009: How To Know When To Reverse Diet

Introduction

You're listening to Biceps after Babies radio episode number 9

Hello and welcome to Biceps after Babies radio. A podcast for moms who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or prs. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, online fitness coach, wife, and mom of four. Every week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise mindset, personal development, and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you, my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey. Hey. Welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke and welcome to today's episode. First off, happy thanksgiving. It is Thanksgiving this week and I hope that you have great plans and that you have lots of food and lots of family and friends to be able to celebrate with. Just want to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. Before I dive into the actual content, I do want to let you know that I created a Freebie for this episode. Reverse dieting is technically kind of simple. That doesn't mean that it's easy, but it's technically not too complicated. But I created a flow sheet that allows you to walk through the reverse diet and like know what you should do next. So if you want to grab that Freebie, it's going to help you as you go through your own reverse diet, Go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/9download. Those are all my announcements. So let's dive into today's topic.

Outline: (03:26)

Today we're going to be talking about a topic that a lot of people struggle with. It is something that I feel has come to light a little more and a little bit more mainstream over the last couple of years. But it's topic that is really important to understand, especially if you're somebody who is trying to lose weight, wants to lose weight, has lost weight, um, because this idea of metabolic adaptation is real and it's something that you need to be aware of so that you can really be successful in the long run. Now, some of you are probably coming into this episode with a background in a little bit of understanding of this term reverse diet, but some of you guys, this may be the very first time you've ever even heard that term, like what the heck is a reverse diet? Before I kind of dive exactly into like reverse dieting and what it is you first have to understand this concept of metabolic adaptation. It's really important to understand that our bodies are master adapters. That's what our body does. Our body keeps us alive by adapting to things to be able to prolong our life. And we see this a lot in in many areas of our life. One being weight training. The reason that weight training works and the reason that lifting weights progressively over time allows you to grow muscle is because your body has a stress on it. You, you lift a certain amount of weight, it then recovers from that stress and adapts to the weight that you lifted. And so as you progressive increase those weights or increase the volume or increase the reps you, your body is now adapting it to that new stressor and you slowly get stronger over time. So our bodies are adapting to the things that we're doing to it, the things that we're feeding it all of the time, like that's just a normal, healthy part of our bodies. So then we can relate this to our metabolism and what metabolic adaptation is and what happens when your metabolism adapts. So at first, understand that metabolic adaptation isn't a good or a bad thing. It just is something your body naturally does. But the more that we are aware of it and understand how it works, the more that we can be able to use it in our favor to be able to get the results that we're desiring.

Fat/Weight Loss Scenario: (05:44)

So let's see if this scenario kind of rings true to you. You decide that you want to lose weight so you cut your calories down cause you know that you have to create a caloric deficit to see that fat loss. And over time you see the scale dropping, you see your measurements dropping and yeah, maybe you have to make some sacrifices and maybe like it's a little bit hard sometimes, but you don't really care because you're feeling so motivated. You're seeing these results, you're putting in the effort and seeing what the changes are happening in your body. And then after a period of time you end up reaching your goal weight or your goal look or whatever the end of your, of your fat cutting phase, and you try on your jeans and they button up really easily and you're feeling really proud and really accomplished for what you've done. So now it's time to celebrate, right? After months of like restricting yourself and not eating the cake, then you're kind of convinced, okay, I'm done. Like I've finished, I can let go of the reins, I can eat whatever I want. This is so great. Here's the problem. The problem is over that period of weight loss, your body has adapted and it's now burning less calories than when you started trying to lose weight. Because over that period of time it's been forced to become more efficient at using energy.

Treating Metabolism Like Fire: (07:04)

So if you think of your metabolism like a fire, if you have a fire, we live near the beach, we live in southern California, we go to the beach a lot. We do bonfires. And when we create the bonfire, like you have to keep putting fuel on the fire, right? You put a log on the fire, um, and the more logs you put on, the hotter the fire burns, the bigger it gets. And to a certain extent, our bodies are the same way. The more food you eat, the higher your metabolism burns. If you take away fuel, just like a fire, if you take away that fire, the fire starts to die out. Take away calories and your metabolism just doesn't, your body doesn't burn as many each day because it becomes more efficient. But if you don't know that and when you end that fat loss phase and you start eating anything that you want, you create this perfect storm for really fast fat gain and, and overshooting your body fat because your metabolism has decreased over time and now you are increasing your calories by exponentially amount. You are going to have really rapid fat gain. And this is where Yo yo dieting comes in. You'll lose 10 pounds, you gain 20 you lose 8, you gain 25 and this Yo yo dieting is something that we see so frequently with people who restrict and then you know, binge or go back to eating way above normal and then end up yo-yoing back up with their weight.

