified after learning about this popular weight loss show called the Biggest Loser, where you'd have these contestants get on there who had to lose tremendous amounts of weight. And as a trainer, you're watching this, and this was a little later when I started to figure out how to do Things the right way. Apologies to my early clients. And you would see them just get beat up and just, they would just. All day long they'd be training their butts off and they'd cut their calories so low and they would lose all this weight. And then you'd read about these people after the show was over and everybody gained the weight back. And then many of them would get interviewed and they'd say things like, I couldn't maintain it. I'm not even eating that much. I just gained all this weight back. And then you start learning about metabolism. You're like, oh my gosh, the body can adapt. And the key to successful any fitness goal is working with your body and trying to induce the adaptations that are favorable, not fighting against it. And so then the reverse diet became a tool for trainers and coaches on setting people up for more effective, sustainable fat loss.

Adam Schafer (10:07)

I actually think this is far more common than, than we realize. And I think that this is why I don't like when the fitness space touts like that how much people under report. And most people have like, because they're taking into account like, our society in general, our society overeats like crazy. They think they eat less than they eat. The average American is eating fast food multiple times a day everywhere. And so when you lump all of those people which don't even attempt to eat better, don't even attempt to exercise, aren't trying to live a better, healthier life, it looks like the majority under report way overeat, way over consume. I actually think a lot of people who have been trying to lose weight most of their life have been actively listening to the fitness podcast that have hired a personal trainer for. I actually think a large majority of them actually fall in this category because they have tried dieting so many times for so long and they've gone about it the wrong way. And so I don't think. And that's why I get really frustrated with, with our, the fitness play space when this is what we're communicating a lot, a lot. And especially a lot of the science thermodynamic guys will use create content around this of that like, you're not, you're not, not undereating, you're under reporting. And, and, and they'll then they'll say that it's like, man, I can't tell you how many people, yeah, I have had that, that are just like the, the numbers that you just laid out. They're eating under 2,000 calories. They are doing cardio three, four, five times. A week. They, they are not overeating and under reporting like crazy. And what's happened is they have slowed their metabolism. That's. Our bodies are so resilient and so smart that if you do that chronically for a long time, it will learn to survive off of that. And the way it does is by adapting slow and slowing. In other words, slowing the metabolism down. And if you've done that over years, you. You've gotten to a place where your body is efficiently running now, not ideal or optimally, but efficiently running on 1300, 1500 calories. And then the occasional one time you go out and you eat 2, 2500 or 3000, you put on weight.

Sal DeStefano (12:20)

Vacation.

Adam Schafer (12:20)

Yeah. And how frustrating that is for that client or that person who is dealing with this. And the answers they keep getting from the fitness spaces, you just got to count your calories or you just got to cut. And it's all the law reporting. Yeah. You're misreporting. You got to do more. You got to train more. Consistent, consistent. Like. And it's like, no, there's more going on here. And the answer for that client is not cutting calories. It's actually feeding the body more of what it needs, focusing on building muscle, because that is going to build that metabolism. That is going to speed that metabolism up. That is what's going to allow you to then later on cut calories and get the response that you.

Justin Andrews (12:59)

Such a disservice to that type of a person too. And I've met so many and had clients in that predicament and have heard that message over and over. I get so mad about that because, you know, they're left thinking that it's some genetic anomaly.

Adam Schafer (13:13)

Exactly.

Justin Andrews (13:14)

And, and that's really like. And then you have the other predators out there that'll feed into that and then they have a pill for that.

Adam Schafer (13:20)

Yeah.

Justin Andrews (13:21)

Because this is your genetic. You know, you're predestined to be.

Adam Schafer (13:24)

Yes.

Justin Andrews (13:25)

Overweight at this weight. And it's, it's like, no, there's a, there's a real sensible way to handle this.

