"Reverse Dieting"
September 16, 2022 9:57 AM   Subscribe

Reverse Dieting: Hype Versus Evidence. (TRIGGER WARNING FOR DISORDERED EATING) Reverse Dieting is a much-hyped method of ending a weight-loss effort by incrementally increasing food intake over time, rather than returning to a maintenance level of caloric intake immediately, with the theory being that this will reverse physiologic adaptations reducing metabolism that occur during dieting. This massive article by Dr. Eric Trexler, pro bodybuilder, researcher, and fitness coach, analyzes the claims and research surrounding reverse dieting and metabolic adaptation (Do metabolic rates get “damaged”? No. ), using research from both more modern research and the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment.

Most weight-related advice the general public sees comes from the straight-forward point of view that weighing more is bad and weighing less is your goal. In the world of strength sports, weight management is often more about gaining weight to increase muscle mass, and for bodybuilding, subsequently 'cutting' to an extremely low body fat percentage to prep for a competition. The cycle can repeat many times over a competitor's career, making the details of metabolic adaptation a matter of particular interest.

Trexler is one of the authors of MASS, Monthly Applications in Strength Sport, a publication which reviews and digests the research regarding nutrition, strength, sports performance, etc. If you prefer to consume your media audibly, Trexler also discussed the article in depth in the most recent episode of the Stronger by Science podcast.

Previously on metafilter, this NYT article by Gina Kolata about alums of The Biggest Loser claiming permanent damage to metabolic function from extreme weight loss efforts.
posted by bq (13 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's great to see Trexler and the SBS crew show up here on the blue!

I got into strength training at 33 as some quick exercise that I could do at home with some 2nd had equipment. That's also when I started to lose weight after trying my whole life. These folks came to my attention after I shifted focus and got into powerlifting.

I'm about to turn 42 and I'm down to 180lbs from 265 and I've competed in two powerlifting meets. The resources on the SBS website have been and continue to be invaluable to me. Both with weight loss and with strength training it's been so very helpful.

TFA is very representative of the content on SBS. They get really deep into the science. So if you're that kind of nerd, you'll nerd out real hard over all their articles.

I tend to skim through them and get to the conclusions. I don't need to be convinced and it's more complex than I can really follow so I just take them at their word. The conclusions are the same kind of direct, concise, easily understood info that they make easy to put into practice and make it clear just how important or, usually, unimportant.

As I frequent various online fitness communities I've noticed that TONS of people go chasing after hyped new practices because it seems like a way to get the results they want with less effort.

But mostly those things only rarely have any effect at all and when it does it's so minor it's immaterial. Unfortunately, whether it's losing weight or gaining strength, putting in the work is the most important thing. The rest is trial and error until you find the right combination of tried and true techniques that are effective for you as an individual. I'm not surprised to find that reverse-dieting is more of the same.
posted by VTX at 11:48 AM on September 16, 2022 [10 favorites]


I've only skimmed this (it's a VERY long article), but there were a few things I really appreciated:

The headings, in the form of a question, followed by a simple and straightforward answer.
Do low metabolic rates play a major role in preventing weight loss or promoting weight regain?

It doesn't appear so.

...

Does reverse dieting resolve the effects of metabolic adaptation?

It doesn’t appear so.

...

Does reverse dieting increase or “supercharge” the metabolic rate of weight-reduced individuals?

No.

It's really nice to have the assertions presented that clearly.

Another thing I appreciated is how straightforward he is about the possibility of conflict of interest, and how clear he makes it that you can pay for his program, but you can also use this information without signing up for anything:
This section is going to sound like a sales pitch for MacroFactor, and that’s a bit unavoidable. We built MacroFactor to resolve diet-related challenges, and it’s important for articles on this website to clearly describe how we constructed a solution for the topic at hand. However, before I propose an alternative to reverse dieting, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: this solution is implemented in MacroFactor, but it doesn’t require MacroFactor. You can still use the information in this section without ever spending a penny on MacroFactor, and that’s totally fine by us.
And one other thing: he notes that the data conflicts with some experiences that people have reported, but he makes a point of being respectful of their stories:
I want to clarify two very important points here: I am not doubting the experiences reported by people with successful reverse dieting anecdotes, nor am I implying that such individuals are “foolish” for overestimating the impact of reverse dieting. Illusions aside, people probably experience some very nice things when they reverse diet. ... So, there are definitely evidence-based explanations for why a person might experience a small increase in metabolic rate, feel better, move more, or perform better as their reverse diet progresses. In other words, the beneficial effects aren’t imaginary, and the anecdotes aren’t flukes or fabrications. However, these benefits are easily and accurately attributable to simply getting out of negative energy balance.
Finally, the chart and summary at the end are terrific. It's really nice to have both a quick, skimmable set of take-aways, AND the full explanation of the data he used to reach his conclusions.

