Client Case Study: Successful Reverse Diet (15 Month Process)

A “Reverse Diet” is a HOT TOPIC in the nutrition space… and after the article I wrote on the Viking himself (my nickname for my client, Jeremiah Bair) – I got A LOT of feedback.

So many great comments and messages sent in on how helpful it was to see the exact process of getting shredded, spread out over a long period of time. So if you haven’t yet checked that one out, read it right here.

It gives insight on his 9-month transformation, from average to savage (literally shredded for a photo-shoot).

But the other feedback I got, was asking for more…

A lot of women wrote me asking for something to show what it takes to get lean from a female’s perspective.

I also had a lot of people write me and ask about how I take clients through a reverse diet, “Can you show the process of reverse dieting?”

So naturally, I decided to answer both of those requests by writing an article about a female who has worked with me for 15 months now, had an amazing transformation, and did so through a reverse diet.

In fact, NOW we’re just starting her cut (literally next week) in preparation for her wedding.

Meet Meredith

Meredith is an unbelievable client. One of the most committed individuals I’ve worked with in my many years of coaching.

But not committed in the sense of, “I’ll do anything. Screw friends. Screw socializing. Screw alcohol. I’m all in!”

Committed in the sense of, “I’m in this for the long haul. I want to learn how to sustain this and not feel like I’m eating rabbit food in order to stay lean.”

She is someone who knew exactly what she wanted, an athletic body – not a skinny body. She wanted to look lean, feel good, and PERFORM. She enjoys lifting weights and wants to excel in it. She loves food and enjoys some wine (why we get along so well), so she wanted to be educated on how to have it all.

I told her it takes time and a lot of planning (periodization). This isn’t an easy task, but it’s more than possible and in the cards for you. I needed her to commit to at least 6 months, ideally a year, and I needed her to be patient with me and trust the process.

She agreed and we got to work!

THE DIET BEFORE THE DIET

I talked about this in the article about Jeremiah, but in a different context.

See he wanted to get shredded for a photo-shoot, so we set a date and went at it. Which meant I needed to prepare his body for the deficit and stress that was about to come, something many coaches fail to truly prioritize – yet it’s so critical to success.

This is where we spend some time at maintenance, build your habits, increase your metabolic capacity, and simply educate you on what it takes. Probably build some strength and even some muscle in this time, too.

By the time this is over, you’re literally PRIMED to diet. It’s the perfect way to prepare for a cut and as a coach it allows me to learn your body better, too.

But with Meredith, we didn’t need this phase prior to the diet… this phase WAS the intention of the entire diet (aka the reverse diet).

Let me explain…

Meredith came to me in a state of under-recovery. She was in a recovery debt.

High stress levels from work, low calorie eating, and too much cardio.

So the intention of the diet was not to get lean, by any means… it was to improve her recovery and get her out of debt. Build her metabolism up, improve her hormonal system, and then build some muscle and strength as these things came to fruition.

And as we go through that process, educate her on what this will look like later on.

Always focusing on the NOW, while teaching about the THEN.

This is how we create sustainability in our clients, we teach them the next step before it’s here. What it is, why we’re doing it, and how we’ll execute it.

Meredith’s Diet/Training (Prior To BBP):

Example Training Routine:

Mondays – 45 min spin bike

Tuesday – 20 min step master intervals, biceps + triceps

Wednesday – Plyometric Workout (jump squats w/ stepper, burpees, X jumps, etc) + legs (lunges, weighted squats, kettlebell swings, etc)

Thursday – Curve treadmill interval sprints + back/shoulder/arms

Friday – Yoga + core

Saturday – repeat something above  

{In other words, daily HIIT or Cardio… Not ideal, VERY common. }

Example Diet:

“I eat Paleo-ish. Try and focus on eating whole, satisfying meals vs. counting calories and restricting. I do not eat dairy. Example dinners are zoodles and meatballs, steak gyro on paleo pita with coconut yogurt tzatziki, swetgreen salads, etc. Weekdays are usually good, and weekends are more flexible. I’ll eat French fries, wings, etc but I try eat small portions and not to over indulge. I used to have a habit of “self-sabotage” eating but I have done a good job of stopping that.

I wake up, have a cup of coffee and go the gym. Then when I get to work, I eat breakfast around 9:30 – 10am. Lunch around 1pm and then a snack before dinner (trying to eat veggies and nuts to hold me off). Dinner is around 7:30pm.”

