Reverse Dieting: Smart Recovery Strategy or Overcomplicated Fitness Myth?

Imagine spending four months dieting. Food's been weighed, calories tracked, training planned around increasingly limited energy intake, and carbohydrates have gradually become something to look forward to rather than simply another part of dinner. Eventually, the diet ends. The target weight has been reached, perhaps a bodybuilding competition has come and gone, or the person has simply lost the body fat they wanted to lose. Surely now it's time to start eating a bit more normally again? Well, apparently not. According to a rather enthusiastic corner of the fitness industry, there's another important stage to complete first. It's called reverse dieting.

And so begins another nutritional protocol. This one involves gradually increasing calories, sometimes by as little as 50 a day each week, while carefully monitoring body weight and waiting for the metabolism to recover. There may be warnings about increasing food too quickly, regaining body fat or undoing months of progress. There'll probably be a spreadsheet involved, and quite possibly a coach congratulating someone for adding 12 grams of oats to breakfast.

There's nothing inherently wrong with increasing calories gradually after a diet. In fact, for somebody who's spent months following a fairly restrictive eating plan, having a structured way of returning to normal food intake might be quite reassuring. But somewhere along the way, a relatively straightforward method of increasing food has developed into something approaching a specialised metabolic rehabilitation programme.

And that's where things get interesting.

The question isn't really whether reverse dieting can work. Obviously somebody can gradually increase their calorie intake after a diet. The more interesting question is whether doing so produces any particular physiological advantage compared with returning to an appropriate maintenance intake more quickly, and whether the process might sometimes keep people in an energy deficit for considerably longer than necessary.

Because there's quite a difference between managing the transition out of a diet and simply finding a more complicated way to continue one.

What is reverse dieting?

Reverse dieting is a nutritional strategy in which calorie intake is gradually increased following a period of energy restriction, usually with the intention of returning towards maintenance calories while managing body-weight regain.

It's particularly popular among bodybuilders, physique competitors, fitness enthusiasts and people who've completed prolonged fat-loss diets.

In practice, somebody might finish a diet consuming substantially fewer calories than they did before losing weight, then progressively increase carbohydrates and dietary fats over several weeks while monitoring body weight, training performance, appetite and recovery.

The underlying idea is reasonable enough. Rather than moving immediately from a restrictive diet to a substantially higher food intake, the person follows a planned transition.

Where things become less convincing is the suggestion that increasing calories in very small increments has a unique ability to restore metabolic function, prevent fat gain or allow the body to tolerate progressively higher calorie intakes without a corresponding increase in body mass.

Those are physiological claims, and they require physiological evidence.

At present, there isn't convincing research demonstrating that a deliberately slow reverse diet is generally superior to returning to an appropriately estimated maintenance intake more quickly.

That doesn't mean the strategy has no value. It means we should probably be a bit more careful about what we're claiming it does.

Why reverse dieting became so popular

Reverse dieting developed much of its popularity through bodybuilding and physique competition, where athletes frequently spend months reducing energy intake to achieve exceptionally low levels of body fat.

These aren't necessarily representative of normal, sustainable body compositions. A competitor might arrive on stage considerably leaner than they'd normally maintain throughout the year, having experienced changes in hunger, training performance, mood and hormonal function during preparation.

Once the competition is over, something has to change.

The athlete needs more food, but they may also be anxious about regaining the body fat they've worked so hard to lose. There's an obvious psychological conflict here. The physical objective is now recovery, while the emotional objective may still be preserving the appearance achieved during the diet.

Reverse dieting offers a way of managing that conflict. Food intake increases, but the process remains controlled. There are still targets, weigh-ins and adjustments, and for somebody accustomed to months of nutritional structure, that familiarity can be reassuring.

That aspect shouldn't be dismissed.

Nutrition isn't simply a matter of calculating energy intake and expenditure. People develop habits, expectations and emotional responses around food and body weight, particularly after prolonged restriction. Giving somebody a manageable transition may help them feel more comfortable with eating more.

But the method has gradually moved beyond competitive bodybuilding into mainstream fitness culture, where people completing relatively ordinary fat-loss diets are sometimes encouraged to spend another three months increasing food by tiny amounts.

This is where the logic starts becoming questionable.

If somebody has spent eight weeks in a moderate calorie deficit, is training well, feels reasonably healthy and simply wants to maintain their new weight, do they really need an elaborate reverse-dieting protocol? Or would eating at estimated maintenance, monitoring the response and making sensible adjustments achieve much the same thing?