And you may be nodding your head right now going, yeah, like I've experienced that when I talk, when I say this to women, a lot of them just sit there and like nod their head like, yeah, that's me, that's the experience that I've had. And some people honestly are going to think about this or talk about this or look at this. And they're going to say, see, you shouldn't try to lose weight. Like intentional weight loss doesn't your, your body's gonna fight against it and you shouldn't. You just shouldn't lose weight because of this. And I really don't think that that's what you should make it mean. I, yes, your body has mechanisms in place to keep you alive, thank goodness. And yes, there is a difference between a weight that you can attain or reach and a weight that you can maintain. And that's a really important concept, but you absolutely can lose a reasonable amount of weight and keep it off, and that last part is key – the keeping it off part. If you understand metabolic adaptation and then you work with it, not against it, because dieting, even for long periods of time or even if you repeat dieting, it doesn't, it doesn't damage your metabolism. Like your metabolism is not dead. It can repair. So in a, in a scientific sense, metabolic damage doesn't happen. Like that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about metabolic adaptation. And if you can adapt one way, then you can adapt the other way. And so how do we start to work with metabolic adaptation and with his understanding of our bodies and not against it? And the real honest truth is by having a plan, reaching your goal, weight or physique is not the end. You have to have a plan to then recover your metabolism so that you're going to be able to maintain that weight loss long term. The absolute worst thing that you can do following a period of weight loss is exactly what you naturally want to do, which is dramatically increase your caloric intake. I'm not saying that the answer is just to continue in the caloric deficit. If you stay eating the same amount of calories that you were eating while losing weight, your body will adapt and will only burn the amount of calories that you're eating. Which means if you want to go through another fat loss cycle, now your metabolism has dropped down and you will have to drop even lower to see any results. So instead what you need to do is focus on employing a strategy that recovers your metabolism after you have been in a deficit without having you gain fat. So essentially we want to get you eating more while maintaining the physique that you worked really hard to, to attain.

Like I said, metabolic adaptation doesn't just work unilaterally just as you can cause your metabolism to decrease. You can cause it to increase as well, and we do this through reverse dieting. So really simply reverse dieting is simply adding calories slowly over time and titrating it to how your body is responding to get you up to maintenance level. So going from a caloric deficit to maintenance is the process of a reverse. We're not going into a surplus. We're not going into a caloric surplus. That's you know, called, that's called bulking and it's not what we're doing. We're taking you from a deficit up to maintenance and we titrate the addition of those calories to your body's response.

Who Should Start Reverse Dieting?: (11:59)

Next is this question of who should reverse? You may be thinking, okay, like I get this metabolic adaptation thing, Amber, but I don't know if I, if I'm in the spot that I should be reversing right now, or if it's something that I need to do in the future or when do I know? How do I know that that's the next step for me? There are really four situations that I really recommend you start thinking about a reverse diet and and move into that phase.

1 – You Hit the End of Your Cut (Predetermined): (12:27)

The first situation is that you hit the end of your cut. So a cut is a fat loss period. It is when you are in a caloric deficit to be able to lose fat and when you are doing this, if you are trying to lose fat, I really highly suggest that you set a timeframe for that cut rather than a goal weight. So often people say, okay, I want to lose until I get to 145 and rather than doing that I really prefer to have you set a time period saying I'm going to cut for six weeks or I'm going to cut for 10 weeks or I'm going to cut for 16 weeks or whatever it is. This prevents this moving finish line that I see so often with women where the finish line just keeps moving. Whether you get to the goal and then you decide, oh I just want to lose five more pounds and then the finish line moves again. Or whether you get frustrated because you feel so far away from the finish line that that finish line is really nebulous and instead I like you to set a concrete, I'm going to cut for eight weeks. That allows you to have an end date and it really turns the process into a sprint where you can see the finish line rather than a marathon where you, you kind of are just running and you have no idea where the end destination is. So that's number one. If you are at the end of your cut, if you finished your 12 weeks or 16 weeks or 8 weeks or whatever it is, that's the time that you need to reverse.

