Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The Myth of Reverse Dieting (Do THIS Instead) | Ep 389

Transcript

The Myth of Reverse Dieting (Do THIS Instead) | Ep 389 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: By now you've probably heard of reverse dieting, and that it is the solution to your suppressed metabolism.
• 0:07
  Philip Pape: Add 50 to 100 calories every week, watch your metabolic rate magically climb, and avoid fat regain in the process.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: Except the research shows that reverse dieting, the way it's commonly practiced and promoted, is mostly built on myths.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: The benefits people experience have almost nothing to do with gradually adding calories, and everything to do is simply getting out of a deficit.
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: Today I'm breaking down what the evidence actually shows about metabolic recovery, why reverse dieting perpetuates myths that keep people stuck, and what you should do instead if you're stuck at low calories heading into the new year.
• 0:41
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're going to talk about one of the most overhyped strategies in the fitness industry, reverse dieting.
• 1:07
  Philip Pape: I've spent years working with clients who have tried reverse dieting, and I've watched this approach evolve from a post-contest recovery strategy for bodybuilders into a supposed metabolic fix for anyone who's ever dieted.
• 1:23
  Philip Pape: And the problem is that most of what you've been told or see on social media about reverse dieting is not supported by evidence.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: The actual research, and there's a lot of it now, it's actually quite interesting, tells a very different story than Instagram testimonials and coaching programs selling you on this approach.
• 1:42
  Philip Pape: So today we're going to look at what the evidence shows, why reverse dieting does perpetuate these myths that seem true, but they're not, and what you should do instead.
• 1:51
  Philip Pape: Because this is more about recovery dieting and doing it the right way, not doing reverse dieting the way it's usually perpetuated.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: Before we get into it, I want to share what is possible when you actually get this right.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: I want to share some quotes from members of Physique University who've been working on their nutrition and training foundations over the past few weeks and months.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: Joseph says, quote, I'm working on my lifting form.
• 2:12
  Philip Pape: Thanks for form checks with inputs from both Coach Carol and Coach Phillip.
• 2:16
  Philip Pape: I have expert inputs allowing me to improve my workouts.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: Huge plus.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: Also, looks like my body fat's trending downward and muscle mass is on the incline.
• 2:23
  Philip Pape: So everything's headed in the positive direction.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: Joe said, quote, I can now wear a pair of jeans that were consigned to the same pile as underwired bras and high-heeled shoes, labeled not possible anymore.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: They fit perfectly now and don't hurt anymore.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: And Christine told me, quote, I had to bring my daughter to get a new state ID this morning.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: She was asking about the real ID, so I got my license out.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: It I saw that after 39 years, I finally weigh less than my license shows by 30 pounds.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: And these are just a variety of different outcomes that people are getting depending on their goal.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: And it's what happens when you understand what drives recovery and stop relying on some of these myths.
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: Joseph is seeing body composition improvements while getting stronger.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: Joe is experiencing real-world benefits that she cares about.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: And Christina's getting results she hasn't seen in 39 years.
• 3:09
  Philip Pape: So if you want these kinds of results for yourself, I am teaching the complete system tomorrow at noon Eastern in the 10-week recovery diet workshop.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: Registration is open right up until then.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: So you can go to the link in the show notes or live.witsandweights.com.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about why reverse dieting isn't what most people think it is.
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: I want to start with the conclusion and then work backward through the evidence.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: Reverse dieting, if you look at social media and how it's practiced, promoted, and spoken about, it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how metabolic recovery works.
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: The idea is that by very slowly and precisely adding calories, usually it's something like 50 to 100 a week, sometimes I'll see 200 calories, and tracking everything, you can somehow coax your metabolic rate upward.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: You could jumpstart your metabolism without regaining fat.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: And then you can supposedly lose fat from a higher metabolism.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: At least those are different elements of this claim.
• 4:06
  Philip Pape: The research shows this is backward.
• 4:08
  Philip Pape: The benefits that people experience from reverse dieting have nothing to do with the gradual calorie increases.
