"Reverse dieting" means instead of cutting calories, you do the reverse: you gradually increase the number of calories you are eating for a period of time. You may be slowly raising your calories for anywhere from 2 weeks to a month or two, depending on how your body is responding.

Reverse dieting is different from a regular diet break, because you are doing it very gradually and in a controlled manner. This strategy involves a rather close monitoring of calories. And it typically involves sticking to a healthy eating plan in order to enable that close monitoring. It's more structured.

Reverse dieting can be used to:

Break through plateaus as explained on the Metabolic Breaks page
Establish your true maintenance level calories to know how much to reduce for weight loss
To return to long-term weight maintenance in a more slow, controlled manner

True Maintenance Calories: Most people don't realize how much they can really eat and still maintain weight because they're so afraid to increase calories. If you've been dieting or restricting calories to any degree for a period of time -- and even if your weight seems stable -- you are probably not actually at your true calorie maintenance level. Wouldn't you rather eat more than less? Plus, ideally you want to "start high" before figuring out how to cut back calories to lose weight.

How To Do It

First, establish baseline calories: how many calories are you currently eating per day? If you don't already know, you will need to track your calories for one week and figure out the daily average.

Second, increase your daily calories by 50 to 100 calories. It may be hard to be exact. Just do your best; consider simply aiming for 75 calories.

For example, if you have been eating 1800 calories per day, you should now aim for 1850 to 1900 calories each day.
These calories should come from carbohydrates or fat. Protein should remain constant. See Eat Protein for suggested amount.

Third, monitor your weight for two weeks. If your weight doesn't change (or even goes down) add another 50 to 100 calories to your daily calorie intake. Keep doing this weekly, until you have gained weight two weeks in a row. When that happens you've reached your current true maintenance calorie level.

Keep in mind: Reverse dieting is a process. Your metabolism and hormones may be more or less recovered, yet you can still keep raising calories without fat gain. You may shocked at how much more you can eat while maintaining your same weight (aside from normal fluctuations).