The above is literally what she sent me in the initial questionnaire she filled out, under the question “What does your current nutrition look like?”

As I dug into her food logs I noticed a trend of low protein, low overall calories, and a lot of randomness – usually do to trying paleo snacks, recipes, etc…

She was eating around 1,200 calories and about half the amount of carbs (at best) that I’d like to see her eating for the amount of work she was doing inside her cardio sessions – on top of her lifestyle stressors, which can be benefited from the additional carbs as they help to prevent overproduction of cortisol (stress hormone).

INITIAL PRESCRIPTION:

February 2018 → Present (May 2019)

Yes, 15 months. 1 ¼ years.

And as that may seem long to many of you, it’s not. Life is long; this is a fraction of the time we spend on earth.

And 95% of the time Meredith has spent with me has NOT been dieting.

It has been training hard, doing casual and infrequent cardio, and being at least at maintenance calories (we slowly worked that number up).

Month 1 Stats:

Height – 5’6”

Weight – 148lbs.

Age – 27

Calories – 1,535

Protein – 125g

Carbs – 135g

Fat – 55g

EXPLANATION:

For me to step in and say to her, “Initially we won’t be seeing the weight loss you’d like to see, it’s going to take a long time, this may seem odd but just trust me… oh and we’re going to jack your calories up every day”… probably not smart coaching.

Probably going to freak her out and have her question her investment.

But part of me being a coach, is being honest. This is honest coaching and I did tell her those exact things. But rather than saying I was going to jack up her calories, I told her about reverse dieting and explained that I’ll just be inching her calories up via specific macronutrients that I believe will cause the least amount of fat accumulation and the most lean muscle tissue growth, while improving her metabolism and hormonal profile.

Since she was coming to me having been in this big deficit, paleo focused diet, I needed to bring calories up a decent amount no matter what the result was. It was the only was we’d begin to improve her physiology.

And the hard reality with reverse dieting is that it is Russian roulette… we really have no exact idea how her body is going to respond, so unless it’s a VERY serious issue of under eating – I’ll be pretty conservative at first.

I pumped up her calories by about 300, but it was almost solely through protein and a little carbs.

So looking at her weekly caloric intake, it’s still pretty low. But at least she’s getting a bit closer to bodyweight in protein now and I added about 15-20g of carbs while leaving fat relatively close to her current average intake.

Now, this adjustment will do NOTHING for her metabolism or hormones. I didn’t make this adjustment to boost things and get her feeling better, I did this so that she could mentally understand and comprehend that she could eat more food and not gain weight.

After about a week or two of hitting this macro breakdown, she lost 2lbs.

ADJUSTMENT 1: MONTH 1

Now she’s at 146lbs and it’s time to make an adjustment. It’s only 2 weeks into things, but again – I wanted to help her make a change and we haven’t made any big shifts yet. To be honest, I was surprised that the small caloric increase, mainly through protein, allowed her to drop some body fat at all.

My guess is that she had more energy because she was eating more food, her TEF (Thermic Effect of Food) was higher so she was burning some extra calories, and I completely switched her training (the biggest thing).

She was no longer doing tons of HIIT and Cardio Circuit Style Workouts… I put her on a 3-day strength-training plan with 3 days of cyclical cardio (HIIT and LISS). It was very much like what is found inside The Tailored Trainer Membership App.

Calories – 1,535 (5 Days Per Week) 1,795 (2 Days Per Week)

Protein – 125g

Carbs – 135g (5 Days Per Week) 200g (2 Days Per Week)

Fat – 55g

EXPLANATION:

I added 2 refeed days, every single week. These two days are required to be back to back, as this is really the only way to get any significant response from her hormones. When the body gets to consume maintenance or surplus calories, for 48-72 hours or more, some positive hormonal adaptations begin to occur.

It was believed for years that we needed a cheat day, cheat meal, or even a refeed day, which is a much more structured version of a cheat day, to boost our metabolism once a week while dieting. In theory it makes sense, because when we consume higher calories we do get a metabolic response, a TEF response, and even a response from hunger hormones that positively benefit the metabolism (leptin and ghrelin).

What further research taught us is that 24 hours, let alone a single meal, just isn’t enough time at a higher caloric intake.

Rather, they’ve found that 48-72 hours was the minimum effective time to be at or above maintenance calories, in order to have any stimulatory effect on the metabolism and hormonal system.

