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Last Updated on May 22nd, 2020

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Reverse Dieting 101 – What You Need To Know

Kick traditional dieting to the curb! Instead, join me and Army Vet turned Online Strength Coach, Cassie Lambert as we teach you the ins and outs of reverse dieting. Learn why eating more food will give you better results in the gym and in your body composition goals as well as more energy, better focus, and of course, bring back your love and enjoyment of food!

 

Welcome to the Fit as a Mama Bear podcast. I’m Shelby, a certified strength coach, nutrition coach, mama to two, and all-around health nut. This show is about a little bit of everything healthy, fit, and natural related. So, if you’re striving to smashed goals, eat better, feel better, and enjoy the occasional mom rant. This is the place for you.

 

 

Introduction (0:19)

How often do you get frustrated trying to restrict food or knowing you should be? How about having a weight loss goal plateau and you just can’t eat any less? Unfortunately, I think every single woman listening to this podcast has been there. We’re bombarded with the mindset that less food equals better results. You need to eat less and work out more to be smaller, and while there is so much wrong with the statement above, today’s podcast is really about eating less and why it’s often crap advice. In fact, what if I told you that you could see better results by eating more because that’s exactly what I’m here to do today and with me as a woman named Cassie to chat about the opposite of the norm, reverse dieting, and I don’t think this podcast could come a moment too soon with everything going on. Diet restriction and mental struggles are the last things that we need.

Pinterest image with text: women in white sweater holding up an apple showing how reverse dieting works

Now, Cassie, is an army veteran turned online strength coach. She features in Itself, Oxygen magazine, Men’s health, and Shape as well as being the co-author of the bestselling book Fitness to Freedom. She believes in building the strong body you want while eating the foods that you love. I think we can all agree that we love food. So, let’s jump in.

 

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Meet Cassie (2:51)

Hello and thanks for listening in to the podcast today everyone. I can’t even describe how excited I am about this topic, but first off, welcome Cassie. I’m super excited to chat with you about dieting.

I’m excited to be here. Thanks, so much for having me.

A bit of backstory, as many of you may or may not know, I actually used to coach figure competitors. That was kind of my full-time gig, which means I lived and breathed the figure competitor lifestyle. Even in my own training.

One of the things that used to drive me bonkers about the figure competitor lifestyle, is how many of the figure coaches would put their clients into a calorie deficit so freaking early on in training, leave them there for approximately five months and then not try and coach them at all post-competition.

This led the athletes to hate competition preparation, they were starving, ravenous, not performing optimally, and couldn’t focus as much as they liked on their day to day tasks. When the competition was over, they would start bingeing on the foods they’d missed and then they’d resumed their eating habits from before the competition.

This pretty much just equals disaster, their digestive systems hated them, and their metabolism was shot, something that often isn’t talked about. My partner and I coached very differently instead we would get their bodies adjusted to a higher metabolic rate.

We’d have them taking in more calories and then closer to competition time when we had to cut it was easy and a lot more practical. Over and over I heard the same situation from competitors, having a high workout volume and super low caloric intake for crazy amounts of time, and it sucked. Since I was so immersed in the figure world,

I found myself tracking calories far more than necessary and also keeping a high workout volume. Eventually, there was a light bulb moment and I decided to switch it around. It was super scary to get out of the dieting mindset. There was no tracking,

I focused on quality foods and moderate but heavy workouts. What I learned has been the basis for probably everything I do now. I feel awesome. I perform amazingly and I haven’t tracked calories in almost seven years.

We are bombarded with facts about eating and being less and we never consider the other side of the spectrum, which is exactly why I wanted to bring Cassie on the show today. We share so many of the same beliefs and one of those beliefs is that it is necessary is to help women learn, understand, and implement why eating can be beneficial, why eating more can be beneficial.

To get the ball rolling, Cassie, why don’t you give us a bit of a backstory on who you are, how you came to be here, and all of that fun.

Yeah. I’m like yourself. I’m a mom, mom of three, you know that crazy, crazy life.

 

Intro To Reverse Dieting (4:34)

So how I got into where I’m at now as an actual coach. Prior to that and coaching women, I had to go through my own process, my own thing. For me, dieting never even came into my head until maybe three or four years after I started lifting and I started lifting and working out but really lifting because I joined the military. When I joined, I realized how horribly weak I was. I could not carry my own stuff; it was just a hot mess.

