Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - *BONUS* Reverse Dieting: In Under 20 Minutes

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

In this episode, Danny gives you the rundown on:What is reverse dieting.Why people reverse diet.The pros, cons, and alternativesHow does it reverse dieting work.Eating more to raise your metabolic rate.All in around 20 minutes!Support the Show.

Good morning, guys. Welcome to the Dynamic Dialogues podcast. I'm your host, Danny Matrenga. And today we're going to break down in the simplest and most efficient way possible the concept of reverse dieting, why it is that people want to reverse diet, the goals, the potential drawbacks, and just kind of lay it out for you in a way that gives you the tools you need to understand if approaching the end of your diet by implementing a reverse diet is the right move or not. And let me first start by saying this, there truly is no one size fits all. And you can't always say after every calorie deficit, after every diet, we need to do a slow and incremental reverse diet because every individual, every person,

every client, every athlete is very different. So take everything with a grain of salt and always run it through the kind of litmus test of, will this work for me, my personality, my training style, my eating behaviors, etc. But we'll just kind of break it down bit by bit to try to make it make as much sense as possible because it's one of the most common questions I get. So let's first start with functionally and fundamentally, what is meant when somebody says reverse diet? So let's first talk about a diet. A diet generally refers to a gradual reduction in calories over time with the goal of losing body fat. Granted, there are diets where we use the term diet to describe dietary or nutritional protocols that might not be associated with weight loss, but conventionally speaking, when somebody says I'm on a diet, it's an attempt to gradually reduce

calories or eliminate food types that are high in calories with the goal of losing weight. Now, a reverse diet is the incremental addition of calories with the goal of slowly gaining weight, so much so that we regain a somewhat normal starting weight or a weight higher than where we were at the end of our diet. However, the goal is to gain minimal fat while we climb out of that finished space from the diet to this new space at the end of the reverse diet. And one of the reasons it's very popular to go slow is because body fat cells don't really disappear when you diet. The cells stay the same as far as quantity, but their quality changes. So if you imagine a fat cell like a big old bag just full of jelly, okay? So just picture water balloons.

Those are your fat cells. You got all these water balloons all over your body and they're full. When you go into that calorie deficit and you need to make energy from something, one of the easiest ways we can do that is from stored fat, primarily because it has nine calories per gram. So it's very energy dense and our body is going to prioritize using that as a fuel source in many cases when we're in a calorie deficit in place of muscle tissue and in place of glycogen. So those water balloons are going to let out a little bit of fat, and those water balloons will get smaller and smaller,

and we'll notice physical change as we diet and we use more of the fuel inside those fat cells or water balloons. However, the balloons themselves never go away, and there's actually some research to support that after they've been completely deflated or after we've lost that fat, they're additionally receptive to being filled up again, even more so than they were before, which is why a lot of people rebound so aggressively after aggressive diets. And it's another reason why when we reintroduce calories, it might make sense to do so in a more slow and incremental fashion. Because again, the goal is to maintain some of

the physique we got from dieting. And in doing that, we would want to be sure that we don't let those water balloons just fill right back up because that's going to make our physique look more similar to how it did before. And there's some ideology out there, and I've seen it in practice, and it's available in the research that if you go slowly, the amount of body fat regain might be a little bit less impactful or a little bit less noticeable than if you go fast and aggressive. So that's a basic rundown of kind of mechanistically what's going on with the reverse diet. Now, why people do it beyond the idea of not gaining additional body fat is actually much, much bigger. And we have to kind of look at it like from a variety of different standpoints. So after a while of dieting, you're going to have different forms of metabolic adaptation.

You're going to have metabolic adaptation. We'll explain what that means. But there's different reasons for it. So first, metabolic adaptation, simply put, in other words, or in other places, you'll hear it referred to as adaptive thermogenesis, but metabolic adaptation, from the simplest standpoint, is your body just going, hey, this is what you used to eat. This is what you currently eat. This is how much you used to move. This is how you currently eat. This is how much you used to move. This is how much you currently move.

I'm going to try to move the needle from where you were at closer to where you are now so things are easier for me and I don't have to work as hard. Because that's your body's game. Your body doesn't want to work as hard. Its main goal is maintaining homeostasis. It doesn't give a crap how many calories you want to eat. It has 200,000 years of machinery telling it, try to get this person to get by eating as little food as possible because that's how we survived for most of our time on this planet. So the things that

contribute to the metabolic adaptation effect post-dieting or after prolonged dieting are kind of what I would call mechanistic in nature. And they're also a little bit kind of structural. So let's talk about structural and mechanistic reasons why metabolism slows down and metabolic rate tends to slow down after prolonged dieting. I use the analogy with clients of a conveyor belt and workers. And so when you're conveyor belt and workers. And so when you're chugging along, eating a relatively high amount, exercising pretty rigorously, your conveyor belt and your workers are pumping out a ton of product. And let's just say that product is energy. Okay, your metabolic rate is pretty high. Well, as you diet, right, you lose a little bit of body fat tissue and you lose a little bit of muscle tissue.