Inability to Lose Any More Weight in A Cut: (13:51)

Number two is if you find yourself in the position with an inability to lose weight despite being low already with your calories, then it's really a time to start thinking of reverse. And I, I get a lot of resistance from people and I get it. I get it. It's a scary process. It's kind of counterintuitive to what you think that you should be doing. And there are a lot of people who get in this in this cycle where they, they just want to keep trying harder and they think, you know, if I want to be successful, I just got to try harder. I just need to dig deeper. I just need to have more willpower. And they just keep spinning their wheels trying to lose fat and they're convinced that if they just do just a little bit more or drop their calories just a little bit more than they're finally going to see success. And the real truth is you got to wake up and recognize that the best thing that you can do for your body sometimes is taking a conscious break and understanding when you go through over's diet, it isn't you quitting. It isn't you like being a worse, it's you actually consciously working towards your ultimate goal. It's like if you are on an escalator and the escalator was sliding down and you're trying to work up, you're trying to walk up the escalator. You are fighting a losing battle. And that's what happens with a lot of people, especially people who have yo-yo dieted for a long time or who have been in a caloric deficit for a long time. Um, the answer is not just to keep dropping your calories. The answer is not to just keep pushing harder to walk up the escalator. The answer is to get off the escalator, go hit the stop button so that it's not fighting against you and then get back on and now walk up a stopped escalator and you're going to make a lot more progress when that escalator is off.

And that's really what I want you to view a reverse diet as not you quitting, not you not being able to cut it, but rather being smart about the next steps so that in the long term you're going to be able to be successful. Would you rather be a year out from now and look the exact same on the exact same low calories or would you prefer to look better and fuller and leaner and and you know, just more healthy while consuming more carbs, more protein and more fat and just not starving your body? And then for those of you who are still struggling with this idea of like maybe in a reverse diet is the next is the next thing that you should be doing and you, you kind of find yourself fighting with yourself about that. I want you to really think about what is the alternative? When you think about it that way of like, what is the alternative? What I'm doing is not working. It becomes a lot easier to accept and embrace the process because instead of just hitting your head repeatedly against a wall of something that hasn't worked, you know, you've already dropped your calories a lot. It's not working. What we need to do is to embrace a process that is going to get you to a place where longterm you're going to be able to be successful. And you know it's only temporary, like this is a part of a long term plan. So that's number two. If you have an inability to lose weight while having persistently low calories or you have a history of Yoyo dieting doing a reverse diet, maybe the best thing you've ever done for your body.

3 – Diet Fatigue: (17:23)

Number three, if you are currently in a cut and you are starting to experience dieting, fatigue, dieting fatigue is normal, we all like start out in a process and we're super stoked about it and we can't wait to like meal prep and do all the things and then naturally over time motivation kind of wanes. It isn't new anymore, it isn't exciting anymore. And Diet fatigue starts to creep in and there are things that you can do to minimize diet for sure and minimize the feelings of restriction. But at some point diet fatigue is kind of normal and it's going to happen and it's okay. But if you feel those feelings of diet fatigue to start to creep in, it's a really good time to start thinking about doing a reverse diet. Again, It's not quitting. It is not looking at the long term perspective rather than just the short term gain.

4 – Cost vs. Benefits of Reverse Dieting Analysis: (18:14)