When I graduated basic training, I said absolutely not, you go into Iraq in less than a year, I can’t be this person.” I was an interrogator when I was in the military, I had to be with the infantry guys. We would be going on night raids; we would have to be carrying heavy packs.

We’d have to be going on 14-hour patrols. I didn’t want to fit into those stereotypes of women being weak, I had this real fear that I would be a liability and not a service. That I would show up one day with the guys I was being deployed with and they were going to think, I was going to be a problem more than an asset as the interrogator that they needed on the ground.

So, after basic training, I got to work. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just started lifting weights, hoping I was doing it right.

This was before you tube and Instagram, so you went to the store, you got a magazine, and all those models showed you what you’re supposed to be doing. I would tear off the pages and take them with me to the gym.

I chose work outs, where I thought the model looked buff and followed what she was doing. For me, my fitness journey started out almost in fear that I was going to be a burden and wanting to be a strong person.

When I started, I couldn’t really tell how weak my body actually was. You don’t know it until you’re put into these very strenuous circumstances. Once you dive headfirst into the fitness world, you then start worrying about things that you never knew you had to worry about, fears that you didn’t think you should have.

As I was reading articles about training, I was also reading articles about dieting and food.

I thought maybe I should lose weight or why am I working out so hard and I don’t look like her. So, while I was educating myself, I was also miseducating myself and while I was getting stronger, I started this whole dieting thing.

Of course, in those same magazines, they have the fitness models, diet laid out and it totals 1100 or 1200 calories. So, I thought that’s what I should be eating too. That started this process of obsessively trying every new diet. Which led to a mentality of ‘Why, why was I working out so hard and I don’t look like her’ and I didn’t have those thoughts before.

I was obsessed with 1200 calories, and it really was not working. So, I thought maybe I would try paleo, but paleo didn’t work so I tried intermittent fasting. Every new diet was always about less and less calories and food. Well, guess what would happen?

My lifts would suffer, my body didn’t look nearly as good as when I was fueling my body to lift. It was just in this horrible cycle and I was really confused. It wasn’t until I started competing and I came across, Layne Norton and he talked about flexible dieting and I learned more about reverse dieting..

That book changed my life because it started to tear down all of these falsehoods that I thought had to be true. Speed up your metabolism by eating six meals a day or 10 meals a day, throw cinnamon on your sweet potato because that will speed up your metabolism, drink Green tea, all these little things or tricks that I would read about and then implement and then still wonder what’s wrong because I wasn’t getting results.

I laugh about it now cause it’s just so silly to think of the sort of things I used to do. It was always about something being wrong with my body, I have to eat less, or incorporate other tricks like teas, not the teas that are around today the relaxing teas, I mean that type of stuff to make me lose more weight or finally see more muscle.

None of it worked because It should have been about more well-rounded eating, It’s was a completely different way of thinking about things and it was that flexibility piece, that really changed things for me and eating more so I could enjoy my lifts.

I’ll never forget when I went paleo, that was probably the worst. I thought all carbs were off-limits, they must be so bad. At the time I was on a trajectory of hitting my first 200-pound deadlift and I was getting there; I was inching closer and closer and then I just hit this wall of energy and I saw my weights go down.

I couldn’t understand why, I was eating healthier, right? That’s what I was being told that’s what I was doing.

It was all false messaging, and once I saw how weak I was getting from this paleo life; I think that was my last straw.

I don’t even know where to start with that because I’m so excited. Before I started coaching figure competitors, we pretty much had the same journey. It was, I’m pretty sure the same magazine we were following too. That’s right, there was no YouTube. You literally cut out the workout or took the magazine with you. I looked like a crazy person in the gym because I did not know how to lunge. I’m convinced that anyone who saw me at that time thought, what in the hell is this chick doing? I just wanted it to be strong. I’ve always been really small, but I was just typically scrawny, skinny, fat small and I was so weak.