• 4:15
  Philip Pape: It comes from getting rid of the energy deficit.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: That's a different thing.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: Those are two different things.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: Getting out of a deficit causes your rate to partially recover back to its current baseline or set point, whatever word you want to use.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: And that happens whether you jump straight to maintenance or you drag it out and inch your way there over, say, 12 weeks.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: So what reverse dieting actually does then is delay recovery while perpetuating myths that make it seem like the gradual increases are doing something special and that they're necessary.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: And then understanding these is important because, you know, lots of smart, well-intentioned coaches believe and say these things, and sometimes in a negative sense in that they are used preying on your fear to get you to join a program.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: So today we're going to break down four myths that keep people stuck in reverse dieting.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: And we're going to talk about what actually drives recovery.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: And then finally, what should you do specifically?
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: So myth number one is that extreme tracking precision is going to reveal your true metabolism.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: Now you might be shocked to hear me say that because I talk about macrofactor all the time and how tracking your weight and your food is going to help you understand your true estimated expenditure.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: So if you are, for example, adding 10 grams of carbs this week and you don't account for that, then the entire approach is meaningless somehow, that you have to track to the gram every day, or you can't tell if your planned increases are having any effect.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: But what's happening when you are tracking, however precise you are, is that you're revealing how much you're actually eating.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: You're not actually revealing your improved metabolism.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: And again, you're like, wait a minute, Philip, it doesn't quite jive with what you've said in the past about eating, tracking your food, tracking your weight, and revealing your metabolism.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: Stick with me because there's some nuances here.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: So I'll see this a lot with clients, right?
• 6:07
  Philip Pape: Someone comes to me, you know, thinking their metabolism is just so much lower with age, it's broken, whatever words we want to use.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: And they're like, hey, I'm only eating 1400 calories at the moment.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: I can't lose weight anymore.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: So I'm not going to go ahead and immediately change their diet.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: What I want to start with is tightening up their tracking and awareness.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: I want them to weigh using a food scale.
• 6:27
  Philip Pape: I want them to use the barcode.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: I want them to use AI-based vision estimates, whatever makes sense.
• 6:32
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be perfect.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: But I do want them to log everything for the day and do it every day so that we get the most and the most precise data in a relatively short time.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: And suddenly they discover, oh, I'm eating 1800 calories.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: So that's one scenario.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: And I'll say it's not the most common scenario today because a lot of people that come to me have heard the podcast.
• 6:55
  Philip Pape: They know to do this.
• 6:56
  Philip Pape: They're not gaslit about how many calories they're eating, is the word I'm going to use.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: But a lot of people aren't tracking or not doing it consistently, or they're skipping weekends, or they're using an inferior tool like MyFitnessPal, where they're just tracking, but they don't know how much to target.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: So then they feel guilty when they don't hit their goals and then they don't track on those days or those meals, right?
• 7:17
  Philip Pape: And the list goes on and on and on.
• 7:19
  Philip Pape: And we we know that even registered dietitians, right?
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: People who have lots of nutrition training are routinely underestimating their calorie intake unless they actually track it.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: Many of us just are terrible at this.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: You know, 40 to 50% is common for non-nutrition people or people who haven't gone through this before.
• 7:38
  Philip Pape: So even if you're trying to do it intuitively, you could be off by 20%.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: And then it kind of compounds over time as your diet changes, your life changes, maybe the adherence is a little bit spotty, those errors get even larger if you're not, you know, kind of on top of it.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: So what makes reverse dieting seem to work is that you are now more precise with your tracking and it improves your habits.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: Because the loose tracking that you did before, where you were quote unquote eating 2000 calories, but maybe you were eating 2,400 on average because you didn't count the weekends, you didn't count the snacks, you didn't count the bites, didn't count the eating off of your kid's plates, right?
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: Those sorts of things, as well-intentioned as you were, that's gone.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: And now you're like, oh, okay, I'm actually averaging a few hundred more calories than I thought.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: And then your brain goes into the solution mode of, oh, well, now I maybe need to meal plan a little bit differently to bring that number closer where my maintenance is.
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: So it's not that, hey, I used to maintain on 2000, now I'm maintaining on 2600, my metabolism is fixed.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: It's not what we're doing here.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: That's that's one of the myths.
• 8:44
  Philip Pape: You are always eating whatever the value is and maintaining at that weight.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: You just didn't know because your tracking wasn't as accurate.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: So for many of you, you've already gone past this point and you are tracking, but I do want to address the listener who is still not quite tracking consistently because there is extreme value in that.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: Tracking creates a real measurable difference in the numbers you see because you see the truth.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: You see the real logged calories.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be perfect.