And unfortunately, a lot of people don't know this, but fat tissue does have a metabolic requirement and so does muscle. So when you lose it, you lose a couple of guys off that assembly line, right? You're like, they're like, I've got to head home, can't afford to pay me right now, so we're laying you off. to pay me right now, so we're laying you off. Okay, so a couple of your workers lead the assembly line, and in turn, the factory or your hypothalamus, your body's regulatory centers actually slow the conveyor belt down a little bit to try to meet the demands. And that would be, again, the structural would be the loss of fat and muscle tissue, and the mechanistic would be the actual hormonal response to that and the downregulation of energy output. There's other things like hydrogen ion exchange inside the mitochondria that could contribute to it.

Eric Trexler is a fantastic resource on this, but I am not. But there's a lot of things that come into play, but the big ones are going to be tissue loss and then just general, you know, adaptive response at the hormonal and endocrinological level. And again, at the neurological level as your body seeks to adapt to these things. And again, guys, my apologies, if I sound a little tired, it is 6am here on the West Coast. I've got a very busy day of training clients, something I'm very grateful for. I have found out how to do sessions over Skype and work with some of my more in need clients, a lot of whom see me for pain management and just general health and wellness, and they like the company. And so that has been quite fantastic. And then I've been able to get a workout in my

garage. I've got a hex bar, barbells, about 400 pounds of Olympic weights, which is, you know, it's enough. I can get some curls in with that. I can't really do squats. It's not heavy enough. Not true. Just kidding. I've got some 15, 25s, 35s, 45s, and 70-pound dumbbells,

and I think I have about a dozen kettlebells. I'll actually take a picture of it and post it to my Instagram story because it's growing. It seems to be growing more and more by the day as I'm able to acquire more equipment from friends and family and people who are just generally like, I don't need this. So it's quite exciting. And it's given me peace of mind that coupled with the fact that I'm able to train many of my clients virtually. And again, like I said, in many podcasts before this, my online clients are doing extremely well with this. It's brought me back to some sense of normalcy and I'm incredibly appreciative of it. So we've kind of covered the basics of reverse dieting.

One, we've covered what it really is from a definition standpoint. We've also covered why one would want to do it from a physiological standpoint. a definition standpoint. We've also covered why one would want to do it from a physiological standpoint. And we've covered what causes that metabolic adaptation and metabolic slowdown in the first place. Now let's talk about the two popular schools of thought on reverse dieting, because both of them have a little bit of clout, and they're both pretty legit. And you need to make the decision for yourself. So first things first, after prolonged dieting, there are negative implications to metabolism and potentially negative implications to your hormone profile. Now, before we go any further, let's just cover this, that after long enough,

how long is going to be unique to the individual, their stress levels, their sleep levels, their nutritional status. But after long enough, no matter how aggressive the diet, if you return to a maintenance calorie or higher, you should see all of those biomarkers return to normal. This is something that I heard from Menno Henselmans and Alan Aragon when they did a webinar about two years back about fasting and reverse dieting, I believe. But basically, the main take-home point is no matter how fucked up your diet was, if you get back to maintenance for long enough and you get everything else in control, you'll bounce back. Now, there's two schools of thought, like I said, to reverse dieting with

the goal of, like I said, bouncing you back to a healthier place. The first school of thought is we're going to actually skip the incremental nature of adding calories back in. We will accept that there will be more body fat gain this way, but we will get you back to a healthier place faster by just simply bringing you up to our estimated maintenance calories. Now, your maintenance calories will likely have decreased after dieting, right? Because you're going to have some lost fat tissue, you're going to have some lost fat tissue, you're going to have some lost muscle tissue, and you're going to have some kind of hardwiring stuff up top in the brain that's brought your metabolism down a little bit. So,

when if you started your diet at a 2,000 calorie maintenance and you dropped to 1,500 to cut, and you got all the way down to 12, and you go back to 2,000, 2,000 might be a little bit higher than your maintenance. Your maintenance might be closer to 18 because maybe there was some metabolic adjustment. But school of thought number one is just jump right back up to maintenance and get these people the hell out of a deficit as fast as possible. I have used this a lot and I quite like it. Again, it depends on the individual and how deleterious the impact of this calorie deficit is. Now, like I've told you earlier, the other school of thought is, of course, a slow, gradual, incremental increase of