It was insane just how little I could do physically and didn’t realize, it was rather depressing.  I started the same way as you, I just started hitting the gym without a clue as to what the hell I was doing. I’ve also tried many, many teas, and all sorts of random things, but it took a lot of trial and error on myself to figure out what my body liked and just a common-sense attitude I found was best for myself personally.

I also found when I shifted my goals to performance versus aesthetics, everything changed, and my aesthetics ended up looking way better. That was kind of my light bulb moment, that changed my mindset on my goals. Performance goals are just more fun.

Yeah, they are. They, they actually are a lot of fun. Aesthetic goals are not nearly as fun. They take a little bit more heartache sometimes.

 

Low-Calorie Diets & The Negative Side Effects (12:01)

 Okay, so why don’t we jump right into the nitty-gritty. Can you run me through what a low-calorie diet is and some of its negative side effects?

A low-calorie diet will be a little bit different for each person. How tall we are matters. Our physique matters, for instance, two women who are both five foot five have different equations because they will have different physiques.

So low calorie will be a little bit different for each person. Especially the girl who’s naturally curvy, she should never try to eat like the girl who has more of a thinner, leaner look to her. Their caloric requirements will just be different.

So low calorie can mean different things for different body types alone. It can also mean how you enjoy eating, someone might feel great on a lower calorie diet while someone else that restricts calories to that extent will crash and burn, they’ll be miserable.

They will be in their pantry with a spoon and the peanut butter, probably eating it to the bottom because they’re just famished. So, low calorie will often be very dependent on the individual. When we start to get to 1200 and below, we’re really starting to get into that low-calorie zone.

What drives me bonkers is that that’s the standard that’s what they tell women to eat, 1200 calories are all you should take in and you’ll be good to go. It doesn’t matter what kind of activity or different body types or any of that, and 1200 calories are so low.

It just bothers me so much because 1200 calories are one of those things where people are trying to eat 1200 calories but they can’t stick with it and so they will be convinced that they’ve been eating 1200 calories for a month or two months but on the weekends they eat 3000 calories because they were so sick of dieting.

When somebody goes straight to 1200 calories it throws them off and they actually consume more through the week, when they were probably eating normally prior to getting that number (1200) in their head.

That’s a really good point, what kind of effects does a low-calorie diet have on the body? Why do we not want to eat too low for a crazy amount of time?

People don’t realize when someone says, they have a slow metabolism, they need to stop blaming the metabolism.

 If they weren’t eating so little, then their metabolism would speed up. When we diet, we are slowing down our metabolism. To understand that and break it down,  when you diet, you start to lose body fat so there’s less of you to maintain, your body is also very resourceful and it realizes that you’re not going to feed it as much so it becomes more efficient at daily tasks, which that means you don’t have to spend as much energy or calories for you to continue to burn metabolically.

For example, instead of someone starting at 1800 calories to get the physique they want, they limit calories to 1200 and then they crash really quickly, plateau really quickly the only place to go after your body plateaus at 1200 calories is 1100 calories and then a thousand calories, restriction ends up getting worse and worse.

Compare that to someone starting at a much higher caloric intake, testing it out, and allowing their body to respond, their performance improves in the gym which means they are now expending more calories and moving more.

Going the route of reverse dieting is a much better way than crash dieting.

It is, and there is only so low you can go with caloric intake before you are nutrient deficient. Unless you figure out a game plan to bust through plateaus, that doesn’t involve just taking off a hundred calories a day then you’re leading to nowhere.

Not to mention the food is nice, we like food.

I love food.

Pinterest image with text: woman in white sweater holding an apple, second image of a veggie noodle bowl- a common recipe for reverse dieting

That’s the method we used with figure competitors. If we were able to get their body to function at 1900-2000 calories, five months before a competition and then we had a whole lot more wiggle room to reduce calories right before a competition so they wouldn’t hate life before they walk on stage.

The same principles apply to general weight loss. If you allow your body to function at a higher caloric intake when you’re trying to lose that last 10 pounds or you have an event coming up or you want to find your maintenance spot, you have a lot more wiggle room.

It allows for the enjoyment of food. I mean we should enjoy life; it irks me so much because food for many people, including me is memories.

It’s culture, it’s holidays, being able to fit in those important foods and not demonizing them means you likely want to maintain a higher caloric intake. Then you’ll be able to get them in and say, yes to grandma, and a second helping of those cookies that she made.