• 9:14
  Philip Pape: By that I mean you should log everything, but the accuracy, there's gonna be a little bit of error, but the error tends to work itself out.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: It tends to be a little high and a little low.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: For example, if you're using AI-based food logging, I think that's good enough.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: I think it's going to be a little bit high sometimes, a little bit low sometimes, especially if you give it context, it's gonna be a little bit more accurate.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: And all of this can be extremely empowering in and of itself without doing anything else.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: Of course, it then throws water in your face because you're like, oh, I'm actually eating a little bit more.
• 9:41
  Philip Pape: So I my behaviors do have to change a little bit, right?
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: So if you need that level of precision to make reverse dieting quote unquote work, that kind of tells you something.
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: I think real changes to your metabolism can happen regardless of whether you're tracking precisely, right?
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: They're they're two different concepts.
• 9:59
  Philip Pape: But the the tracking is going to create the awareness that's gonna improve the habits that are gonna help you with your metabolic change.
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: Okay, I hope that all made sense for the first one because some of these myths are a little bit are a little bit nuanced.
• 10:11
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: Myth number two is that your metabolism only works at a specific calorie level.
• 10:17
  Philip Pape: And what I mean by this is the idea that your true maintenance is, you know, this one number and it's not very different and it doesn't differ very much.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: In other words, it's fixed or close to it.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: So let's say your maintenance is 2200 right now, then your brain immediately goes to, okay, if I eat 2100, obviously I'm gonna lose weight.
• 10:37
  Philip Pape: And if I eat 2300, I'm obviously gonna gain weight.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: But the reality is far from that.
• 10:43
  Philip Pape: Let me walk it through.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: Okay, so let's say your true expenditure, we call it your total daily energy expenditure, the amount of calories you burn in a day.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: Let's say it is 2200 calories per day right now.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: If you eat exactly 2200 calories a day, your weight will probably stay fairly stable.
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: Now, if you eat 2100 calories a day instead, you're in a 100 calorie deficit.
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: Over three months, we would see a, you know, a couple pounds of fat loss, let's say.
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: But because daily weight fluctuates by, say, one to three pounds for most people, having nothing to do with fat, but because of water, you may not even be able to notice that.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: Even if you're using a tool like Macrofactor, you know, which is as precise as it gets in terms of your weight trend, it's gonna be hard to see that.
• 11:26
  Philip Pape: Now, what if you're eating 2,300 calories?
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: So that's a hundred calorie surplus.
• 11:30
  Philip Pape: Again, opposite.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: You're gonna gain a couple pounds over several months, barely noticeable, especially within the noise of day-to-day fluctuations.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: So for practical purposes, your maintenance is actually a range of something like 400 calories.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: I mean, you know, because 400, we're talking about practicality here.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: So anywhere from let's say 2,000 to 2,400 calories a day is gonna feel like maintenance to you.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: And because the scale isn't obviously going up or down, your clothes fit the same, you would say that you're maintaining.
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: But here's how it creates another reverse dieting myth.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: Let's say someone finishes a diet at 1800 calories and they're on the low end of their maintenance range, maybe even a small deficit because but but because they're losing weight so slowly, they perceive themselves as maintaining, right?
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: And then they start reverse dieting.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: Over, say, 10 weeks, they work up to 2200 calories.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: So they went from 1800 to 200.
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: And remember that 400 calorie range.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: Well, now they're kind of on the high end of their maintenance range that they ended the diet with.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: Maybe they're in a small surplus, but again, the weight change is barely perceptible.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: And then you think their mind goes to, hey, I just added 400 calories over those 10 weeks and my weight stayed the same.
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: Awesome, reverse dieting works.
• 12:45
  Philip Pape: But their actual expenditure might have been 2,000 calories the entire time.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: They went from slightly below to slightly above it, and they stayed within that invisible range of quote unquote maintenance the entire time.
• 12:58
  Philip Pape: They didn't reverse metabolic adaptation, none of this reverse dieting magic occurred.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: They just moved from one end of maintenance to another.
• 13:05
  Philip Pape: Maintenance is a range.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: And it fluctuates even so, even beyond that.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: You know, I could think of a client who, for example, reverse dieted from 1700 to 2100 calories over 12 weeks with a previous coach and had told me this story how she had done these reverse diets and she's like, Yeah, I added 400 calories, I didn't seem to gain weight.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: But when you averaged it out based on the intake, her TDEEE was really around 1950 the entire time.