Sal DeStefano (13:29)

Yeah. The couple times I stumbled upon this strategy as an early trainer, there was one woman, I remember there were two. Two scenarios. One woman, she came to me, she was running a lot, doing some strength training, counting her calories, wanted to lose, wasn't a lot of weight. I don't know how much it was. It was like £12 or something like that. And I was trying to figure out where to go. She was already eating really well, her calories were low. She's doing all this exercise. I'm not going to ask her to do more exercise. Couldn't figure out what was going on. And I had this trainer that worked with me at the time, this was years ago. And this trainer said, oh, I remember overhearing them talk. You know, when your body's stressed out, they were having a conversation with someone. When your body's stressed out, it tries to hold on to body fat. And the reason why it tries to hold on to body fat is because body fat is like this insurance policy with these extra, you know, extra calories stored on it. So if you're overstressed, it wants to keep body fat on the body and it doesn't really want to build muscle for whatever reason. I heard that and I went, oh.

Adam Schafer (14:33)

That makes a lot of sense.

Sal DeStefano (14:34)

This woman that I'm training seems overstressed. Like, she did a lot of exercise, she was pushing herself, she was an executive. And so I remember I talked her into cutting a couple of her running days and replacing them with yoga. And I didn't sell it to her like she was going to lose weight. I sold it to her like, you're really stressed out. You're hating life right now. Let's just try this out and see how you feel. Man, I think you need to do this. And she tried it and then she lost weight. And I remember being like, huh, you're running less, you're doing yoga, which doesn't burn a lot of calories, and you're losing weight. And so I started to think, like, is there something to this stress thing? And then I had another client who very similar, over trained like crazy, worked out all the time, plateaued, met her in the gym, talked her into hiring me. We started working out together and she wanted to lose weight. Now she was one of these. One of these people that would come in, do tons of cardio or take a class. So I'm like, okay, we're going to strength train. That's going to solve your problem. Well, we started strength training. She didn't stop anything else she was doing. So we just slapped strength training. On top of everything else she was doing. Her calories were still low and nothing was happening. And I remember how frustrated she was. I remember how frustrated I was because I had told her we were going to see some changes. So all I did in my head, this was my strategy. My head was, I'm going to just show her something else. We're going to forget weight loss for now, because I can't figure this Out. I need to build her confidence. I'm going to convince her to try to get stronger. And so I came to her and I said, look, let's forget weight loss for now. We need to get your body stronger. Let's just focus on that. And then later on we can focus on the weight loss. Do you feel like you want to get stronger? She's like, yes, let's just do it. So I cut down some of her other exercise and I had her increase her protein intake. I didn't even tell her to bump her calories. Necessarily increase your protein intake. And suddenly first she got started getting stronger, she started feeling confident, and then her body started changing and she started burning body fat and getting leaner and her body started sculpting. And those are the two times I can remember that started getting me to go, wait a minute, what is going on here? So the goal of a reverse diet. There's really three main goals with the reverse diet. Back in the day, a reverse diet would be called a bulk. Okay, we don't call it a bulk anymore because if you say bulk to someone who wants to burn body fat, they're going to run the other direction. But really what it is, is you're eating more calories in a strategic way to add lean muscle tissue, metabolically active muscle. Okay. What this does is it moves your metabolism in a more positive direction, or to use a different term, speeds up the metabolism. So the goal of a reverse diet is to build muscle, speed up the metabolism, and then for many people, is to set up a successful cut. Okay, so before we get into how to do this again, anytime you lower your calories below what you burn, your body's job is to now learn how to burn as many calories as you're taking it. Our bodies, if it didn't do that, we would have died a long time ago. We would never have survived before the agricultural revolution. So if you're burning 3,000 calories, you take in 2,000 calories initially, your body finds those extra calories from itself, hopefully body fat. But eventually your body figures out how to run on what you're taking in. How far can this number go down? Very far. You can look at the studies on POWs. These are. These are. These were men that were captured during war and given a few hundred calories a day. And yes, they looked emaciated and they looked whatever once they got freed, but they survived off a few hundred calories a day for a long time. So the body can really slow its metabolic rate down. And this is what you do to yourself through chronic dieting, chronic overtraining. Typically it looks like lots of cardio, lots of classes, lots of everything. Cut, cut, cut, cut. With calories, you're in this crazy plateau. Where do I go from here? This is when we reverse diet. We're going to build muscle, boost the metabolism. By the way, yes, muscle burns more calories than other tissues, but it's not this, there's not this formula of like 1 pound of muscle burns this many calories. It's actually there is a range of calories your body can burn with the same lean body mass. The metabolism is extremely complex. I'm not even going to attempt to explain it because we still, nobody still fully understands mammalian metabolism and all the, the, the metabolic pathways and stuff like that. But what we do know is that there's this range of calories your body can burn. Hormones influence it, muscle influences it, stress influences it. And the signals you send your body influence this. And the best signal. So here's where we're going to start. The best signal to, to move you in this positive direction is to strength train. So before we get into the reverse diet, it is absolutely imperative that you're, that you, the primary form of exercise that you incorporate is strength training, build muscle, otherwise this won't work.