But there are also two sides of this that I need to explain, because I don’t want everyone to get excited and start refeeding without practical purpose:

→ 80% of the time the purpose of multi-day refeeding is not to enhance metabolic function, but rather protect during a deficit. It acts as an insurance policy or safety net, for our muscles, performance, hormones and psychological health. Because you’re in a deficit 5 days a week, 2 days at maintenance will not INCREASE metabolic or hormonal output – it merely slows down the decline while dieting. Yes you may spend more weeks in a deficit because you have some high days, but you’re protecting yourself from serious metabolic slow down, too.

→ That 20% of the time is saved for times like this – with Meredith. During a reverse diet with someone who has been consuming low calories for a long time and really wants to look and feel lean, it can be difficult to adhere to a big increase in calories EVERY single day. Add to that, her metabolism was already in a down regulated state – therefore it will be a bit more sensitivity to any caloric increase. So adding 2 days of refeeding is going to help us a.) achieve better adherence because she still has some low days (aka it’s less scary for the client) and b.) see some sort of metabolic “boost” from even 2 days because her body truly needed anything it could get.

ADJUSTMENT 2: MONTH 2

Now she’s at month 2, so literally just 4 weeks into this, and already needs an adjustment. She’s responding really well to the reverse diet so far and loves how she is feeling.

This is the big thing to note, here… “She loves how she is feeling.”

Every day, we ranked how her fatigue, performance, sleep, stress, hunger and motivation were. Seems like a lot to stay on top of, I know. But the reality is, it’s not. It’s simply writing a score of 1-5 in a little box upon waking, takes a single minute and a few thoughts.

Is it annoying at first? Maybe. But it gives me data as a coach that I can use to enhance your results. So when she sees the scores get better and better, her body look better and better, and her coach get happier and happier… it becomes REAL easy to track every day.

And on that note, if you refer back to the beginning of this article where she mentioned her current nutrition; she explained that she doesn’t like to track because she does not want to restrict herself. Yet now, she’s tracking daily – shit, she has been on and off for 15 months with me.

The reason people do not usually like to track is simply because they do not commit to giving themselves a few weeks, first. Before you start, it seems tedious. After a couple weeks, it’s quite easy. After a month and your results speak for themselves, it’s an accepted habit.

By this point already, tracking was a habit for Meredith – and she also began to see how she actually could eat more than expected, in fact paleo was restricting her more than tracking macros was.

Meredith weighed in at 146.4lbs, no loss and 0.4lbs gained.

Calories – 1,595 (5 Days Per Week) 1,900 (2 Days Per Week)

Protein – 125g

Carbs – 150g (5 Days Per Week) 215g (2 Days Per Week)

Fat – 60g

EXPLANATION:

We bumped her carbs up by 15g across the week and her fats by 5g.

To some, this may look an aggressive adjustment but it’s really only about 5% of calories and for where she’s at – we still needed to bring calories up.

We’re sticking with the 5/2 approach because it is absolutely helping her from a metabolic standpoint, but it’s also giving her with the flexibility inside her diet – she doesn’t feel restricted, yet she still feels like she’s working towards her goals 5 days a week, too.

Another thing to point out here, regarding her ability to bump up calories and maintain weight so well, is that we dramatically changed her training.

And even though she was sweating less, her heart rate was more controlled, and she didn’t feel like she was going as hard as she was… the adaptations that occur from smart strength training are unbelievably positive during a reverse diet.

This is because volume is the key driver of muscle growth, while intensity (load, not effort) is the key driver of strength. Well when we put these two things together in a training split that enhances both strength and lean muscle gain, we’re inherently increasing the calories our body needs in order to function, perform, and survive (in other words, our metabolic demands increase).

So as we’re increasing calories, we’re lifting heavier weights and adding more volume (reps/sets/exercises) in the gym. So these calories we’re putting in her, are GOING TO WORK.

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ADJUSTMENTS 3-5: MONTHS 3-4

Now she’s 4 months in and we’ve made a few more adjustments, because she’s yet again maintained her weight this entire time. She’s hovered between 145-146lbs every single week.

Something to note her; she has not lost any weight for the 4 months we’ve worked together (at this point).

This discourages many people, because the scale means everything to them. But not Meredith; she’s lifting heavier than ever before, has clearly put on some muscle, and her biofeedback (sleep, stress, mood, etc.) has been increasing on a linear basis ever since we started.

Here is her visual progress, thus far:

This is why taking progress photos along the way, during your journey, is absolutely crucial.

Meredith didn’t have ANY scale changes and is eating MORE calories… so in theory she shouldn’t look any better. But based on what you see above compared to our starting point, she’s WAY leaner and has WAY more muscle definition.

