When you're serious about bulking up, diet is every bit as important as your workouts. Without the right nutritional support, you won't be able to acquire the muscle mass that you require. Many fitness enthusiasts who are focused on gaining muscle size and strength rely on reverse dieting to help them accomplish their training goals and maintain their physiques.
What Is Reverse Dieting?
Traditional dieting for fat burning involves eating fewer calories than you burn on a daily basis. This calorie deficit requires your body to utilize fat stores for energy, which allows you to shed pounds. Reverse dieting involves increasing calories to eliminate a calorie deficit and provide the body with more calories that can be used to increase muscle mass. For the right individuals, reverse dieting can increase the pace of muscle growth, provide extra energy during the day, curb feelings of hunger and allow for a healthier, more positive relationship with food.
Who Is Reverse Dieting Right for?
The most important thing to understand about reverse dieting is that it's not for everyone. If you're trying to burn fat and replace it with muscle mass or you're only a casual fitness enthusiast, reverse dieting could cause you to gain weight over the long term. Those who benefit from a reverse diet include powerlifters, fitness models and fitness competitors who need to develop large amounts of muscle mass and want to have very well developed chiselled physiques. Individuals who are engaged in intense training for bodybuilding competitions and powerlifting are unlikely to gain body fat from reverse dieting; instead, gains will come in the form of increased muscle.
How to Get Started
To get started with reverse dieting, follow these steps:
1. Use a digital body fat and weight scale to obtain your body fat percentage and your weight. Do it first thing in the morning on the first day of your reverse diet plan.
2. Increase your calorie intake by 3% for the first week. Make a detailed plan of your meals, so that you can adjust your eating. Ensure that the increase comes from whole grains and other complex carbohydrates rather than from fats and sugars.
3. On day 8, step on the scale again. If your body fat stayed constant, proceed to step 4. More than likely, it will have.
4. Increase your calories by 1%. Continue to plan your meals and get your extra calories from complex carbs like whole grains. Weigh after another 7 days. If your body fat remains the same, continue to increase by 1% and repeat the process. Keep going until you experience a slight increase in body fat and then go back to the calorie levels from the previous week.
Reverse dieting is just one part of the nutritional puzzle for helping you achieve your goals and support your bodybuilding efforts. You'll also need the right combination of supplements to help you power through your workouts and recover optimally after training.
Sportsfuel can help you put together the perfect regimen of supplements to complement your reverse diet. Contact us for assistance.