Justin Andrews (19:22)

You have to immerse yourself in the environment that, that demands to build muscle.

Sal DeStefano (19:27)

Right.

Justin Andrews (19:27)

And, and so there's nothing better than that than actual strength training, which also requires rest periods.

Sal DeStefano (19:33)

So this is a big, definitive, traditional strength training.

Justin Andrews (19:36)

Traditional strength training, you know, minute to three minute rests in between, which can feel like an eternity for somebody who wants to just keep jumping through these exercises. But that's really the recipe of what we need to establish first.

Adam Schafer (19:51)

What's amazing is that when you get somebody to adopt this and go in and strength train, truly strength train, let go of the cardio, do the rest periods, start to slowly increase calories. A lot of times, not always, but depending on how, how, how far we, or how deep we've gone into the, you know, starving the body of calories for such a long time. But a lot of times people start to see themselves lean out with them starting to slowly increase calories, which is such a, like, I don't, I, so I don't ever tell the client that because I don't know what I mean.

Sal DeStefano (20:22)

It's a welcome surprise. But it happens.

Adam Schafer (20:24)

And so I, I want, I'm, I'm always like preparing them. Like, listen, we're not going to worry about the scale right now because the goal is to reverse diet. And I tell them a lot of times we're probably going to see the scale go up a little bit while we go that. I don't care about that. I expect that. So I tell them all that to set them up. But a lot of times what ends up happening is they bump those calories and maybe initially they see a little bit of water in the first week or two, but then all of a sudden they start going down and it's like, oh, that's such a great sign. And then it tells me that I can start to feed more, which again, still hard for them to do because they finally see a little bit of the right direction and you're like, no, this is a great place. Feed again. And that's what we're looking for, is that as you start to do that, that increase.

Sal DeStefano (21:00)

So start with your primary form of exercise being a traditional strength training program. In our programs, maps Anabolic would probably be most appropriate for most people. What this looks like for most people is two or three days a week, full body exercises, and you're focusing on big compound lifts. It is a traditional strength training program because what we're going to try to do now is boost the metabolism through the process of building muscle, which happens by getting stronger. Now, the first thing you do to kind of know where we need to go is to start tracking your calories. So before you start the reverse, just track your calories and your food intake for the next week or two. And the reason why you're doing this, don't change anything yet. And maybe you're already doing this. So if you're like a chronic dieter and chronic, you know, over trainer, you probably already know how many calories you're eating. But if you don't, start tracking them, so we have an idea of where you're at, once you know where you're at, then what you do while strength training is you increase your calories slowly. Now, the common question is, well, how much should I increase my calories? Now, this can be quite individual if your calories are really low. If I'm working with someone who's at 1300 calories, I'll bump them, you know, 5 to 800 calories right out the gates. But if you want to do this slowly, you can. It's really up to you. Typically, people will bump their calories between 1 to 250 per week or two. So every two weeks or so, so increase above that, where you were at, averaging about 100 to 200 calories, and then Also hit your protein targets consistently. What does that look like? A gram of protein per pound of body weight.

