2690: The NEW DIET Everyone Is Using For Fat Loss

0:00Hi, I'm Jake Rez, also known as Nurse Jake. As a travel nurse, I've worked in all kinds of places, different settings, cities, and climates. Every assignment brings on a new challenge, which is why I always bring my figs. These scrubs are built for whatever the job throws at you. They're breathable, flexible, and comfortable in any environment. No matter where I land, I know they're going to keep me looking and feeling my best. And don't sleep on the details. The pockets, the features, the finishing touches, everything has a purpose and it makes a real difference when you're moving nonstop. The fit is clean, tailored, and super polished, and they come in a huge range of colors.

0:34In other words, they feel great throughout a 12-hour shift and they always look good. See every healthcare professional on Instagram. If you work in healthcare or know someone who does, check out FIGS and get 15 % off your first order at wearfigs.com with code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, how to reverse diet.

1:15So many questions come in on how to use this incredible tool to speed up your metabolism, build muscle, and set yourself up for successful fat loss. We break it all down for you in today's episode. Now, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Z-Biotics. This is a pre-alcohol drink. It's a probiotic that is genetically modified to break down acetaldehyde in the gut. So you drink it, then you drink alcohol, and guess what? You feel way better. Go check them out. Go to zbiotics.com. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S.com forward slash MindPump25. Use the code MindPump25. Get 15 % off for first-time purchasers.

1:55Also, ladies, we have group coaching available. If you're a muscle mommy, if you're a woman that likes to build muscle and look sculpted, we have group coaching for you. It's brand new, and it's led by our trainers here at Mind Pump. Check it out. Go to musclemommymovement.com. All right, here comes the show. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. 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 uh 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 this can't be possible i know it's crazy calories lose body fat?

2:53What? Yeah. So this, so this, so reverse diet, it's just like it sounds, right? So typically what you do is you, 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 hit the stage to how to get back to normal afterwards.

3:36Because 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 month and a half, two months. Not even. Following. Weeks. Sometimes. Oh, yeah. Crazy. More often, weeks. That's why this was such a phenomenon and why it needed to be talked about because it was very common to see somebody come off stage, male or female, and put 20 to 30 pounds on initially. And you can make the argument that 10 of that is water or so and another 10 of that they probably needed. but for it to come on that hard and that fast is not healthy, is not ideal.

4:20And so in comes the reverse diet is how do we slowly step somebody up? I also think part of what made it get popular too was there's 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 your you're reducing body fat you're not building uh any or very little if at all muscle during that period of time because you're cutting but then you would do that for six eight twelve 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 prs you feel stronger you i mean it just it's incredible uh 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 the body like really responds like it was it was it was dying for that and you finally gave it to yeah So that was kind of like the history and the origins of it.

5:40And then it moved into the kind of coaching and training space because we saw applications. And many of us who train 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 pounds. I'm already strength training or working out. Oftentimes it's classes, four days a week.

6:25I'm taking this many steps a day. You know, I'm watching my diet. I still have 25 pounds to lose or 20 pounds to lose. What do I do? then I'd say, well, let me see your food logs. Let's talk about how much you're eating. And I'd look at their calories and they were low. I'm like, oh my God, you're consuming 1 ,700 calories a day with that much activity. You still have 25 pounds 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 1 ,700 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.

7:01And so I guess my strategy is to cut your calories even lower, but where's that going to put you? 1 ,200 calories? And so as an early trainer, this is what you're taught to do. You take what they're currently eating. They want to lose weight. Well, then you got to eat less. And so I would do this. And or add activity. And or activity. Burn more calories. Getting them to do more cardio and you're cutting their calories. I tell you what, it was so frustrating as a trainer to the point where I thought people were lying because then I would cut their calories. Now they're eating 1 ,200 calories. And we would see some initial weight loss on the scale, but then they'd plateau.

7:35And then I'd be in this really weird place. Like, what do I do now? We can't go any lower. My certification courses wouldn't even allow me to go below 1 ,200 calories. You're already doing a lot of activity. 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'd 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.

8:12What do I do to the point where you thought that they were not tracking properly? They defied science somehow. It did. And then you start to realize like, oh gosh, maybe what's happened, and I remember it took me a while to really accept this. maybe what's happened is their metabolism has 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 with 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.