• 13:35
  Philip Pape: When you look at the expenditure graph, we had to reverse engineer it with her data because she wasn't using macrofactor at the time, and then we kind of reverse engineered it.
• 13:43
  Philip Pape: So that's like she started slightly below it and did slightly above it, and it looked like metabolic recovery.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: And I think this is a power myth, powerful myth to sit on here because it creates the it creates the experience that reverse dieting promises, which is eating more without gaining weight, but nothing's changed.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: It's purely a, I'll call it an accounting error.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: It has to do with math and averages and dynamic dynamic, your system being dynamic and the signal versus noise and all that fun stuff, the kind of the engineering stuff that you really have to be aware of.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: And you can get fooled by if somebody is a really slick marketer and kind of flips the numbers the right way.
• 14:21
  Philip Pape: And so this is why tracking and monitoring your expenditure matter a lot.
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: Because when you understand your actual energy expenditure via logging food, logging weight, not just this perception or this like nebulous range, it helps you target in on those smart decisions.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: How do I want to adjust my calorie, calories, but not let it drag out a long time and not actually have a result?
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: So I'm teaching this tomorrow at Noon Eastern in the 10-week recovery diet workshop.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: This is not reverse dieting with all the myths and all the false promises, but it's actually called recovery dieting, where it's based on your metabolic response and your personal lifestyle and the need to adjust as you hit various plateaus and situations.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: So I'm going to walk through how to assess your foundation.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: You know, how are you even in the place where you can properly track, measure, and execute a recovery diet and know that you're doing it?
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: How to use that data, like your expenditure, to make those informed adjustments, how to monitor biofeedback, which honestly is one of the best indicators of recovery.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: And then what to do when your data shows that you're ready for certain changes along the way.
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: So you don't go too slowly.
• 15:28
  Philip Pape: I'd rather you get there fast and efficiently if you can't.
• 15:31
  Philip Pape: So that's tomorrow.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: It's $27, includes a 20-page protocol workbook and all the bonuses, all the guides, the workshop itself.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: Live.witsandweights.com or click the link in the show notes.
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: Go to live.witsandweights.com, click the link in the show notes.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: I'm going to continue on now with myth number three that you are eating more without gaining because your metabolism's going up.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: Now, again, you might think, well, yeah, isn't that what happens when you recover?
• 15:57
  Philip Pape: You eat more, your metabolism follows, and therefore you don't gain weight.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: And mathematically, it's very convincing.
• 16:05
  Philip Pape: It explains why a lot of people are certain that reverse dieting worked for them.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: And again, you're thinking, Philip, this sounds a lot like what you talk about, but there's differences.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: I really want to explain.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: I hope I'm doing a good job on this podcast because it's hard to do this.
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: The myth is hey, I'm now eating 2,800 calories and maintaining the same weight I used to maintain at 2,000 calories.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: Therefore, my metabolism increased by 800 calories.
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: The problem is that calorie intake is instantaneous, but body weight change is cumulative.
• 16:37
  Philip Pape: When you ignore that cumulative math, you create a myth of metabolic improvement.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: And honestly, as much as I love macrofactor and I use it myself, this is where I have to constantly question what it's telling me in terms of the expenditure and either offset it one way or the other because people, I think, maybe trust it too much to be like, this is what's going on today, even though it's a lagging indicator, all right, and doesn't overrespond, it's very conservative.
• 17:05
  Philip Pape: So what's actually happening looks like this.
• 17:08
  Philip Pape: Let's say you finish your diet, you go on a fat loss phase, you lose some fat, you finish your diet, or maybe you're plateauing, whatever.
• 17:13
  Philip Pape: Let's say your expenditure at the end of the diet is 2,400 calories, but you're not quite sure that's what it is.
• 17:19
  Philip Pape: You've been eating something below that, right?
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: Like let's say 1800, what did we say?
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: 1800 calories?
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: I don't think I gave you a number, but let's say 1800 calories.
• 17:28
  Philip Pape: And so you're like, I'm gonna do a reverse diet, I'm gonna jump up to 1900, and I'm gonna go up 50 calories a week for the next X number of weeks until I recover my metabolism.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: So in the first, let's say, eight weeks, if you're going up 50 calories a week, you're basically still in a deficit because you didn't really trust how high you should go and you didn't want to lose fat, right?