Adam Schafer (22:33)

The truth is you can never go too slow here. Like people always ask us how much and it's to your point. There's times where I'm bumping somebody 500 calories. But if you're somebody who's really nervous and afraid of that, there's nothing that stops you from adding 50 to 100 calories every week or over the week. It's. The point is you're going, you're intentionally going the other direction. Instead of always trying to cut and, and doing the rat race of running like crazy trying to burn as much and cut as much, you now are in the opposite strategy, slowly reintroducing more calories while also strength training.

Sal DeStefano (23:04)

That's right. Next. All right, what do I track besides food? What am I looking at to know if I'm going in the right direction? Strength. There is no metric that will give you a better, you know, measure of whether or not you're moving in the right direction than strength. If you're getting stronger in the gym, you're doing great. If you're not getting stronger in the gym, re examine your caloric intake. Maybe you need more and, or the program that you're following. Sometimes people will, with the reverse diet will go on this like six day split bodybuilding, crazy intense routine. Way too much. Way too much. Oftentimes in combination with the reverse diet, when I'm taking, when I'm picturing this avatar, it's typically reverse diet and reduce all the workouts are doing.

Adam Schafer (23:50)

Yeah.

Justin Andrews (23:50)

Because I mean the mentality again that got them there was adding on to everything that they were doing as an answer answer. And this sometimes it really takes that subtraction to get you there.

Adam Schafer (24:02)

Yeah, subtraction of the volume and intensity and then also maybe more addition because that's what it, what they just not giving each other. A lot of times this client is so low that 50 to 100 calories just still is not, is, is not enough for them to feel the difference in their workout. And we got to go higher, which sometimes is really difficult to do with that person who's scared to death of the scale going up. But the truth is you're so low and the amount of activity and intensity that you're doing or volume in your training is so high that even a 50, 100 calorie bump just isn't enough. And we got to go more.

Sal DeStefano (24:33)

That's right. So track strength. If you're getting stronger in the gym relatively consistently. In some of the big lifts, you're moving in the right direction. Now back now the scale. You mentioned the scale a couple times. I don't let my clients who are reverse dieting weigh themselves. It messes with their head psychologically. A bad idea that starts to fluctuate up, down, whatever. Especially if it goes up, that person is going to freak out and overcorrect.

Adam Schafer (24:57)

Oh, yeah.

Sal DeStefano (24:57)

So I'm like, we're not weighing yourself at all. We're just going to track your strength and then, you know, I'll assess them as we go. But we're looking at strength. And oftentimes what happens with this client is after a two month period or so of doing this, they'll come to me and be like, people are commenting and saying, I'm looking leaner and I feel real strong and my butt is rounder. Or this part is, you know, I feel stronger and everything's, you know, moving the right direction. And then I'll let them weigh themselves into their surprise. Their weight either hasn't changed or maybe gone up a little bit, but their body composition typically, and people need to understand.

Adam Schafer (25:29)

So let's say you do a 200 calorie bump, okay, up every day. That's where you're at right now. In a week's time, okay, the scale could show three to five pounds, maybe go up on the scale. But you can't even possibly put one pound of fat on with that. No, that's 1400 extra calories. That's saying that those are additional calories. If you add added that many calories in a week's time, Even though the scale could fluctuate three to five pounds due to water or timing or whatever or inflammation, a whole host of other things that could cause the scale to go up a little bit. You did not put on three to five pounds of fat. You didn't even put on one pound of fat. It's just not mathematically possible if all you've increased is 200 calories a day and over the course of a week. Yet psychologically, if you see that scale go up five pounds, you freak out.