And then number four, the last kind of person or category of people who should consider a reverse is if you find yourself trying to lose fat and the costs are start starting to outweigh the benefits. I really love this idea of always weighing the costs and benefits and, and being in control of making those choices of what you're willing to put in. I don't like it when people say things like, oh, I can't work out that much, or, oh, I can't meal prep, or I can't do x, Y, and Z, I, I really don't like that. Because the truth is, is that you could, you're just making choices not to right. You're prioritizing your time differently and that's okay. And that's, that's wonderful and that's beautiful and that's awesome. But I like people to own how you're spending your time. If you say, you know, I don't have time to work out or I can't work out because I'm too busy, you know what? Like, that's fine, but in rather than saying, I'm too busy or I can't do it, or I can't find the time, like I would rather you say, I don't make time for working out. Like right now my priority is making dinner for my family or it's my career or whatever. I have x, Y, and z priorities and that's not a priority right now. And that's 100% okay. There's no shame, there's no guilt in that. But when you start to disempower yourself by saying like, my circumstances are making it so that I am not able to do anything, that's where I really have a problem. And that's where I really think that you need to be kind of honest with yourself sometimes of like, no, I could do that if I wanted to, but I don't. And so I don't do it. And I do this in my life all of the time. When I was a not working mother, I love to make my kids Halloween costumes. So I would always do homemade Halloween costumes. What do you want to be? We'd work together. I would sew things I would make things and that was a priority at that time in my life. It is not a priority right now in my life to make homemade Halloween costumes. So rather than, you know, I'll make maybe some of the things I painted a this year I painted a shield for my son who wanted to be a Zelda character. So, you know, I did a little bit of that, but like I sure as heck bought that Ninjago character that my other son wanted to be. And I sure as heck bought those Percy Jackson shirts that my other son wanted to be. And I didn't feel any guilt about that. It wasn't a priority to me. And that's okay. So I'm kind of getting off on a tangent. This is something that I like really feel about of like owning your choices and, and feeling empowered by owning your choices. But I digress. I, the point I was trying to get to was that there may be a point where the costs to be able to get an x, Y, z result is more than you're worth, you're willing to put in. And it's okay to recognize that and it's okay to say, you know what, if I really wanted to get abs or I really wanted to get as lean as I thought I did, I would have to put in six hours of work workouts during the week. And I just am not willing to put in that time and effort into the gym. And it's okay to say that and it's okay to own it. And if you're finding yourself where you're like, you know what, I kind of know what I need to do to be able to get the result, but I'm really not willing to do it, then that's a great time to start thinking about a reverse diet.

What Does Reverse Dieting Look Like?: (21:34)

So if you identify with one of those four categories, then now we can kind of start to dive into what is a reverse diet and then how does it look like? What does it actually look like throughout the weeks to be adding these calories back in? Before we dive into that, I really need you to understand one thing, and that is the goal of a reverse diet is not to lose weight. That's not the goal. Okay it, it can happen. And with some people at happens, and it's always exciting when it does, but you cannot go into a reverse diet with the goal being weight loss. The goal of a reverse diet is to recover your metabolic rate. It is to eat more food while maintaining your weight. It is to minimize fat gain and it is to increase the likelihood of future weight loss. Like I said, reverse dieting is technically simple. It's, it's technically simple, it's not easy, but it is technically simple. The mental part honestly is usually the hardest, hardest part for people. But the technical part of it, I wanted to help you out. And so I created this week's Freebie, which is a flow chart for how to work through a reverse diet. So if you want to snag that go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/9download and you can download that chart, that flow sheet that's going to walk you kind of through this process. The basic outline is that you're going to be adding a hundred calories to your intake and that's a hundred calories per day. So let's say you were eating 1500 calories a day, then the next week it would be 1600 calories every day. But you're adding those calories and you're titrating it titrated, it mean meaning you're watching how the body responds and then you are adding more, um, at an appropriate time. That a hundred calories is usually in the form of carbs or fat. So it can mean adding 25 grams of carbs or adding 14 grams of fat because those both equal a hundred calories. Or if you want to do a mixture, you can do 14 carbs and five fat or you know, some other breakdown between the two. We don't usually add protein because in a deficit protein is usually kept pretty high. And so yes, you can increase or decrease protein based a little bit on preference if you find that you don't really want to be eating that much protein. Protein is really, really important in a caloric deficit and it's important during maintenance as well. But in a caloric deficit, it helps to protect your muscle mass from being used from, for energy and in maintenance that just isn't as big of a problem. So you can definitely increase or decrease protein based on a little bit of personal preference, keeping it within a range of 0.6 or 0.7 up to 1.2 grams per pound. That's kind of the range you want to keep it in.

How to Monitor/Titrate Your Reverse Dieting Results: (24:25)

So that's Kinda a, you add a hundred calories for that week. Um, you go through the next week, you reweigh yourself and you see how your body is responding. If the scale goes up or your measurements go up, you just kinda stay fast, wait another week for the body to kind of reestablish equilibrium and then continue adding until you get to maintenance.If you gain weight, don't freak out. As you're adding more carbs in, your muscles are going to go hold onto more water and glycogen. And it's easy to gain a couple pounds without having any change in your body fat. So one way to be able to reassure yourself and know that you know, yeah, weight fluctuations are normal, but it doesn't necessarily mean I'm gaining body fat, is to be comparing your weight, measure your waist measurement with your weight measurement. So if you're, if you have a, you know, an increase one week in your weight measurement but your waist is staying about the same, you can be pretty sure that that increase on the scale is not necessarily body fat. And so taking those two um, measurements, your waist measurement and your weight measurement and using both of those to be able to kind of get an idea of if we're adding fat or not, is really, really helpful. So you go through this process of adding a hundred calories, waiting, seeing how your body responds, adding another a hundred calories waiting, seeing how your body responds and you go all the way up into maintenance. Now it's good to have kind of an idea of what you're shooting for. And usually I have clients go about 400 calories over their cutting macros. So if you're cutting on 1500 calories, your maintenance you'd be shooting for is around 1900 calories. Now that can be, it can be plus or minus a couple hundred calories. Maybe you can go as high as 2100 maybe you can only get to 1800 but giving you an idea of like what you're shooting for can be really, really helpful. And remember, maintenance is defined as a balance. The calories in is equally in the calories out. So you want to get to this point where you're eating the same amount and your weight just isn't changing week to week.