calories. Now, when most people diet, particularly for physique reasons, they keep their protein pretty high, and sometimes it goes even higher. So, let's just say it's at a gram per pound of body weight, and oftentimes it's higher. Like standard way that people would reintroduce calories is just by saying, hey, we're going to add like 25 to 50 carbs per week with like five to 10 grams of fat sprinkled in there. And we're going to do that until we get back to approximately what your maintenance calories would have been or before you dieted. I've seen people do 10 carbs and five fat every other day. I've seen 25 carbs and five fat a week. I've seen 50 and 10. I've seen it done a million different ways. It really just depends on the size of the individual, what their food response tends to be, how their satiety and hunger responses are. But

generally, you're upping the carbs and the fats. You're not upping the protein because that was probably already high enough as is. And in many cases, you'll actuallypping the carbs and the fats. You're not upping the protein because that was probably already high enough as is. And in many cases, you'll actually have to bring it down. Hey, guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode.

So let's create a little hypothetical situation there around that protein intake. Let's say you were a male or a female and you were dieting for a very long time and you elevated protein well beyond one gram per pound of body weight with the goal of increasing satiety. As you reverse diet, you might say, hey, I'm going to borrow some of these calories from this protein intake because, again, my satiety is going to be more easily met now that I'm not eating 1,200 calories. I can use other things, you might bring that down closer to 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, even one grams per pound if it was above that and just borrow some of those protein calories and kind of spill them over towards fats and carbs.

One of the things I do take into account as a coach with my clients is I try to remember that protein does have a very high thermic effect of food. So while it does have four calories per gram, just like carbohydrates, some of that is used in the metabolism of that protein. So I won't borrow gram for gram. For every like five, I would say like for every 10 grams of protein I take away, I'll probably give my client six to eight grams of carbs just because there is some burn off give my client six to eight grams of carbs, just because there is some burn off. If I want to be super, super, super meticulous, and I'm bringing protein down in an effort to refeed them, or give them this reverse diet

stuff right out of the gate, I will tend to bring protein down quickly. And I'll give them more carbohydrate, but I will also tell them to up the green veg, just because they kind of work similarly in that both protein and green vegetables have a very high food volume and a very satiating impact on the diet. So I don't just want to say, hey, take the protein away and just go eat whatever carbs you want and then go pound back a ton of cereal. They'll be hungry as shit. But if you say, hey, eat whatever carbs you

want, but add some veggies to each meal, they tend to be fine. And they usually feel a little bit better with a higher carb than the protein intake. That's what I found in practice. Now, does that mean that works for everybody? No, but that's what I found in practice. So those are the two real schools of thought. You either just go right back up to what you assume would be maintenance, or you slowly and gradually work your way there. Which one you decide to do depends on where your people are at, where your clients are at, where you are at, and how much longer you're really willing to commit to the diet. There's pros and cons to both. The pros of going back faster are it generally takes less mental effort, It generally feels less like dieting and you

generally will get back to the healthier metabolic and hormonal profile faster. The downsides are you might gain a little bit of extra body fat. Now with reverse dieting, it's more slow. It's more incremental, which can help people feel like they're more in control. You're less likely to gain extraneous body fat, but the cons are it does take a little bit longer and it might make that diet that you were just on seem like it's bleeding into your new kind of post diet window. And that can be really tough for people because oftentimes after 12 to 16 weeks of dieting, the last thing they want to do is feel like they're dieting again just to get back to a place where they can kind of eat semi-regularly. And that's why for many people

post-show, they put on a ton of weight. Now, I don't want to just talk about competitors because I think that that's a little bit myopic. There's a lot of people who diet and reverse diet that don't compete, but we'll use bodybuilders as an example. And that fat gain post-show can often be pretty insane. And that's an example of that kind of water balloon effect in full force. So those are some of the things people are kind of looking to mitigate by reverse dieting is to kind of like just say, hey, they know the water balloon thing's going to happen. So they want to just limit how much fat gain there is. And if you rush back to maintenance, oftentimes you'll go into a little bit of a surplus because your maintenance has dropped. So you might see more fat gain than you

want, but there's totally no problem with doing it either way. You just need to understand, you know, how do both of these work? Which one's right for me from a coaching standpoint I use them pretty equally about 50 50 it depends way more on the client as a personality type and the client as an actual physiological organism like what they're going to respond to what I've seen their body respond to then it does what I want to do so we'll usually communicate that and say okay diet went good glad we're where you want to be. Where do you feel would be the best place for you to be in three to maybe six weeks? Would you want to be incrementally working your calories back to maintenance? Or would you kind of already want to be there and