The answer might well be considerably less exciting than the marketing.

What actually happens to your metabolism during a diet?

To understand reverse dieting, it helps to understand what happens when somebody loses weight.

During a sustained calorie deficit, the body draws upon stored energy to help meet its requirements. Body fat is reduced over time, and depending on the diet, training and degree of restriction, some lean tissue may also be lost.

As body mass falls, energy expenditure generally falls with it.

That isn't particularly mysterious. A smaller body normally requires less energy to maintain, and moving less total mass around can reduce the energy cost of physical activity. Someone who's lost 15 kg shouldn't necessarily expect to maintain their new body weight on precisely the same calories they required when they were heavier.

But changes in body mass aren't the whole story.

Energy restriction can also influence spontaneous movement, appetite, exercise performance, hormone signalling and resting energy expenditure. These responses are often grouped together under the broad term metabolic adaptation, although the individual mechanisms aren't all the same thing.

Adaptive thermogenesis isn't metabolic damage

Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the energy your body uses while at rest to maintain basic physiological functions. It's influenced by body size, tissue composition and several other factors.

When weight is lost, RMR generally decreases partly because there's less metabolically active tissue to maintain.

Adaptive thermogenesis refers more specifically to a reduction in energy expenditure beyond what would be predicted from changes in body mass and composition alone.

It's an important distinction.

If somebody weighs considerably less after dieting, we'd expect their energy requirements to be lower. That doesn't mean their metabolism has been damaged. The interesting question is whether energy expenditure has declined further than expected, and whether that additional reduction persists.

A 2022 systematic review by Nunes and colleagues examined 33 studies involving 2,528 adults. Evidence of adaptive thermogenesis was reported in many studies, but the magnitude varied substantially, and better-controlled research often found smaller or statistically non-significant effects.

The researchers also noted that adaptive thermogenesis appeared to become less pronounced, or sometimes undetectable, following periods of weight stabilisation and neutral energy balance.

So metabolic adaptation is a legitimate physiological phenomenon, but its magnitude, duration and importance vary. It's not evidence that every person finishing a diet has a permanently damaged metabolism that needs repairing through meticulously controlled calorie increases.

The phrase metabolic damage isn't particularly helpful. It gives the impression that normal biological adaptations to energy restriction are somehow evidence of a malfunction.

The body isn't necessarily broken. It's responding to changes in energy intake, body composition and physiological demand.

That response can certainly become problematic, particularly when energy restriction is severe or prolonged, but calling it damage doesn't explain the biology. It just makes the situation sound considerably more frightening.

The role of NEAT, hormones and appetite

There's another part of the equation that's often overlooked.

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, describes the energy expended through activities outside formal exercise. Walking around, standing, fidgeting, household tasks and all the other little movements that make up everyday life contribute to it.

During prolonged energy restriction, some people unconsciously reduce their movement. They might sit more, walk less or generally become less physically active without making any deliberate decision to do so.

Their energy expenditure can therefore fall even when their planned exercise programme hasn't changed.

Dieting can also influence hormonal systems involved in energy regulation.

Leptin, a hormone produced primarily by adipose tissue, is involved in signalling information about energy stores and availability. Circulating leptin generally declines as fat mass is lost and during energy restriction.

Thyroid hormone activity can change too, particularly triiodothyronine (T3), which contributes to the regulation of metabolic processes. Appetite-related signalling may also shift, and some individuals experience increased hunger, food preoccupation and reduced satiety.

These responses don't occur identically in everybody, and it would be misleading to suggest that every hormone changes in a simple, predictable direction during every diet. Human metabolism has an irritating habit of being considerably more complicated than nutritional infographics suggest.

Still, the overall pattern helps explain why prolonged dieting can become increasingly difficult.

The body may be using less energy while simultaneously encouraging greater energy intake. And when food intake increases again, some of these adaptations may begin to reverse as energy balance, body composition and other physiological conditions change.

The crucial point is that there's no convincing evidence that the body requires calories to be increased by a particular tiny amount each week for that recovery to occur.

For a wider explanation of how energy intake, training demands and recovery interact, we've covered the foundations in our Fundamental Diet Principles article.

Does reverse dieting actually work? What the research tells us

This is probably the most important part of the discussion, because reverse dieting is often promoted with far more confidence than the research currently warrants.

There's plenty of evidence that energy restriction affects body composition, resting energy expenditure, appetite and aspects of hormonal function. There's also research showing that increasing energy intake following prolonged dieting can support physiological recovery.