It usually takes about four to six weeks to reverse up from a deficit into maintenance. Can you finish your, your fat loss phase and then jump all the way up to maintenance like an estimated maintenance? That's sure. That's fine. You can, it's sometimes you may overshoot and that's kind of the risk that you run of overshooting your calories. But if you've done this a couple times and if you'd like cycled your calories of cutting and maintaining phases, which I really recommend, um, you may not have an idea of like where your maintenances and in that case it's a little bit safer just to like go from a cut into your maintenance calories without necessarily having to go through that reverse. But if this is your first time trying to figure out where your maintenance calories are, I really recommend that you do that slow addition of calories until you kind of find that equilibrium point. Again, if you want this kind of laid out in a visual form, cause I know like the podcast is not a great place to kind of have this visual. Um, that's why I created the Freebie. So if you go to www.bicepsafterbabies.com/9download, I have a visual flow sheet of like if this happens, add calories. If this happens, don't, if this happens, you know you're at maintenance. Um, that I think will be really helpful in walking you kind of through the process.

How to Mentally Approach a Reverse: (27:45)

The last thing that's really important to address is that, again, this is not complex, but it doesn't make it easy. The mental challenges of our reverse diet is probably one of the hardest things for people. It is really hard to go from a fat loss phase where you are doing work each week to see a change in the scale of change on your body. A change in measurements to go from that, I put in x, Y,Z effort and I get x, Y, Z results. To Go from that paradigm to my goal is simply to stay the same, to eat more food and to stay the same. That can be a hard transition for people to make. It can be really scary for a lot of people who, especially who have Yo-yo dieted or who have under eight for a long time. It's scary mentally to add calories. It's scary to see those calories ticking up and this fear is in the back of a lot of people's minds that if I eat more, I'm going to gain weight. And you have to continue to remind yourself of, yeah, if you jumped 600 calories right now, you probably would gain fat. But that's why we are titrating it slowly over time and slowly increasing because we are again, using that metabolic adaptation to our advantage. Your metabolism can adapt, it can add, will adapt, but you have to do it slowly and you have to give it time for your body to kind of catch up. Your body doesn't adapt in a flash. It adapts slowly over time and that's what we're going to do is we're going to work with it to slowly increase your metabolism over time. So I get it. You're scared, like you're scared to add those calories. But I want to remind you that even if you only add a hundred calories more this week, if you're eating 1500 calories before and now you're eating 1600 calories. Over the course of an entire week of seven days, you only eaten 700 calories more than you ate the week before. To gain a pound of fat, you have to eat 3,500 calories over your maintenance. Okay? You have only eaten 700 or more than you ate last week and last week you are in a deficit because you are losing. So adding a hundred calories is not going to make you like immediately blow up and yes, take this slow, you know? But you're going to have to walk yourself through this and try to remain objective. And that's one of the most important things is you got to kind of look at this as like a science experiment that this is, yeah, it's your body, but like you have to step back from the emotions that are tied to your body and just be able to look at the numbers objectively and be able to adjust things in an objective way. And honestly, it's one of the reasons that a lot of people like to have a coach for a reverse diet because it can be mentally challenging. And when we start to look at our bodies, we're not really objective a lot of the time. So if you feel like you can be objective, then you know, doing a reverse diet on your own is 100% okay. If you feel like you're somebody who may struggle with that objectivity, hiring a coach can be a really good plan for you. Then you can have someone who's just going to tell you what to do and then you just have to kind of execute it. And if you're saying to yourself, you know what? Like I kinda know that I need this. I know that I need to reverse diet and you're interested in maybe having somebody walk you through that process. I want you to go sign up for our maintain, don't gain holiday challenge. Remember that's www.bicepsafterbabies.com/healthyholidaychallenge. And at the end of that challenge, there's going to be a option to join me and a powerful group of women in a real transformational adventure that will be starting January 1st so I really want you to get excited. If this is something that you're interested in doing and you're interested in walking through it with a coach, then put that date on your calendar. Um, come join our five day challenge. And at the end there's going to be an opportunity to really join a elite group of women as we go through this transformational adventure together. And this group will not just be for people wanting to reverse diet. It will be for anybody who wants to go through a transformational experience inside and out. So there'll be more information coming, but just know that that is on the horizon. And if you want to get started with me and a group of women in January, then that will be an option.