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: And then at some point you hit your maintenance, but you're still going and you start to overshoot, and eventually you get into a surplus and you start to gain a little bit of weight, but all of this is imperceptible.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: It's all imperceptible.
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: And then by let's say three or four months later, you've been trying to do this, it may not take that long, maybe a shorter time frame.
• 18:04
  Philip Pape: You're actually eating a higher level than your true maintenance that's even fully recovered.
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: And your cumulative energy balance over that entire time is approximately zero.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: You haven't gained weight, but you think you've boosted your metabolism by that amount of calories, let's say 800 calories.
• 18:23
  Philip Pape: Except in reality, you took a long time to get to your true maintenance, and then you took a long time slightly going past it.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: And again, going back to myth number one, you're effectively in that range the entire time.
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: And yet you've probably ended up on the top end, and now you may be in a surplus and start to gain weight, but it's gonna happen slowly over time.
• 18:43
  Philip Pape: So it's this lack of data and lack of confidence where you think, oh, the reverse diet worked and I'm maintaining my weight, and you're not really, you're actually starting to slowly gain weight at that point, maybe a lot of weight, and it just slowly catches up.
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: And so I think this part ex this myth explains the most common reverse dieting testimonial, quote unquote, you know, I'm I'm eating so much more than I used to, and I haven't gained weight.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 19:06
  Philip Pape: Because it's true, at least on the surface, but they haven't been eating that much more for very long, and the cumulative energy balance really hasn't had time to catch up.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: And because they're not tracking their data accurately, they don't know it.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: And so this is where, hey, I gained eight pounds or 10 pounds months later, and I'm not, and I don't know why.
• 19:25
  Philip Pape: So this is kind of disconnecting calorie intake, which is what you eat today, from body composition, which is what you've eaten over many months.
• 19:33
  Philip Pape: And the illusion of reverse dieting manipulates the timing to create this myth of eating more without gaining, but the cumulative math is gonna catch up eventually.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: And that brings me to myth number four that gradual calorie increases drive the metabolic recovery.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: And this is the most important myth to understand because it gets at the core misunderstanding of what actually drives metabolic recovery.
• 19:54
  Philip Pape: The reverse dieting myth says that gradually increasing your calories causes your metabolic rate, your metabolism to increase.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: Add 50 calories this week, your metabolism speeds up a bit, add another 50 next week, it speeds up more, keep going.
• 20:07
  Philip Pape: And then you rebuild your metabolic capacity through this careful manipulation of calories.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: And again, the research shows us and experience shows us this is backward.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: What actually happens is eliminating the energy deficit, the calorie deficit, causes a metabolic, your metabolic rate to increase.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: That's different than increasing calories causing it to increase.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: You have to eliminate the deficit.
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: When you transition from a negative energy balance to a neutral energy balance, maintenance, metabolic adaptation partially reverses because you're no longer in an energy depleted or resource-depleted state.
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: And guess how fast this happens?
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: Within days, it has nothing to do with whether you jumped straight to maintenance or inched your way there over 12 weeks.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: Once you get to maintenance, right, and that's the important part, you're gonna start recovering very quickly, which is why we want to do it quickly.
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: Metabolic adaptation is driven by two things: the loss of fat mass and body weight and the presence of an energy deficit, right?
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: Those are two different things.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: You're getting lighter on the scale and you're in a deficit.
• 21:15
  Philip Pape: When you get rid of the deficit, that portion of adaptation driven by the deficit reverses very quickly.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: The portion driven by your loss in body mass is going to persist until you regain it because you're just a lighter person.
• 21:28
  Philip Pape: Of course, that was your goal, right?
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: To be a lighter person.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: So you take that along for the ride.
• 21:34
  Philip Pape: So reverse dieting gets the causality backward, the cause and effect.
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: You're not able to add more calories because you're carefully manipulating your metabolism upward.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: You're able to add more calories because eliminating the deficit increased your metabolic rate.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: And now your old maintenance is actually a slight deficit, right?
• 21:51
  Philip Pape: The maintenance you ended your diet with, technically, right, is now a slight deficit because you've recovered to your true, full recovered maintenance as quickly as you could.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: I think it's almost like a parallel to progressive overload and training, right?