This is really interesting, bq - lots to think about here. Thanks so much for posting it!
posted by kristi at 12:12 PM on September 16, 2022 [9 favorites]


I can’t even figure out how I fell into the SBS-verse - what podcast episode I stumbled over. But I appreciate the science-based approach and the way they’ll look at a paper and take it apart and explain what makes it tick. And they have a TON of information aimed at women, which is not the case everywhere.

Let me tell you, though, it was a real through-the-looking-glass moment when I realized there was this whole subculture of people whose goal was sometimes putting ON weight. Not necessarily healthier than diet culture, but disordered in an entirely different direction. I found additional female-friendly fitness forums that accommodate this worldview and it’s just - nice. Not as much negative self-talk.
posted by bq at 12:44 PM on September 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


Excellent article! Seems thorough and well-researched. Also it includes a lot of context which is so often missing from weight loss articles.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:10 PM on September 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


Very interesting to see research on weight gain in the context of people without a proclivity to obesity, i.e. bodybuilders who have to cycle gains and cuts.
posted by MattD at 1:14 PM on September 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


OMG YES!

The experiences I've heard are scary in how close they mirror my own with weight loss but it's people struggling to eat enough to gain weight. You simply cannot gain weight without a caloric surplus but the hunger signals don't align with that goal in the same way my hunger signals tell me to get fatter.

I've lost just about all the fat I want to lose so right now I'm maintaining my weight and eating a little bit more. It's wild that the number on the scale isn't moving but I'm still getting leaner. My goal is build muscle until I'm a lean ~198 (the 90kg powerlifting weight class). It's so contrary to how I've been eating that it feels surreal.

By and large the powerlifting community is really really awesome. Everyone just wants everyone to make every lift. Bodies are talked about in terms of leverages and performance. All body types and genders are accepted. Doesn't even matter how strong you, we just all want each other to keep getting stronger. I love it.

Some of the biggest names in powerlifting are in the super-heavyweight class. These are huge men and women that often carry a bunch of fat.
posted by VTX at 1:22 PM on September 16, 2022 [8 favorites]


I am a devoted SBS listener. The other thing I really like about them is the near-absence of machismo, the regular inclusion of women lifters in their "feats of strength" segment, and how Greg straight up said when asked about muscularity and mating success "that is some incel shit and whatever you're reading where you get this, you need to stop" (from memory, might have the wording slightly wrong). They seem to have resisted the pressure to pander to toxic masculinity which infests so much content in the fitness space, and I salute them for that.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:37 PM on September 16, 2022 [14 favorites]


Definitely a long article but shares some insights I think I’ve seen, as a zone eating calorie counting intermittent faster (14h).

1. After initial loss I stalled out even at 1200-1500 cal per day
2. It’s like my body completely adapted. I’m down right stuffed on 1500. But don’t lose any more if at 1200.
2a. When I hit a homeostasis / weight loss plateau I need to do something to “shock” the system into loss again. Sometimes that means eating at the 1500 range for a few days.
3. I suspect IF works by shocking your body into fat burn mode; if I eat at 10pm even if within calorie budget I have no loss. I also get nightmarishly hot if I eat at night which I didn’t before.
4. Side note: I have to be a zone eater otherwise my emotions go INSANE even on a same calorie diet. The anger/anxiety/blood sugar connection is real y’all.

The long and the short of it, I’m finding managing the loss is much more of a fine tuned activity where you have to be really dialed in to the micro signals of the body.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:59 PM on September 16, 2022


The anger/anxiety/blood sugar connection is real y’all.

Not for everybody. Twice now I've worn a continuous glucose monitor for two weeks, taken careful notes, and found absolutely no correlation at all between my blood glucose level and my mood.