Guess what?  You will be crushing it on 1600 calories, so yes, take two cookies.

There comes a point when you’re are just depriving yourself and how is that enjoyable? I really dislike the mindset of exercise as a punishment. It happens a lot around the holidays where people think “I ate this so now I need to go do 4,200 burpees to burn it off” your body doesn’t work like that and your mind shouldn’t either.

Eat the cookies, enjoy the cookies, the cookies are delicious, go to the gym because it’s fun, chase goals because it’s fun. Don’t try to cancel one out with the other. Reverse dieting rocks.

Yes. You don’t have to earn your food and you don’t have to burn off your food either.

That’s the biggest lesson I want my daughters to learn to be perfectly honest. Exercise is fun and food is delicious.

I used to be that person, totally the opposite of what I am now. I used to go home and do as much cardio as possible to get rid of, all the sweet potatoes and marshmallows from Thanksgiving.

It never works. Where do you begin when you start coaching people to eat more and to embrace reverse dieting? What are your steps that you think people should follow? Any advice to people who are super scared cause it is really scary to all of a sudden eat more.

 

How To Begin Using Reverse Dieting (18:56)

Any time I get on a consult call with a client and they’ve gone through a history of very low-calorie eating or been going to some of those weight loss clinics.  Some of those people have been told to eat 800 calories and they can’t work out because they are not eating enough.

It’s scary, sadly I’ve heard this and had previous clients who have been through this. So, once I get this take that they’ve eaten a very low caloric intake over a period of time, I already know we’re probably going to start using reverse dieting with them.

One because I already know they will have blocks in their head about eating more and getting fat. So, I want to meet them where they are instead of trying to increase calories quickly, I don’t want to scare them.

I want to slowly introduce more food and then show them that their body doesn’t gain and a lot of times it actually loses, reverse dieting can help. All my clients do a three-day diary before I set their total intake. It gives me a window into what they’re doing daily.

I know they are likely tampering down a little bit during those three days, they don’t want me to see them eating junk. A lot of the times what I see is an 800-calorie day one day and a 2,500-calorie day the next day. What we do is average out the three days.

For example, if the average caloric intake is 1350 calories, we start with 1375 calories. People feel confident that they can do that small increase. We start there and then we check in the following week. Once the client sees that nothing’s changed, we can add in probably 50 to a 100 more calories.

I slowly introduce them, even if they probably could have started much higher. It’s hard, they have to change their human behavior and their relationship with food, we have to ease them in.

Even if it takes 12 weeks to get them to add 250 calories, that’s a victory because they’re changing the way they view food. They start feeling stronger and it’s a positive association with food when before it was a negative one.

We’re now changing the conversation they have with themselves and they’re seeing the benefits of eating more.

That’s a big thing, it is a very big mental block that we have when it comes to reverse dieting. Just shooting someone up 600 calories a day, even though they can get there eventually might have negative side effects, your body’s not going to like that drastic of a change.

Easing in to reverse dieting slowly is the best way to go and I know that frustrates a lot of people because they just want to dive in and do it all and have results in three weeks, but it doesn’t work like that.

Taking the time to wean in and adjust your body and your mind is always the best way to go. Now while they are taking those steps, what do workouts look like for them? Are they staying the same? Are you bumping up the volume? When do you do it?

 

Strength Training Goes Hand In Hand With Reverse Dieting (22:02)

It depends on each person, but I want all of my clients to be doing a three-day strength training routine. That is a minimum threshold that I’m very happy keeping people at because it’s achievable? Not everybody can hit the gym five days a week.

Three days is the bare minimum for my clients too.

I usually think we can do better; I also peel back all cardio, with the exception of walking. Though I want some regular movement patterns, especially if they’re sitting all day. That can be just getting 20 minutes a day of walking the dog or walking on an incline.

Maybe it’s even done on days that they don’t train.  Usually, I’ll have most people doing five to seven solid exercises focusing on two compound lifts a day. Then if they’re able to hit PRS or they’re feeling that energy, we can add in some burnouts at the end.