8:51She doesn't feel good. Uh-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 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 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 i 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.

9:54And so then the reverse diet became a tool for trainers and coaches on setting people up for more effective, sustainable fat loss. I actually think this is far more common than we realize. And I think that, and this is why I don't like when the fitness space touts how much people under-report and most people have, because they're taking into account 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. 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 overconsumed.

10:42I 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 or that like you're not you're not not under eating you're under reporting and then and then they'll say that'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.

11:43Our 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, in other words, slowing the metabolism down. And if you've done that over years, you've gotten to a place where your body is efficiently running. Now, not ideal or optimally, but efficiently running on 1 ,300, 1 ,500 calories. and then the occasional one time you go out and you eat two twenty five hundred or three thousand you put on weight vacation yeah and and and that how frustrating that is for that client or that person who is is dealing with this and the answers they keep getting from the fitness spaces you just got to count your calories you just got to cut and it's all the law they're reporting yeah you're misreporting you got to do more you got to train more consistent like And it's like, no, there's more going on here.

12:36And 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 want. It's 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 for them. And that's really like, and then you have the other predators out there that'll feed into that.

13:15And then they have a pill for that because this is your genetic, you know, you're predestined to be overweight at this weight. And it's like, no, there's a real sensible way to handle this. Yeah, the couple times I stumbled upon this strategy as an early trainer, there was one woman, I remember there were two scenarios. One woman, she came to me, she was running a lot, doing some strength training, counting her calories, wanted to lose. It wasn't a lot of weight. I don't know how much it was. It was like 12 pounds or something like that. And I was like trying to figure out where to go. She was already eating really well.

13:51Her 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're 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 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 that makes a lot of sense this woman that i'm training seems overstressed like she did a lot of exercise she was pushing herself she was an executive yeah 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.

14:48You'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, 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.

15:23So 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.

15:48I 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. I said, 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.

16:20And 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, there's, 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.

16:59So the goal of a reverse diet is to build muscle, speed up the metabolism, and then for many people, it's 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've taken 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.

17:41How far can this number go down? Very far. You could look at the studies on POWs. These were men that were captured during a 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?

18:17This is when we reverse diet. We're going to build muscle, boost some metabolism. By the way, yes, muscle burns more calories than other tissues. But there's not this formula of like one 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.

19:02So 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. You have to immerse yourself in the environment that, that demands to build muscle. And so there's nothing better than that than actual strength training, which also requires rest periods. So this is a big definitive difference. Traditional strength training. Traditional strength training, minute to three-minute rests in between, which can feel like an eternity for somebody who wants to just keep jumping through these exercises.

19:42But that's really the recipe of what we need to establish first. What's amazing is that when you get somebody to adopt this and go in and strength train truly strength train let go 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 and i don't i so i don't ever tell the client that because i don't know what i'm it's a welcome I'm always like preparing them.

20:23Like, 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 there. 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.

20:50and 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. 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.

21:20Now, 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, overtrainer, 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.

21:53Now, 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 1 ,300 calories, I'll bump them, you know, five 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 one 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.

22:29The truth is you can never go too slow here. 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. The point is you're intentionally going the other direction. Instead of always trying to cut 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. That's right.

23:01Next, 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 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, reexamine your caloric intake. Maybe you need more and or the program that you're following. Sometimes people with a 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.

23:46Cause I mean, the mentality again, that got them there was adding on to everything that they were doing is an answer. And this, sometimes it really takes that subtraction to get you there. Yeah. Subtraction of the volume and intensity. And then also maybe more addition because that's what they just not giving you another. A lot of times this client is so low that 50 to 100 calories just still 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.

24:28And we got to go more. 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 uh clients who are reverse dieting weigh themselves it messes with their head psychologically a bad idea that starts to fluctuate uh up down whatever especially if it goes up uh that person is going to freak out and over correct oh yeah 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.

25:02And 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 in the right direction. And then I'll let them weigh themselves and to 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. So let's say you do a 200-calorie bump up every day. That's where you're at right now.

25:30In a week's time, 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 1 ,400 extra calories. That's saying that those are additional calories. If you 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 in over a course of a week.

26:06Yet psychologically, if you see that scale go up five pounds, you freak out. 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 gonna 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?

26:44Well, 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 1 ,800 calories to 2 ,800 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.