The Diet AFTER The Diet How to Not Get Fat
BEGINNING Dieting itself is hard enough. You go through weeks and months of counting calories, monitoring your macronutrients, doing tough gym workouts and performing hours of cardio. Even if you follow a flexible diet, where you don’t ban or restrict any foods, it’s still difficult and can wear you down to the point where you’re lacking energy and motivation, feeling cold, tired, irritable and hungry. And if you’re following a meal plan, or a diet such as Atkins, the Paleo diet, or a clean eating approach, it’s even worse. You deprive yourself of all your favorite foods, to the point where you crave them. While you’re dieting and working towards being slimmer, lighter and leaner, it’s manageable, as you have a goal to reach, and the lure of getting there keeps you focussed and on track. When you reach that goal though, it’s a different matter.
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What Happened The Last Time You Dieted? Perhaps you’ve dieted for a bodybuilding or figure show before? Maybe you dieted to look good for a photo shoot, or you just wanted to drop a few pounds and lean out for a holiday, a friend’s wedding or an anniversary. Whatever it was, let me ask you a question: What happened when you got there? I bet you were happy, but how long did that last? Did you manage to stay in that kind of shape long-term, and transition back into normal eating without piling on the pounds? Did you stay sane and slowly increase your calorie intake, get tasty foods back into your eating, and gradually lower how much exercise that you were doing so that you got back to a normal routine without any excess fat gain? I’m guessing not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing. From personal experience, I know just how hard it is to do. I’ve been there: I’ve dieted down, worked my butt off to get my body into the kind of shape I can be proud of, felt euphoric for a few days, maybe had a big meal with lots of junk food as a reward, and then started to feel incredibly flat. The happiness of reaching your goals wears off, and your cravings start to increase.
I’ve talked with many people – men and women – both in the fitness industry and not, who’ve succumbed to cravings post-diet and gained, 5, 10, even 20 pounds in less than a week after dieting. This is not water weight – this is body fat. All this is also assuming that you actually got where you wanted to be, and didn’t find your diet so tough that you gave up before achieving your desired weight loss or physique. So what’s the solution?
After so long sticking to a plan, it’s so incredibly difficult to get your mental state to the point where you can control and maintain the body you strived to achieve.
It seems that you’re either destined to be forever dieting, and hating your body, or you’ll be binging, over-eating and getting fat.
You’ve got no set goals, and so now, you’ve got 2 choices:
But hope is here.
1.Stick to your plan, where you feel hungry, weak and miserable. 2.Eat all the foods you want, to appease your cravings, but add pounds of unsightly, unwanted body fat.
There IS another way. It’s called reverse dieting, and that’s what I’ll go over in this e-book.
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What Is Reverse Dieting? Reverse dieting is a concept whereby you ensure that you finish a diet successfully. That doesn’t just mean that you drop the weight you want to, or get to your dream physique, but also that you maintain a body you’re happy with, while eating more food, doing less cardio and having a more relaxed approach than you did during your fat loss phase.
Myths and Misconceptions of Reverse Dieting Many people seem to think that reverse dieting has to be incredibly slow, and involve adding minimal amounts of calories every week, or only gaining weight very, very slowly. This isn’t the case. The beauty of reverse dieting is that you can be as cautious or as aggressive as you choose. If you need to stay lean (perhaps you’re a professional model or athlete, or you’ve got plans to compete again in the near future) then you can keep steady, and ease out of your diet slowly, but still stay within a few weeks of your needed physique. Likewise, if you’ve found dieting to be an arduous, horrendous process, and you’ve lost strength and muscle mass, then you can reverse diet a little faster, regain your strength and lost muscle, but still make sure you don’t get fat. It really is the perfect solution. You get out of the physical and mental rigors of dieting, but without the drastic after effects that many people experience when they try to finish their diet.