Every body is a little different from every other and there is nothing that works exactly the same for everybody. The trick is finding out what works for you. It will probably be something that's worked for other people as well, and that's good because support groups are often helpful, but please don't fall into the trap of getting either evangelical or dogmatic about it.
posted by flabdablet at 2:42 PM on September 16, 2022 [8 favorites]


There is a live Q&A from SBS on YouTube right now.
posted by bq at 5:45 PM on September 16, 2022


I found this article very interesting and relevant to me.

We owe a lot to what he calls "physique athletes" and also to wrestlers, who have to make weight for a certain day, but who are OK with regaining some weight in between those days. I can remember reading stuff more than thirty years ago that was using wrestlers to try to understand the tendency to binge after a period of deprivation.

I was particularly interested to read about the idea of the dual intervention-point model, which suggests that we each have a lower weight point at which our bodies aggressively adapt to fight additional weight loss, and a higher point at which our bodies aggressively adapt to fight additional weight gain, and that variation between those two points is largely driven by environment rather than metabolism. This seems like a useful idea for non-judgmentally making sense of the way Americans have gotten fatter in the era of cheap, easily available foods with lots and lots of high fructose corn syrup in them, and it counters the idea that we'll all just keep gaining weight and gaining weight and gaining weight until the species dies off.

I liked the ideas of people who are "thrifty" with energy expenditures, and those who are "spendthrifty" with energy expenditures. It felt like a non-judgmental way to acknowledge a real difference, and the discussion of how those two general types were likely to respond to various scenarios of energy deficit and surplus was helpful.

I liked the general non-judgmental tone about people who might want to lose weight, maintain their weight, or increase it. The article doesn't say, "weight loss interventions never work!" but it's honest about their shortcomings and the pitfalls of the time after a weight loss, and I appreciated the places, like in the summary, where the author was willing to say, "Yeah, this is basically not a thing."

The reason it feels relevant to me is that from last September until this June just past, I was very sick and could not eat normally. My doctors pursued testing and treatments, but nothing helped, and I spent a bit more than nine months living on popsicles, ginger ale, and, on a good day, broth. Oh, and jello. So much jello.

During this nine months, I lost about 140 pounds, or more than a third of my body weight. I had been at my highest weight ever, which had been driven upward by factors that felt out of my own control, including meds I was on for other conditions.

In June, I started having frequent near-fainting episodes, and ended up in the hospital, where they found I had catastrophically low potassium, a fairly common side effect of not eating things and never having solid poop because to have solid poop, you have to be eating solid food.

Getting my potassium back to normal levels has been near-miraculous. I still have a limited diet, and have to eat small meals, because of gastroparesis, and because I wrecked my stomach with NSAIDs I was taking for years for osteoarthritis. But I eat food I have to chew every single day, usually more than once. It's fantastic. My mood, energy, and brain function have also improved dramatically.

At the same time, while I do not recommend my method, I'm not at all sorry about the weight loss. It's improved my ability to care for myself and improved my mobility (that osteoarthritis I mentioned). While I want to enjoy eating, I would prefer not to gain back the weight I've lost. I'd be comfortable staying where I am now, but if I lost another 20 pounds, I wouldn't be sorry.

So I'm very much in the situation the article is addressing: I've lost a bunch of weight, even if it happened because I was sick and not on purpose. I did it, again not on purpose, by extreme calorie restriction. I'm definitely one of his "thrifty" metabolism people; I've always been prone to gain weight and unlikely to take it off. Therefore, I'm at a point where my body is going to be inclined to start putting weight back on.

I have actually been looking for an app that would help me track my eating, including watching carbs because I have diabetes (nicely in remission from nine months of not eating and losing a ton of weight, but moving back and forth over the "normal" and "prediabetic" line now that I'm eating food again). But I do not want a weight loss app. I'm going to look at their app and see if it feels like it could be a useful tool for me.

Thanks for the article. I do feel like I learned a lot from it.
posted by Well I never at 8:22 PM on September 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


Mod note: Note: I twiddled this a bit so that the big trigger warning is not the title, which people were finding jarring.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:12 AM on September 17, 2022 [3 favorites]


One of the big selling points for MacroFactor the app is that it is ‘adherence neutral’ - no red lines if you miss your goals.
posted by bq at 3:11 PM on September 17, 2022


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