training a little bit harder? We just kind of go with what sounds good to them. And I will lay out the pros and cons on a phone call that sounds very similar to this. And I'll let people decide and we just guide them through that. But one of the difficult things is people think that they need to reverse diet just for the sake of reverse dieting. And we'll talk about that a little bit more now here. So as is the case with almost all things in fitness, people like to make inferences and extrapolate. idea that reverse dieting after a show or after a prolonged diet has the impact of slowly elevating metabolic rate in a less um in a way that makes it less likely that people gain fat somewhere along the line somebody came up with the idea of well hey if i'm just at maintenance can i reverse diet

my way to being able to eat like 4 000 calories 5 000 calories a day and be shredded and while there's a lot of people in the space that tout how much they eat like oh i000 calories, 5,000 calories a day and be shredded. And while there's a lot of people in the space that tout how much they eat, like, oh, I'm so lean and I eat 3,500 calories a day, or oh, I'm so lean, I eat 5,000 calories a day, or wouldn't you love to eat pizza and be as lean as me by my, you know, reverse dieting, metabolic inferno, 5,000 guide. Again, that's not something that shows up all the time in research, and it doesn't show up all the time in practice. Some people are able to get a really positive response to incrementally increasing calories, but it's oftentimes people who already have very high NEAT and very high activity levels. And if you consider that the variance in NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis,

from person to person, is the singular biggest variable in metabolism, like Joe Schmo and Joe Blow might be twin brothers, but if Joe Schmo and Joe Blow, one of them's a construction worker and one of them's a lawyer, let's say Joe Blow's the lawyer, he's going to burn a lot less than Joe Schmo, even though they might be identical twins with almost completely identical metabolic machinery. You know, Joe Blow, the lawyer, is in a lot of trouble if he starts on this, say, metabolic ramp-up inferno plan as Joe Schmo, because Joe Schmo's got way higher meat. He's got a way higher likelihood of being able to do something with all those additional calories. So the idea that you can just slowly and incrementally add them in and jack up your metabolism to wherever the fuck you want with zero fat gain, it sounds nice. I've seen it work with certain people, but only people who tend to have really

high needs. I don't know how well this works functionally for general population. I think it would probably end quite poorly with people gaining a lot of extraneous body fat. Again, could many women in particular stand to eat more and probably look better? That I do agree with, which I think is another reason why this has legs. I think women are just kind of generally convinced that they need to eat like a bird to look a certain way, because again, it's sociological. There's decades of hardwiring into, you know, decades of kind of things built into the social construct and the social consensus about how women should eat that aren't healthful and, you know, keep them eating very low calories, which is unfortunate because most of the females that I work with, women that I work with, when they eat a little bit more,

they perform and look just fine. But, you know, it's this ideology that you have to eat very little to look thin and keep the guys happy. And it's unfortunate because, again, there is some inherently built-in sexism in most things that we do, but it even shows up in the nutritional and the dieting space. So, don't, anyway, long story short, don't go crazy adding in calories with the goal of jacking up your metabolism, because the potential to have that workout for you is very, very much genetic, very, very much biological. And I would say that probably relies more on, it probably comes down to your NEAT and your overall activity level beyond even those two things. And it's just too hard of something to scale out. You're not going to be able to predict how that's going to go perfectly. And a lot of people are trying to sell it to you because it's a very easy thing to sell. The idea of eating more and looking leaner is like,

you know, if anybody else who didn't know nutrition or didn't have a ripped body walked up to you and said, hey, I'm doing this new diet where you eat more and you actually get leaner. You'd be like, yeah, dude, that's fucking stupid. But when somebody who's on steroids and Instagram and has a bunch of followers says, yeah, dude, I'm eating 9,000 calories a day and I'm shredded by my guide. People are like, yeah, whatever you say, dude, you're shredded. And they completely missed the fact that this person probably works out for three hours a day, has very high NEAT, and takes drugs.

So as far as ramping up your metabolic rate by eating just tons and tons of calories, I don't think that's going to show up the way people want it to more often than not. So it's one that I would at the very least be cautious with. So that's it guys, reverse dieting, metabolic adaptations to dieting, and kind of elevating your calorie intake through gradually increasing food pros and cons wrapped up in around 20 minutes. I want to do more episodes where i attack really common questions or concepts people have a lot of questions about in around this 20 minute timeline and you can expect this to be a regularly occurring bonus episode on the podcast so again thanks so much for listening if you could do me a favor

leave me a five-star rating or review on it. It makes a huge difference. Actually, a five-star rating and written review is the way to go if you have the time. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great day. And remember, it's a great day to be a good person.