Sal DeStefano (26:14)

That's right. So don't weigh yourself unless you want to screw yourself and really freak yourself out throughout this entire process. By the way, average reverse diet for somebody takes anywhere between, on the short end, 30 days. But typically you're looking at 60 to 90 days of a reverse diet. So you're in there for the long haul. Focus on getting stronger. Now, the next question people will typically ask is okay, I'm going to do this. When is the right time to cut the calories? How do I know when I'm ready to now go in a deficit so I could start losing some body fat? Well, here's how you know. When you get to a place where you're eating enough food or so much food that you can cut from there and be comfortable, that's how you know. So if you're eating 2,800 calories or 2,700 calories, you're like, man, I'm actually eating a lot. I am eating so much that I'm actually finding it difficult to eat this much food. And I feel good. And I've done this now for three months. I've reverse dieted from 1800 calories to 2800 calories and I think I'd like to cut now. You can go in a cut and guess what? You get to cut to 2,500 calories, 2,400 calories higher than where you were before, and then watch the fat come off your body. It's pretty amazing. I mean, some just personal success stories. I've taken people who were running, you know, 20 miles a week, plus strength training, who were eating 1800 calories over a six month period to eating over 2,800 calories, only running five miles a week, only strength training, two days a week. So I've had that happen. I've had many, many scenarios. This definitely works. For some people. It takes longer than others. If you've had a long time of beating yourself up and under feeding yourself.

Adam Schafer (27:53)

Yeah.

Sal DeStefano (27:54)

Then it's going to take you much longer to go in the opposite direction to build things up. But you know you're moving in the right direction. When you're getting stronger energy, feels good. Hormones start to feel like they're balancing out. You're moving in the right direction and don't reverse out again. Don't go into a cut until you're at that point where like, oh yeah, I could cut from here and feel totally good.

Adam Schafer (28:13)

One of the most important things that you haven't touched on yet while reverse dieting is making sure you hit your protein. Yep, that is going to be the most essential and important macronutrient when we're trying to build muscle. Because if you just increase calories and those calories just come from carbohydrates and fat and you miss protein consistently. This is a recipe for you potentially putting on body fat to build muscle too. Yes. And less likely to build muscle if our calories come from protein and you get your optimal amount of protein, we are far more likely for those additional calories to get partitioned over to building muscle than to being stored as body fat.

Sal DeStefano (28:51)

And just so everybody knows, this approach is so successful that towards the end of my career, I don't care who you were, if you want to lose body fat, always reverse diet. I would start here and really what it was was became build first. That's right, it was always build first, then lose later because the muscle makes the fat loss a lot easier. If we go right out the gates.

Justin Andrews (29:14)

To lose, I'm not going to build strategy.

Sal DeStefano (29:16)

That's right.

Adam Schafer (29:16)

I started doing it with anybody. I didn't care. Even if you had a good metabolism already, even if you were already eating a healthy amount of calories, it just made more sense. It made more sense if I was. You were just getting back on your, your fitness kick to. Okay, if you've taken a break from working out from a long period of time, a long period of time, or never have worked out, your body is primed to want to build muscle. It's novel, it's new and so why not lean into that that it the fact that it's everything you do, lifting weights wise is novel and stimulates the body to want to build muscle. That is the most optimal time to be feeding it. Totally feeding it. So I didn't care if you were a chronic overeater and way overweight. If you hadn't been strength training consistently and you want to lose weight regardless of where your your calories were, I'd always focus like let's go build first. Because if we go build and we build the metabolism up, no matter where you're at, it's going to make the fat loss process faster, easier and more sustainable.

Sal DeStefano (30:06)

Totally. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram Indpump Media. We'll see you there.

Announcer (30:10)

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle@mindpumpmedia.com the RGB Super Bundle includes Maps, Anabolic Maps, Performance and Maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now. Plus other valuable free resources@mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.