That on top of her feeling great; we’re in a perfect place.

Calories – 1,720 (5 Days Per Week) 1,980 (2 Days Per Week)

Protein – 135g

Carbs – 160g (5 Days Per Week) 225g (2 Days Per Week)

Fat – 60g

Now we have her in a position where her normal deficit days are what her refeed days once were, this is an outstanding sign of positive adaptations happening and her metabolism catching up as we anticipated.

We’ve stuck with the 5/2 up until now because it’s working and why fix what isn’t broke?

She feels good, her results speak for themselves, and she has the flexibility she desires two days per week.

This is a 2 month period that we went from 125/150/60 up to 135/160/60 and we did so because getting lean is still her primary goal, while my goal as a coach is to have her feeling good and sustaining that long term. So we have to work together in accomplishing this, which means being patient and moving slow.

Because I know she enjoys lifting and her goal is an aesthetic body, I wanted to increase protein up over time. So this was our first bump and I had plans to increase it even more.

When consuming 135g of protein daily, it can be difficult to get the optimal muscle protein synthetic response in every meal – which is the goal when consuming protein in every meal. We need at least 20g, and that’s the minimal effective dose, and optimally 40g. 40g is a lot for someone of her stature, so if we can get each meal between 25-35g – we’re golden, in my experience.

ADJUSTMENTS 6: MONTH 5

Month 5 is here and she’s weighing in at 146.2lbs, which is 0.2lbs down – but in reality this is a maintained weight, again, because she fluctuates between 145.5-146.5lbs on the regular (as do 99% of people).

This is also a great example as to why we weigh in daily with a lot of clients. Our bodies will fluctuate weight 1-2lbs. per day based on water, sodium, stress, and training – therefore we see the changes, A LOT. If we had one weigh in per week and she happened to have a salty meal on a stressful night prior to weigh in’s, she’d weigh in furiously because her weight would be up 2lbs.

But if she had weighed in daily, took the average, and looked at prior averages – she’d understand that her average weight is actually still trending down or maintaining. Saving her a ton of frustration and myself as a coach the confusion and questioning.

Calories – 1,780 (6 Days Per Week) 2,000 (1 Days Per Week)

Protein – 135g

Carbs – 175g (6 Days Per Week) 240g (1 Day Per Week)

Fat – 60g

EXPLANATION:

This adjustment wasn’t an increase in calories. If you take her weekly total intake from before, divide it by 7 days, get your total and then redistribute that into 6 low days and 1 high day – you’ll get this macro prescription.

I didn’t want to adjust her refeed schedule AND bump calories up, for 3 reasons:

1. That’s a lot to adjust at once and from a habitual/adherence side of things, it’s best to adjust one thing at a time to minimize the feeling of being overwhelming and increase the ability to stay consistent and adhere.
2. Even though the weekly is the same, the daily is higher – this may initially cause some water retention since 1g of carb holds 3-4g of water. I don’t want the scale shock to freak her out and if I increased macros AND did this, it likely would.
3. I also changed her training; we shifted to a new and higher volume cycle. So by doing that, on top of the rest… it’s just a lot of changes to expect of her.

ADJUSTMENTS 7: MONTH 5

We’re still in the same month and she’s still maintaining weight, so after 1-2 weeks of this latest adjustment I decided to continue the reverse and bump her up again.

Calories – 1,820 (6 Days Per Week) 2,040 (1 Days Per Week)

Protein – 135g

Carbs – 185g (6 Days Per Week) 250g (1 Day Per Week)

Fat – 60g

EXPLANATION:

At this point we’ve added over 600 calories to her diet without gaining a single pound and that’s NOT including the refeeds, which are 800 calories over her original 1-2x per week. We’re in an amazing place with her progress and I’m going to begin fast-forwarding the adjustments to get you to her current state.

The reason being, we’re simply reversing now.

She trusts the process, she’s well educated at this point on why we need to reverse and how her body is going to adapt, and she’s become unbelievably consistent.

We’re in the perfect place to simply drive calories up, mainly via carbohydrates since she has more than the minimal effective amount of fats coming in to support neurological and hormonal processes, over the course of the next 3+ months.

FURTHER REVERSE DIET ADJUSTMENTS: MONTHS 6-10

Calories – 1,940

Protein – 150g

Carbs – 200g

Fat – 60g

We slowly worked her calories up, then shifted her away from having any refeeds, and then began to add calories again via protein and carbohydrates.