On the other side, if they are feeling exhausted afterward or by the end of the week, then I need to reconfigure things for week two. It really is crazy; people’s operating systems are just so different from one another that I have to listen to their cues before applying that same workout.

I always have a test week and then we bring, those weights down for the next three weeks.

I love it, one thing I want all listeners to note is that the workouts aren’t, go home and work out until you vomit type workouts.

People get the misconception though that to train hard means you have to work to the point of vomiting into a bucket. It hurts my head.

No, I’m talking make an ugly face because you’re lifting a heavyweight. I make some ugly faces when I’m lifting. Especially those last two or three repetitions, you should have some strain on your face, you’re not going to look pretty for those.

It shouldn’t be hard, but you should feel all your workouts. I just really want people to understand that your workouts are there to make you feel better.

You should feel energized and strong and awesome about yourself not dying on the floor six days a week.

That will take a toll on all of your systems, a lot of people who do that high-intensity stuff all the time don’t feel hungry afterward so they don’t fuel their bodies properly after workouts and then we’re back to missing meals and that low-calorie diet cycle.

I 100% I agree.

 

Superfoods To Keep You Healthy (25:59)

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What Foods Should We Increase For Reverse Dieting (27:19)

Let’s talk about specific foods for reverse dieting. When we are increasing calories and what kind of foods should we be increasing?

I start with protein first because my clients always seem to have a low intake initially. This is another area where we want to ease people into changes, for example, if we look at the three-day diary and a client averages 50 grams of protein per day and I want them to consume 125 grams a day. I start them at 75 grams of protein per day, that way they are not overwhelmed.

No one wants to start something new and fail immediately at all the standards that have been set. I let them know where I want them to be eventually, but we set reasonable targets that are easily achievable so that we breed a feeling of success right from the start.

Simply adding a protein shake in the morning or some eggs is a huge improvement and people feel like they can achieve those small changes easily. Then we aren’t suddenly changing the way a client been eating for many years.

I think that’s actually where coaching fails clients, the coach takes their knowledge and expects the client to change all their habits right now, right from the start.

Instead, we need to look at human behavior first, know where the finish line is but start the client at step one.  You wouldn’t expect someone who has just started working out for the first time to do five days in a row with compound lifts when they’ve never even squatted in their life.

Why should diet changes be any different?

I find with a lot of coaches and the coaching mentality is that they programmed for robots.

They don’t consider that a woman might be emotional at certain times of the month or use food as an emotional tool.

Coaches often don’t think of how overwhelming it is to be a client, clients usually don’t know what are doing wrong and to have to just change everything suddenly is scary. Changing a habit is a very big deal and coaches shouldn’t take it lightly.

We want to focus on leaner protein but still enjoy or meals. The easiest way to do that is to make healthy substitutions or variations.  

For example, if you love burgers switch your ground beef from 83% beef, the traditional amount in a burger, to 90% beef, then we have a leaner burger and it’s still going to taste great.

Another example is pizza night. We can still have pizza, but maybe everybody makes their own at home using a whole wheat wrap, let’s make it a family event. Now we have a fun family activity surrounding healthy food.

I really try to listen to how a client is eating now and think of ways that they can change things a little bit for the better.

When you’re working around kids too, you don’t want to have your client or yourself be the mom that is eating a completely separate dinner than the rest of the family. It’s not fun for you to cook two dinners.

You’re going to feel left out, and your kids are going to wonder why you’re eating such a different meal. I don’t agree with that because it messes up their ideas of nutrition and training.

So, finding a way to make those small swaps but still have regular family meals and have your kids see you still eating what they eat is super-duper important.

One of my favorite meals is when we have a spaghetti night. The kids will usually eat regular whole wheat pasta, but I love edamame pasta or zucchini noodles, so conceptually it’s still the same we are just having a different type of spaghetti in our bowls.

I love chickpea pasta and edamame pasta but my husband, who is not a health food person, does not. So, we make both my healthy noodles and his regular noodles and the kids get to choose.

We just talk about the different kinds of noodles, why there are different, and what they do for our bodies nutritionally, then the kids make their own choice. Still having that family aspect is really important.