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: You don't get stronger because you added five pounds to the bar.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: You're able to add five pounds to the bar because you got stronger from the previous training.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: I know it sounds like a paradox, but the weight increase is the effect of you adapting and getting stronger, which is why we're not really overloading, we're actually loading right to the edge and then causing that adaptation.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: The same thing happens with reverse dieting.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: The calorie increases are the effect of metabolic recovery from eliminating the deficit.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: So you're kind of like allowed now to increase your calories because you're slowly getting out of that deficit, and the recovery happens because of that.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: The gradual increase in those calories are you just getting up to that point, albeit slower than I would like you to, which is kind of the whole point of this whole discussion.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: And this matters because if reverse dieting is the effect instead of the cause, then the approach is redundant.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: What do I mean?
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: Well, you're engaging in weeks or months of this guesswork, and maybe you are tracking, but it's still this very mentally fatiguing calorie manipulation to accomplish something that happens when you automatically automatically when you just go to maintenance.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: You just jump up to maintenance now, like within a day.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: So the research actually confirms this.
• 23:22
  Philip Pape: When people transition out of an energy deficit right to their true maintenance, their metabolic rate goes up within days, not weeks, not months, days.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: And it increases the same amount whether you jump to maintenance now or your reverse diet, you're way there weeks later.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: But we want it now, don't we?
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: We want to recover.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: Your body's gonna feel much better for it.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: What does not increase quickly is the part of your metabolism driven by your body weight because you're lighter and you can't change that.
• 23:51
  Philip Pape: It's a biological reality.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: That's the other confusion because you're not gonna recover, you may not recover fully to the metabolism you had before.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: Now, the difference being you're probably also building muscle over time.
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: So that's gonna slowly inch up your metabolism as well, just a little bit.
• 24:03
  Philip Pape: But in the short term, you're not gonna have any of that going on.
• 24:06
  Philip Pape: You're just gonna be a little bit lower because your body weight, but you should recover because you're not in the diet.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: And I actually see this in the data when when I work with clients or in physique university and we're using macrofactor and we're doing this the right way.
• 24:17
  Philip Pape: We'll sometimes see the expenditure bottom out, and then within a few days or at most a couple weeks, it really starts to climb and get back to its normal level.
• 24:25
  Philip Pape: It's always gonna have ups or downs, though.
• 24:27
  Philip Pape: You gotta understand that it's very dynamic, but it's going to recover.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: So putting this all together, and then I'm gonna talk about what to do instead in a moment.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: The evidence tells us that metabolic adaptation, it's not permanent damage.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: It's just temporary, a temporary change in metabolism that reverses when you eliminate the deficit.
• 24:45
  Philip Pape: And then if you gain your weight back, it'll go all the way back to what it was before.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: Or if you gain muscle, it's gonna go up, right?
• 24:52
  Philip Pape: That's adaptation.
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: The adaptation adds friction to the whole process and it adds confusion.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: And that's why I do these episodes.
• 25:00
  Philip Pape: But we're talking about a modest impact, not a huge impact.
• 25:05
  Philip Pape: Effectively, effectively, when metabolism drops during dieting, it's gonna add several weeks to the whole process.
• 25:10
  Philip Pape: Or it's gonna cause you to have to eat a little bit less.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: That's basically what it comes down to.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: And you can choose do I want to go faster and have it be a little bit harder with more hunger, or do I want to go slower and face the reality of it?
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: The portion driven by the deficit will reverse within days of returning to maintenance.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: That's, you know, primarily hormonal, right?
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: Your thyroid, we know it drops by like 6% on average in a 500-calorie deficit, but then it goes right back up when you get out of the deficit within days.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: We know this from bodybuilders as well.
• 25:37
  Philip Pape: You know, the research on physique athletes, those who tried to kind of restrict their weight regain because they were worried about getting too much fat back, they actually had this persistent long-term suppression of their metabolism.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: While people who said, you know, I'm gonna come right back to my set point right now, recovered faster.
• 25:55
  Philip Pape: And then ironically or coincidentally, your metabolism then pops back up where it needs to be.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: So, what should you do instead?
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: So instead of reverse dieting, you want to do what's called a recovery diet.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: It's not about gradually adding calories and hoping, guessing, taking time, being stuck in that maintenance window and not actually recovering.