The reason we removed the refeed days is because we’re going to see more benefits from having a linear caloric intake that matches her body, stress levels, and physical output. Meaning, I’d rather her have more calories each day than higher calories on a single given day – from a metabolic perspective, this just makes more sense.

Adherence wise, there is a time and place for allowing more calories – but we weren’t ever worried about not having that on paper, because the reality is I allow that as a coach. Every now and then, we would take a refeed day or mini diet break (1-3 days) where she can have more calories, more flexibility, or even complete freedom from tracking (intuitive) for a period of time.

So the need for a specific refeed day each week becomes useless and in the grand scheme of things isn’t going to benefit her, as she is no longer in a deficit.

Add to that, she’s never eaten this much and stayed lean before in her life! So she’s not dying for a break, it doesn’t even seem like a diet to her. (That’s the goal)

As you may have noticed, I also brought her protein up to 150g. The reason for this is because a.) she does have that muscle and strength goal, so even though more protein doesn’t necessarily translate to more gains – this allows us to be 100% positive she’s hitting her MPS needs.

B.) as she eats more carbs, her low-grade protein goes up and takes over some of her more bioavailable protein. What I mean by this is she’s getting more protein from plants and starches, because her carbs are increasing – but I want to be sure she gets enough from animal proteins as that will contribute to muscle and performance more effectively.

And c.) it’s more food! I want her eating more calories and staying more satiated, so that adherence and metabolic health are at an all time high.

MAINTENANCE: MONTH 10-15

This takes us up to where we are today, literally.

15 months into this and we’re ready to cut, in preparation for her wedding.

To be honest, as you’re reading this – it’s day 2 of the cut (well, this was written on day 2 of the cut). We’re literally just starting, today. And if you look at the pictures above, she doesn’t have much to go – at all. But she wants to shred up a bit.

Over the last 5ish months, we’ve spent time maintaining her higher caloric intake, focusing on performance, and allowing her body to reset in a sense – resetting her caloric maintenance, resetting her body fat levels, and resetting her muscle tissue levels.

This is an unbelievably important phase of success and if you’ve read or listened to my Periodization Podcast or Blog, you know what I’m talking about.

This is the step that allows sustainability to be a real thing.

Yet so many people skip past it or don’t spend time investing in maintenance, because it’s not exciting or sexy – you’re staying put.

We gave Meredith a couple mini cuts along the way, using a Matador Style approach – cutting aggressively for 1-2 weeks, breaking for 1-2 weeks – just to test her body, keep her weight in check, and really see how she’d adapt after all this time reversing.

Because as a coach, I know an adaptive metabolism when I see one and this is where some people will get very frustrated.

An adaptive metabolism is a metabolism that adapts VERY well; this is an outstanding thing with a reverse diet client, because they will adapt as you increase calories up and maintain weight very easy. However on the way back down, they also adapt quickly to the drops in calories which can make it much more difficult to cut because you cannot take a soft conservative approach.

Now, because it’s literally impossible to completely predict a metabolism – it’s smart to start very small and conservative, to test things out. Because if you can cut 5% of calories going into a cut and it works, you’re golden.

But if it doesn’t, now you know to pull back and wait to let the client restore the original maintenance again before you’re too deep and then dig a bit harder by pulling 10, 15 or even 20% of calories for a much more aggressive approach.

And that’s the plan with Meredith.

→ Pull 5% and tighten up the reigns a bit, making sure all things are tracked very accurately and toning down the flexibility (macro ranges, alcohol, meal timing, etc.)

→ See where she lands after just 1-2 weeks; I won’t need much time to read this properly because I’ve learned how her body works over the last 15 months.

→ Add NEAT or Cardio when necessary; usually after the first 1-2 pulls calorically, if there’s space for cardio, because I like to keep calories high as I find it maintains muscle tissue better.

→ Step-by-step adjustments; week-to-week, we’ll tweak until she’s 100% ready and confident in her body when her wedding comes in the fall!

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This, like all of our coaching clients, is a VERY detailed process.

This is what we did for MEREDITH. Not you, not Steve, and not me. Meredith.

The reason I say that is because these are methods and tools that absolutely can be applied across so many different people – but it is still highly individual as to what, when and how.

This is why we encourage you to apply for coaching with the BBP Team.

We’re ready to take you through YOUR individual process to reach YOUR individual goals.

Click Here and Apply For A Free Strategy Call (No Strings Attached).