We’re talking a lot about protein because it is the most common macronutrient that women overlook with training and fueling. Eating more protein doesn’t mean you need to eat six chicken breasts a day. I find a lot of women get freaked out over increasing their protein they always tell me they can’t eat that much chicken. There’s a lot of ways to up your protein intake, greek yogurt is one of my favorites for people and eggs, I’m pretty sure I can eat my entire protein intake with eggs.

While we’re talking about the nutrition aspect. Why don’t you run us through a breakdown of what you eat in a day and give listeners an idea, of how their days can look.

I am the kind of person who eats the same foods all the time and dinners are the only thing that switches out. Morning is usually one or two whole eggs with four to five egg whites, one slice of bacon, and about two cups of strawberries.

It is a massive volume of food and it’s so good to me, I absolutely love bacon, but I just have one slice. I break it up in the pan beforehand and then I throw my eggs into the bacon with it, and then that freshness with strawberries.

I just love starting my day this way. It makes me feel full, I know I’m not going to be thinking about food two hours later.  If I’m on the go, or if I’m training in the morning, I’ll usually grab a slice of toast with a fruit preserve with some good fiber in it.

I’ll bring half a banana with some sun butter with me. No reason for the sun butter, I just like it.

There are no nut butters allowed in schools here and we live off of nuts and nut butters in our house. So that’s been a huge adjustment on my end to have to use a nut-free alternative. Sun butter is what I use for my daughters for school snacks.

 Oh wow. I tried to give sun butter to my kids, they spit it out, I tried sneaking it one day because we were out of peanut butter and they knew I had made the switch and were very upset. I love it though.

Usually, for lunch I love having some leftovers from the night before because I probably had a protein-rich dinner, whether it’s warming up burgers, warming up tacos, warming up the spaghetti, it’s already done. I don’t have to waste food, which is such a pet peeve of mine. Right now, though I’m obsessed with a ham and tomato grilled cheese sandwich. I use two whole wheat slices of bread, which has good fiber, the ham is a good protein, I like cheddar cheese, and then I stick veggies in there as well.

Featured image with text: woman in black shirt and blue shirt in the gym posing after a workout

Treats During Reverse Dieting (36:55)

Dinner we switch out the same seven or eight meals. Last night it was salmon. Sweet potatoes are a staple two to three times a week, they’re just so easy. Sometimes I’ll do salmon or steak with a zucchini noodle or spaghetti squash side.

One of the things that I’m known for, at least on my Instagram, is that I have two Oreos every single day, either before my workout or after my work out. As someone who used to say no to so many foods it is the way I treat myself with one of my absolute favorite treats in the world every single day, and it is my constant reminder about how far I’ve come.

It’s okay to treat yourself, not because you’ve been a good girl or a good person or you’ve been healthy but because you deserve to be treated because of just being who you are. Two Oreos a day to keep the bingeing away is my awesome motto.

My Oreos are pre or post-workout and they are with my protein shake. Another tip for getting veggies in is I always put 1 cup of spinach in my protein shake You don’t taste the spinach, it’s staple in my day.

I’m a crazy smoothie person. I love smoothies, but everyone always looks at me funny when I say that. What I’ve learned is that I really love smoothies, but then I top them with a zillion things, it’s really just crunchy ice cream, delicious. When I broke down the calories though, it was about 600 calories.  

Let’s break down a smoothie, what do we want in it? Let’s avoid that low-calorie mentality and focus on the nutrients. I would like to see a banana, a nut butter, a protein source, and maybe something else.

With kids, it’s a really easy way to cram in nutrients. My smoothie basics are, a fruit, a veggie, always a healthy fat, like chia seeds, coconut or avocado, already making it kind of nutrient-dense, and then a liquid. Some of my favorites are banana, coconut milk, and avocado, they all make it so creamy.

Yes, absolutely.

 

Healthy Food For Healthy Metabolism (40:10)

For breakfast, we rotate between, eggs, chia pudding, avocado toast or overnight oats. For myself personally, I can’t have carbs for breakfast, they don’t work as well for me. I find I need that high protein breakfast to kind of get me going, so I’ll normally have a protein smoothie or eggs.

I’m more tired if I start the day with a lot of carbs. I think that’s why the strawberries are so filling and juicy and fresh I will not usually be doing two pieces of toast or pancakes.