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An Introduction to Calories and Macronutrients To reverse diet properly, you need to be familiar with your calorie and macronutrient (macro) intakes. In fact, if you’ve dieted without knowing your calories and macros, it would be a good idea to work out exactly what you’ve been consuming by plugging a typical day’s worth of food into an online calorie tracking website or app. From here, you can work out how much you’ve been eating. If you’ve been a dieter who’s stuck to a set list of foods, or used “bro” principles such as banning and restricting foods, taking fat burning supplements, or excluded carbs and fats, then you may well actually not be ready for reverse dieting yet. Give yourself a few months to get used to counting calories and monitoring macros, and re-establishing a healthy relationship with foods, where you don’t look at anything as “good” or “bad.” In summary: To effectively reverse diet, you need an idea of your calorie and macronutrient intake, as well as knowing how much cardio you’ve been doing each week. If that means you’re a little stuck, don’t worry, I can help you out. Just drop me a line at lidoronlinept@gmail.com
The Starting Point To get going with reverse dieting, we need some numbers to work with. Let’s take two dieters – a typical 120-lb female who’s come out of a bikini contest prep � (we’ll call her Susan) and a 180-lb guy who’s dieted for a photo shoot. (Let’s call him Steve.) For simplicity, we’ll say that both dieted for 12 weeks. Susan started her diet on –
Steve started his diet on –
5 Low-Carb Days per week of –
5 Low-Carb Days per week of –
150g protein 120g carbs 55g fat
215g protein 260g carbs 80g fat
2 High-Carb Days per week of –
2 High-Carb Days per week of –
150g protein 220g carbs 55g fat
215g protein 440g carbs 80g fat
And 60 minutes of cardio per week.
And 30 minutes of cardio per week.
She finished on –
He finished on –
5 Low-Carb Days per week of –
5 Low-Carb Days per week of –
150g protein 75g carbs 40g fat
215g protein 195g carbs 60g fat
2 High-Carb Days per week of –
2 High-Carb Days per week of –
150g protein 160g carbs 40g fat
215g protein 320g carbs 60g fat
And 120 minutes of cardio per week.
And 75 minutes of cardio per week.
These are both fairly standard macros and drops for an active girl and guy at these bodyweights for �a 12-week diet. But remember, these are just examples you need to calculate your own macros. You can do that by going here –
www.lidordayan.com/training/ The whole goal of dieting is to rectify the detrimental effects of being in a calorie deficit, �which requires you to increase your calories while decreasing your cardio. There are a number of ways you can do this, and we’ll run through these now.
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Method #1
Carbs contain 4 calories per gram, while fats have 9 calories per gram.
Your metabolism is on the floor after a diet, so you need some initial increase in calories to get it going again and get healthy.
If Susan was only increasing by 125 calories, she could add in 15 grams of carbs (60 calories) and 8 grams of fat (72 calories.) Or if she was being more aggressive and adding 250 calories, she could double this to 30 grams of carbs and around 15 grams of fat.
The Initial Bump The amount you put this up by depends on how long you dieted for, and how tired, weak and lethargic you felt, but typically, a good rule of thumb is to increase your total intake (on low days if you were carb cycling, or on all days if you weren’t) by 10-20%.
It’s the same principle for Steve. His 215 calories could be 30 grams of carbs (120 calories) and 10 grams of fat (90 calories) right up to 60 grams of carbs and 20 grams of fat.
Looking at Susan, she finished her diet with 1260 calories on her low days, while Steve was on 2180 calories. Therefore, Susan would add between 125 and 250 calories per day (rounding to make it simpler) bringing her to between 1385 and 1510 calories per day, while Steve would increase by 215 to 430, giving him between 2395 and 2610 calories.
Method #2
Increasing Carbs & Fats Method #1 only focus on increasing total calories, which is fine. If you decided that you had enough with strict macro tracking during your diet, and would rather monitor calories to make it easier, then provided you get enough protein (between 0.8 and 1.25 grams per pound of bodyweight per day) then counting calories might be enough for you. That said, if you want to get a bit more specific, keeping an eye on your carb and fat intake is a good idea. You can still use the 10 to 20% increases as discussed above, but now you’ll be distributing those between carbs and fats. After a diet, protein can stay the same (or even decrease, as we’ll discuss in a moment) so that 10-20% increase can go to carbs and fats. Ideally you want a relatively even split, but if you know you’re really craving carbs, have more carbs, whereas if fats are what you fancy, have more fat.
Method #3
Lowering Protein When you’re dieting and in a calorie deficit, it’s hard for your body to hold on to muscle. Therefore, a higher protein intake is beneficial, as protein is muscle-sparing. Once you’re done dieting though, this can come down if you wish. Use the calculations above, then drop your protein back down to between 0.8 and 1 gram per pound per day, see how many spare calories you now have and add those in with carbs and/ or fats.