What's much less well established is whether gradually increasing calories provides a unique benefit compared with increasing them more quickly.

A 2022 scoping review by Chica-Latorre and colleagues examined the available research on post-competition recovery in natural physique athletes.

The review included 12 studies and considered changes in body composition, resting metabolic rate, energy intake, hormonal measures, menstrual function and psychological recovery.

Three broad approaches to post-competition eating were identified: gradually increasing calories towards maintenance, returning to maintenance more immediately, and allowing a less restricted increase in food intake.

The problem was that the available studies were predominantly small observational investigations and case reports. They didn't provide strong comparative evidence showing that one approach consistently produced better recovery.

The authors concluded that more research was needed to establish which nutritional strategies best support post-contest health and performance.

That's quite an important conclusion when you consider how confidently some reverse-dieting protocols are promoted.

It's one thing to say that a strategy is commonly used by experienced physique coaches. It's another to suggest that its particular rate of calorie increase has been demonstrated to improve metabolic recovery.

Those aren't interchangeable statements.

What did the 2026 research find?

More recently, a 2026 study by Buechel and colleagues followed 19 natural physique athletes, eight men and eleven women, through competition preparation and a subsequent 12-week recovery period.

Researchers examined body composition, resting metabolic rate, thyroid hormones, strength and several psychological measures.

As expected, competition preparation was associated with substantial body-fat loss, changes in thyroid hormones and signs of physiological and psychological strain in some participants.

Following competition, body mass and fat mass increased, while several physiological and psychological measures moved towards recovery.

One particularly interesting finding was that larger increases in energy intake after competition were associated with greater recovery of resting metabolic rate adjusted for body composition.

However, those increases also occurred alongside fat-mass regain.

It's important not to overinterpret that finding. The study was observational, involved a small group of athletes and didn't randomly assign participants to different reverse-dieting protocols.

It therefore can't establish that increasing calories more quickly directly causes superior recovery, nor does it identify the ideal rate of increase.

Nevertheless, the findings raise an important question.

If somebody is recovering from prolonged energy restriction, could deliberately keeping calorie intake low in an attempt to minimise fat regain actually delay aspects of physiological recovery?

It's a reasonable possibility, and one that deserves considerably more attention.

It also highlights something that often gets lost in the discussion: restoring body fat after extreme physique preparation isn't necessarily a failure. Some of that restoration may be part of returning towards a healthier, more sustainable physiological state.

This is where reverse dieting needs to be considered a little more critically.

The strategy that preserves the lowest possible body-fat level isn't automatically the one producing the best recovery.

Reverse dieting versus going straight to maintenance

If reverse dieting doesn't possess any established metabolic advantage, does that mean everybody should immediately increase calories to maintenance after finishing a diet?

Not necessarily.

There are practical and psychological reasons why somebody might prefer a gradual approach, but there are also situations where prolonging the transition makes little sense.

An important detail is that maintenance calories aren't a fixed number permanently assigned to an individual. They're influenced by body mass, body composition, activity, training, energy expenditure and other factors.

An athlete's current maintenance intake after a diet may therefore differ from what it was before the diet began.

And the exact figure is rarely known in advance.

Some estimation and adjustment will usually be necessary regardless of which approach is chosen.

Three approaches to increasing calories after a diet

Approach	What it involves	Main consideration
Gradual reverse dieting	Increasing food intake in stages over several weeks	May provide structure, but can prolong an energy deficit
Faster return to maintenance	Increasing intake towards estimated maintenance over a shorter period	Restores energy intake sooner, but requires accepting possible scale-weight increases
Individualised recovery	Adjusting intake and, where necessary, training around physiological and psychological recovery	Particularly relevant after severe restriction or signs of low energy availability

None of these approaches is automatically superior for everybody.

For somebody who's finished a moderate fat-loss phase and remains healthy, a gradual increase might simply be a convenient way of adjusting intake and observing body-weight trends.

Another person may prefer to move directly to estimated maintenance, accept the normal increase in glycogen and water, and adjust their intake based on what happens over the following weeks.

Both approaches can be reasonable.

But there's a difference between choosing a slower transition because it suits somebody's circumstances and suggesting that an increase of exactly 50 calories per week has special physiological properties.

We don't have evidence establishing that.

When a slow reverse diet becomes counterproductive

Consider somebody finishing a long diet on an intake substantially below their current energy requirements.

If they increase food by only a very small amount each week, they may remain in an energy deficit for several more weeks, potentially longer.

They might describe themselves as reverse dieting, but physiologically they're still restricting energy intake.

