Buzz
According to TikTok enthusiasts, there’s a supposed hack that allows you to CONSUME MORE FOOD! Without GAINING WEIGHT! It’s marketed as perfect for those TIRED OF DIETING! Forget the fact that simply stopping dieting can achieve the same results. Instead, this method requires a specific name and rigid guidelines: reverse dieting.
The core concept of reverse dieting involves gradually increasing your calorie intake each week. For instance, if your maintenance calorie level is 2,000 per day but you’ve been consuming 1,500 to lose weight, you might start by eating 1,600 calories daily for a week, then 1,700 the following week, and so on. Over time, you’ll return to 2,000 calories or potentially even exceed that amount.
This trend didn’t originate on TikTok. The term appears to have roots in the bodybuilding community, where athletes undergo extreme cycles of bulking (gaining weight to build muscle) and cutting (shedding fat before competitions). While this process can produce impressive physiques, it also disrupts metabolism and overall health.
Reverse dieting offers a method for moving from an intense calorie deficit to maintenance or bulking phases: Rather than indulging excessively right after a bodybuilding competition, you might prefer to gradually raise your food intake as you rediscover your maintenance calorie level. This concept has fueled the trend of influencers promoting reverse dieting as a solution to all diet-related woes. However, it’s not a universal fix.
The scientific basis of reverse dieting
Certain claims made by slender women showcasing their abs on TikTok, as well as bodybuilders urging you to trust their expertise, hold truth. These include:
Your metabolism adjusts to dieting, meaning you’ll eventually need to consume fewer calories to continue losing weight (this is a well-documented phenomenon).
After prolonged dieting, you might find yourself stuck eating an uncomfortably small amount of calories.
Increasing your food intake can help your body become less calorie-restrictive, potentially boosting the number of calories you burn.
Once you’ve raised your calorie intake, you may eventually lose weight again while eating more than during the strictest phase of your diet.
However, there are also numerous myths and partial truths circulating. You might hear that rapidly increasing calories post-diet will cause fat gain, or that you can add 1,000 calories and still lose weight, or vague claims about hormones and cortisol. (Spend enough time on fitness TikTok, and someone will inevitably blame cortisol for all your issues. Take a sip every time you hear it.)
This is where the concept of “reverse dieting” steps in. Allegedly, the solution to these issues is to incrementally add 50 to 100 calories to your weekly intake. Though the process is gradual and demands patience, sticking to it could supposedly transform you into this girl (picture me gesturing to the before-and-after images I’ve digitally placed behind me), allowing you to consume 2,400 calories instead of 1,200.
So, what’s really true about reverse dieting, and why is it so popular? Let’s dive deeper.
When executed correctly, “reverse dieting” essentially means “not dieting” but with additional guidelines.
After reviewing the points above, you might wonder, why not simply stop dieting? You’ll eat more, your body will burn more calories, and from there, you can either resume dieting or—here’s a wild thought—stop dieting altogether. You could even experiment with gaining weight.
And that’s the real solution. Just stop dieting. Life will go on. You can enjoy food again, and everything will be fine. So, why bother with reverse dieting?
As Eric Trexler, a researcher specializing in nutrition and metabolism, explains here, the initial aim of reverse dieters was to seamlessly shift from a calorie deficit to maintenance, and then to their first bulking phase after a bodybuilding competition, without gaining excess fat. However, a key issue with this method is that after such intense dieting, bodybuilders must regain some fat. Staying extremely lean indefinitely is unsustainable, whether you’re a bodybuilder or a fitness influencer on TikTok.
On social media, reverse dieting is often portrayed as a way to keep dieting while increasing calorie intake. While it’s true that adding just 50 calories a week while in a 500-calorie deficit means you’ll remain in a deficit for weeks—10 weeks, in fact—Trexler points out that this approach only delays recovery and makes the dieter’s life unnecessarily challenging.
Reverse dieting is not a solution for chronic dieting
I believe there are two dynamics at play here. The first is relatively benign. Imagine you’ve finished a diet and are ready to gain weight. Instead of jumping to an extra 1,000 calories daily (moving from a 500-calorie deficit to a 500-calorie surplus), you could add a few hundred calories this week, then a few more next week, and so on. This gradual approach helps you avoid sudden weight fluctuations (since more food means more in your stomach, temporarily increasing the scale) and makes it easier to estimate your future calorie needs.
However, social media paints a different picture. Slim women are convincing chronic dieters that they can eat more while staying thin, provided they adhere to a rigid reverse dieting plan. Yet, the strictness and unrealistic expectations can be harmful in themselves.
For an extreme case, consider this video from a registered dietitian and eating disorder specialist. She recounts a woman in recovery from an eating disorder who, due to her critically low body weight and related health problems, was advised to gain weight immediately. Instead of following her care team’s recommendation to gain a pound per week, she secretly adopted a reverse diet plan. By increasing her already insufficient calorie intake by just 50 calories weekly, it took her three months to gain a single pound—effectively delaying her recovery by three months.
This brings us to why reverse dieting content thrives in weight-loss-focused corners of social media. While eating more seems healthier—and it’s a step in the right direction—adhering to a strict reverse diet is simply another form of restriction.
Reverse dieting can often be another method of restriction
Imagine, as many TikTok examples show, you’re currently consuming 1,200 calories (a starvation-level diet) and have stopped losing weight. Even if you’re a sedentary, petite woman—possibly due to low energy—a healthy daily intake would likely be 1,600 calories or more. So, you’re told to eat 1,250 next week, then 1,300 the following week? At that pace, it would take eight weeks to reach what should be your maintenance level. Even without an eating disorder, you’re mimicking the issues faced by the patient in the dietitian’s case study.
What’s even more troubling is the precision required for 50 or 100 calories. If my goal is 2,000 calories daily, some days I might eat 1,950, others 2,100—it evens out over time. But aiming for exactly 1,850 calories, not 1,900 (since 1,900 is next week’s target), demands meticulous tracking. This lifestyle involves weighing toast before and after adding peanut butter and avoiding restaurants because who knows how many calories are in each dish or how much sauce they’ll add?
While scrolling through #reversedieting on TikTok, I came across women sharing how they skipped family meals and faced worried comments from friends during their reverse diet. It’s evident they haven’t truly moved away from diet culture. For them, the “reverse” seems more like prolonging their diet. Instead of eating at maintenance for those eight weeks, they’re still restricting. And what’s the end goal? Reverse dieting is often framed as a way to boost calorie burn so you can return to dieting.
Even when influencers showcase muscle gain and claim to eat genuinely healthy calorie amounts (assuming their numbers are accurate), the focus remains on leanness and thinness, often highlighting their abs. Prioritizing leanness while building muscle is counterintuitive. It’s perfectly fine not to have visible abs when you’re working to grow stronger. As strongman JF Caron once said, “Abs aren’t a sign of strength. They just mean you’re not eating enough.”