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Method #4
Bringing All Days to High Days If you followed a carb cycling plan, this can work extremely well. By the end of a diet, both your high and low days should have decreased, and there probably won’t be a huge calorie difference between the two, so try taking all your low days up to the same macros as you had on your high days. How well this works depends on what type of carb cycle you were on, but for anyone following a moderate plan, with 2 to 3 higher carb/ calorie days per week, it should work just fine.
Method #5
Cutting Cardio Getting rid of some of your cardio is another way to ensure that you slowly get out of a calorie deficit, and can see your strength gains shoot through the roof, as you now have more energy for lifting weights. Like increasing calories, cutting cardio should be done gradually. Start by reducing it between 25 and 50% from what you were doing during your diet. (The more you were doing, the bigger the percentage drop can be.) From there, reduce it by 10 to 20 minutes each week. You don’t have to completely cut cardio, but it’s a wise idea to dedicate less gym time to it, and more to your strength training.
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Method #6
Close, Careful Monitoring What happens next is up to you. As you know by now, the goal of a reverse diet is to get you feeling sane again, repair your metabolism, bring your strength levels back up and rebuild any lost muscle mass. And that means you HAVE to add calories (and/ or cut cardio.) I know it’s scary, as it’s something I, and many of my clients have had to go through. You think you’ll get fat, lose your abs and become a blubbering mess. Trust me – that won’t happen. At least not if you do it right. You need to weigh yourself each week, as well as taking measurements, and then add calories appropriately. Here’s what I suggest:
WOMEN
MEN
If you’ve lost 0.5 to 1 lb, increase your daily intake by 100 calories.
If you’ve lost 0.5 to 1 lb, increase your daily intake by 100-200
If you’ve lost up to 0.5 lbs, increase your daily intake by 50-75 calories.
If you’ve lost up to 0.5 lbs, increase your daily intake by 50-100
If your weight has stayed roughly the same, increase your daily intake by 25-50 calories.
If your weight has stayed roughly the same, increase your daily
If you’ve gained more than 0.5 lbs, keep your intake the same.
If you’ve gained more than 0.5 lbs, increase your daily intake by
calories. calories. intake by 50 calories. 25 calories. If you’ve gained 1lb or more, keep your intake the same. For the measurements, I like to see some gradual trends – Waist and hips should stay the same, though over time, they will rise a little. Muscle measurements, such as your calves, thighs, chest, arms and shoulders should see the biggest increases. If this is happening, and your weight is going up at a sensible rate (around 1-2 lbs per month for women and 2-5 lbs per month for men) then you’re reverse dieting right. If you’re doing this AND managing to eat more food and increase your calorie intake too … You’re DEFINITELY doing it right.
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Reverse Dieting Wrap Up Even after reading that, you’re probably still a little worried (or even terrified!) of screwing up your reverse diet, and either binging, or sticking to your calories and macros but gaining fat. That’s completely normal, don’t worry. The mental process of dieting down to lose weight and drop body fat is tough, and even the strictest, most diligent of trainers struggles with it. But often, it’s actually harder to come off your diet than it is to complete it in the first place. The chances of you binging post-diet are huge, as your body is crying out for nourishment, so don’t be surprised if you do start wanting to eat everything in sight. Stay strong, this will pass. Personally, I’ve struggled like hell after every diet I’ve done, and that’s why I’ve always had someone I could be accountable to. For me, this meant hiring a coach I trusted, and could check in with to make sure that I stayed on track, didn’t cave to cravings, and increased my macros at a sensible rate so that I regained a normal, healthy relationship with food, and came off my diet without getting fat. And that’s what I want to help you with. I appreciate the time commitment you’ve made to read this e-book, and so I’d like to give you an offer. If you’re currently dieting, and are scared about getting fat once you finish … OR you’re looking to diet down, strip body fat and get lean, but don’t know where to start… Let me help. Throughout my years in the fitness industry, I’ve help many guys and girls just like you – - Lose fat without feeling the energy-sapping effects of dieting - Get lean eating tasty food - Build muscle mass and strength faster than ever before - Reverse diet successfully to the point where they’re eating thousands of calories and not gaining a single pound of body fat. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, and you’re finally ready to commit to something that works, click the links below:
www.lidordayan.com/training/
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