In the morning I want to feel light and airy so I can get the work done, a lot of carbs in the morning leave me feeling sluggish.

That’s exactly me, I have just found that it’s too heavy and I work out in the mornings, so I don’t like a higher carb breakfast before I work out. I prefer high protein before I work out, and a higher carb after I work out like overnight oats or protein oats.

When we talk about eating more, which is still very scary for most women. How will people look and feel eating more? Explain to me the benefits of what your clients experience after eating more food because I know we’re just so ingrained to believe that more food means more fat.

 

Benefits Of Reverse Dieting (41:53)

Let’s talk about just daily life, with reverse dieting your energy will go through the roof. I have worked with people that say they are too tired to go to the gym. When I see how much they are eating though it’s no wonder they are tired.

I encourage them to eat more and the energy levels slowly start to come back. Suddenly they are telling me that they can get off their couch after work, and they can play with their kids in the evening. Overall eating more increases your ability to take on life, motherhood, work, etc.

You’re just going to have the energy do things because you’re fueling your body to move more. There is some great research that indicates that as we eat less, small movements, like a little fidget or a little twitch stop happening because your body is conserving energy.

So, as you start to increase those calories you will notice this daily movement will naturally increase as well. Energy levels are reason one, the second reason is your performance in the gym.

If you’ve been stuck at a couple of weights, eat to build more muscle and build more strength to lift more. The scale might not change that week, but you could add five pounds to your overhead press when you had been stuck there for four or five months.

Look at it differently, reverse dieting is a much different way of eating and you’re going to fuel your body for life, both in the gym and outside of the gym. You’re going to be less cranky.

You can also potentially help your hormones if you’ve been low for a very long time because you probably were low in fat. It can be life-changing in so many facets of your life.

I love that lesson. I really do and that was the hardest one for me. Once I figured it out it was amazing and it truthfully took me changing my goals from looks to performance to be able to get there. For everyone who has a weight goal or an aesthetic goal, those are great goals. I’m not saying don’t achieve them.

What I am saying is sometimes when you place the focus elsewhere, those goals happen naturally anyway. I would be fairly low calorie and I never had abs, abs on me are really difficult to develop no matter how low that I go calorically, I can be lean, but in terms of a full six-pack it’s not my body type.

When I shifted to performance goals through and ignored everything to do with that aesthetics, I leaned out significantly. I wasn’t aiming for it; it took changing that mindset to overcome the idea that more food is going to make you fat.

Somebody has to experience it for that light bulb moment, it’s okay to tell someone these things but they have to really trust you to take them through that process.

People get fear gremlins, they’ll start to eat, and they don’t get results in 72 hours, so they panic. Scale weight change based on various things, eating more carbs can increase water weight but that doesn’t mean body fat increased.

 

Final Tips For Reverse Dieting (46:01)

Yes, two different things. All right Cassie, any other tips you would add? Final last words for all the mamas, that are feeling stuck in their goals and ravenous.

Take a step back and ask yourself, what do I really want? Have I been eating this way for years? Have I been hopping on and off the 1200 calorie diet train over and over again?

You’ve got to do something different. There’s a saying that if you’re doing the same thing over and over again, it’s just pure chaos. Try something new. Try to add in a little bit more food slowly and start to take notice of how you feel.

Are you noticing different things? Or change your goals for 12 weeks, for example, don’t weigh yourself for don’t think about fat loss or worry about weight loss at all focus on performance goals and eating for performance. Just give it a try and see how it changes the way you feel.

I love it. I think my tip would be that trial and error on yourself is the best thing you can possibly do because everybody is going to respond slightly differently to various approaches. The only way you’re going to find the best method for you is to find what you enjoy.  

Trialing different styles of eating and giving your body a chance to adjust is the best way to find your sweet spot.  That’s all I’m asking is just try it. If you hate it, if you don’t like it, find a different system, but try eating more and make note of what you experience is the best thing you can do.

Well thank you bunches for coming onto the podcast today and for all the listeners, I truly hope you took away some valuable tips when it comes to food and why you shouldn’t fear it.

If you took one lesson from today’s podcast, I hope it’s that it is okay and possible to boost your metabolism and that life shouldn’t revolve around dieting.

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