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: It's understanding what drives recovery and then optimizing for those factors.
• 26:17
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna give you six quick ones here.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: And again, we're gonna cover these in detail in tomorrow's workshop.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: First is to assess your foundations.
• 26:25
  Philip Pape: These are things like sleep, stress, training, activity, nutrition quality.
• 26:29
  Philip Pape: All of that is going to help you regain your or not regain, it's going to help you come back to your uh recovered state without gaining fat, right?
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: Because that's what we're trying to do.
• 26:41
  Philip Pape: Number two is transitioning to maintenance as quickly as you can instead of inching your way there over many weeks or potentially months.
• 26:49
  Philip Pape: And you can do that with a lot of confidence without worrying about fat regain when you follow the kind of approach that we take.
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: Number three is to be tracking your dynamic maintenance.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: Again, we use MacroFactor, use my code Wits and Weights, all in Word.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: It is the only food logger that can do that right now.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: The only other way to do it is with a spreadsheet.
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: Although I'm gonna drop a hint right now, there's an app that I'm developing that will also do that for you in the background.
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: But anyway, your metabolic rate is gonna climb slightly after you eliminate the deficit.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: And you want to get first to where it is right now as quickly as you can, and then you start to jump up to where it's going to be in the short term.
• 27:29
  Philip Pape: So that's not reverse dieting, that is a quick jump and then some subsequent jumps as you know how your metabolism is changing.
• 27:37
  Philip Pape: Number four is to accept the reality of biology that, you know, if if you're extremely lean to get fully, fully, fully recovered, you're probably gonna gain a little bit of fat back, or you're just gonna have to stay, you know, to stay lean, you're gonna have to just be eating a little bit less, not a lot less, like a diet, but it's not gonna be as much as you were when you were heavier, right?
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: You can't override that with any system or magic reverse dieting protocol.
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: Number five is tracking things that really matter during this whole process, like your strength, your energy, your sleep, the performance in the gym, all of that is telling you that recovery is happening.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: So even if you didn't have all this data about calories, you could tell quite straightforwardly, I don't know if that's an adverb, based on your biofeedback that you're recovering.
• 28:26
  Philip Pape: And then number six is using your recovered capacity now in an intelligent way.
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: What I mean by that is let's say you come to our workshop tomorrow and then follow the 10-week protocol.
• 28:38
  Philip Pape: Now, it doesn't take 10 weeks to recover.
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: A lot of that time has to do with building the foundational habits, okay, and assessing these things and doing it the right way.
• 28:47
  Philip Pape: It's actually gonna happen fairly quickly, but you're gonna finish your recovery, you're gonna enter the new year at a well-known maintenance with good biofeedback, then you're ready to go hard at a proper fat loss phase.
• 29:00
  Philip Pape: Not because you boosted your metabolism, but because you're not fighting this deficit-driven, this lack of foundation-driven suppression in your metabolism.
• 29:10
  Philip Pape: That is recovery dieting, okay?
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: And that is what I'm teaching tomorrow with all the implementation details, with the workbook, with the plan and everything.
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: In tomorrow's workshop, just go to livewitsandweights.com.
• 29:20
  Philip Pape: Again, just go to live.witsandweights.com or use the link in the show notes.
• 29:24
  Philip Pape: It's $27, includes a complete 20-page protocol workbook.
• 29:28
  Philip Pape: It includes the foundation assessment, it includes the dynamic maintenance approach we talked about today, how to actually execute it.
• 29:35
  Philip Pape: It includes how to bio how to monitor your biofeedback, and I even have a troubleshooting guide in there for all of the things that will come up in the data, in your plan, and in your life, especially since it's during the holidays.
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: So again, go to live.wits and weights.com or click the link in the show notes if you want to stop wasting time on all these diets and the reverse dieting.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: And you want to understand this is how I recover, and then I can go after good fat loss in the future.
• 29:58
  Philip Pape: Until next time.
• 29:59
  Philip Pape: Keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember your metabolism isn't broken, it's just adapted.
• 30:05
  Philip Pape: And understanding the difference is what actually drives recovery.
• 30:09
  Philip Pape: My name is Philip Pape, and you're listening to the Wits and Weights podcast.
• 30:13
  Philip Pape: Talk to you next time.