How Long Until I Reverse/Stay in a Reverse: (32:06)

The last thing that I want to talk about before I kind of wrap everything up is fat loss and maintenance phases. What a lot of people tend to do is they tend to get in this fat loss mindset of like I'm trying to lose fat and like that mindset and that like period of time stretches out over months and months and years and like they're always trying to lose weight. I think it's really important because of metabolic adaptation, because of dieting fatigue, that you take your fat loss in chunks, which means you take a period of time. I recommend no longer than 20 weeks for any cut, but you set a period of time and you say, okay, I'm going to cut for 16 weeks and you do as much work as you can during that 16 weeks. You then reverse, you maintain for at least as long as you cut so you make sure there's a maintenance period in there and then you can do another cut and then you maintain. And so rather than just always, always trying to be cutting, I think it's really important to cut, maintain, cut, maintain, Cut, maintain until you've reached whatever end goal you want. And a lot of people, especially people who have a lot of weight to lose, who have, you know, we're talking people who have like a hundred pounds to lose. This can feel really like far out. Like if you're really telling me, Amber, that I have to cut and maintain and kind of maintain it, it's going to take me forever to lose a hundred pounds. And my response to that is it may take a little bit longer, but you're actually going to be able to maintain it in the long run. And what I don't want to have happen is I don't want you to lose the weight and then regain it all back. I would rather you take it a little bit slower and research shows that if you take it a little bit slower and go through these cycles of cutting and maintaining, you are going to actually be able to reach a weight that you can maintain with a lifestyle that you enjoy. And that's my goal and I hope that that's your goal as well.

Reverse Dieting Recap: (34:02)

So let's wrap this up. To recap. We talked about metabolic adaptation and how that is a natural phenomenon and that it doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to lose weight, it just means that we need to be really intentional about what we do after that weight loss period to be able to reverse the metabolism back up. And to do that, we do a reverse diet and if you're somebody who has hit the end of your cut, if you're struggling to lose weight, even though your calories are already really low, if you're feeling diet fatigue or if you just kind of find that you know what the costs that you have to put in isn't, isn't worth it to you right now, then that's a really good time to start thinking about doing a reverse diet. Remember, a reverse diet is not about losing weight again. Some people will, we'll have that and you'll see that on Instagram and social media all the time where people are like, I just started doing reverse diet and I increased my calories and now I'm eating 500 calories more than I ate before and look how much weight I have lost, and that's awesome and it's, it's not like out of the realm of possibility, but do not go into a reverse diet with that being your goal. If you do, you're going into it for the wrong reasons and you are likely going to be disappointed. The point of a reverse diet is not to lose weight. It is to recover your metabolism so that in the long term you're going to be able to maintain your fat loss and you're going to be at a really good spot to be healthy, add muscle and be able to, if you want to go through another fat loss phase, actually create a deficit without having to continually drop your calories lower and lower. So that's going to wrap this up week. I have an incredibly amazing guest. This is actually a former client who went through a reverse diet and we talked about her experience reverse dieting, what it looks like for her, what her experience was, what are the kind of the mental and emotional struggles that she went through and how she kind of worked through it. I think it'll be really helpful to hear from somebody who actually went through the process themselves and got really good results from it. And I think a lot of the things that she shares in the fears and the questions that she will share next week on next week's episode are going to really resonate with a lot of you. So that's it. That's gonna wrap up this episode of Biceps After Babies radio. This is your last week to go and leave a review on iTunes if you want to be entered to win the giveaway of enrollment into my 12 module program, ditch the Diet. This is my a to z guide for fat loss and improving your confidence and your relationship with food. And I'm going to give it away to one of you guys. So go and leave a review on iTunes. That really, really helps me and I appreciate all of you who have left reviews already for me. Thanks for listening today. I'm Amber. Go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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