If training performance is poor, recovery is deteriorating, hunger is intrusive or there are signs of low energy availability, that prolonged deficit could be entirely counterproductive.

A slightly more generous amount of peanut butter doesn't become metabolic recovery simply because somebody has entered it into a spreadsheet under a new heading.

The important question is whether the nutritional intervention is actually addressing the problem.

And sometimes the problem isn't a lack of control over food intake. It's simply that the person isn't eating enough.

When eating more becomes a health issue, not a dieting strategy

Low energy availability occurs when insufficient energy remains to support normal physiological functions after exercise demands have been accounted for.

It can affect male and female athletes and, when severe or prolonged, may contribute to a condition known as Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs).

The International Olympic Committee's 2023 REDs consensus statement describes the potential effects of problematic low energy availability on health and performance, including disturbances involving bone health, reproductive function, immune function and metabolism.

Possible warning signs include persistent fatigue, declining training performance, recurrent illness, bone stress injuries, menstrual disruption, reduced libido, poor recovery and other unexplained physiological changes.

No single symptom proves that an athlete has REDs, and the diagnosis requires appropriate clinical assessment.

But these aren't things to dismiss as the ordinary inconvenience of getting lean.

If an athlete is experiencing significant under-fuelling or signs of REDs, recovery may involve increasing energy intake, reducing exercise demands, restoring body mass or fat mass where necessary, and addressing any medical or psychological complications.

And importantly, returning to estimated maintenance at the athlete's current reduced body weight may not always be sufficient to restore normal physiological function.

In these circumstances, a deliberately slow reverse diet shouldn't be treated as the default solution. Professional support becomes considerably more important than following an arbitrary weekly calorie adjustment.

The same applies to someone with a history of disordered eating, where continued weighing, tracking and restricting food might reinforce an already difficult relationship with eating.

This deserves particular emphasis because reverse dieting is often marketed as a recovery strategy.

Recovery should mean actually recovering, not simply continuing the behaviours of a restrictive diet under a more reassuring name.

What happens to body weight when you start eating more?

One of the biggest sources of anxiety after dieting is the sudden increase in scale weight that can occur when food intake rises.

Somebody might finish a diet at a particular weight, increase calories and discover that they're noticeably heavier within a few days.

It's very easy to interpret that as immediate fat gain, particularly after spending months watching the scales move in the opposite direction.

But body weight isn't the same thing as body fat.

When carbohydrate intake increases, the body can replenish glycogen stores in skeletal muscle and the liver. Glycogen is stored in association with water, so replenishing those stores can increase body mass without requiring an equivalent increase in fat tissue.

Eating more food also increases the amount of material passing through the digestive system. Changes in sodium intake and fluid balance can influence scale weight as well.

All of these can contribute to early increases in body mass following a diet.

That doesn't mean fat gain cannot occur. If somebody consumes more energy than they expend over time, energy can be stored, including as body fat.

It simply means that a sudden increase in scale weight shouldn't automatically be interpreted as an equivalent increase in adipose tissue.

We've discussed the relationship between carbohydrate intake, glycogen and water in more detail in our guide to carb cycling and carb loading.

There's another point worth remembering here.

If somebody has reduced body fat to an unusually low level during a competition preparation phase, some subsequent fat regain may be physiologically appropriate.

Trying to prevent every gram of that regain can be at odds with restoring energy availability, hormonal function and normal training capacity.

Which brings us back to what the person is actually trying to achieve.

Is the objective to recover from the diet, or to remain in competition condition indefinitely?

Because those are very different things.

Who might actually benefit from reverse dieting?

Despite the reservations about its marketing, reverse dieting shouldn't be dismissed entirely.

Some people genuinely prefer having a controlled transition from a calorie deficit to maintenance. They may find gradual adjustments easier to understand and psychologically more manageable than making a larger change immediately.

For a physique competitor who's finished a relatively moderate preparation and isn't experiencing significant under-fuelling, a planned increase in food could provide useful structure.

It might also help somebody establish their new maintenance requirements, particularly if their body mass and activity levels have changed substantially.

The important thing is recognising what the strategy is achieving.

If gradual increases make it easier for someone to eat adequately, monitor their response and maintain reasonable habits, that's a practical benefit.

But stable body weight during those increases isn't automatically evidence that the metabolism has been successfully 'trained' to burn more calories.

Energy expenditure can change as food intake, body mass, training and spontaneous activity change, but demonstrating an increase requires more than simply noticing that body weight hasn't risen.

Equally, there's no guarantee that strict tracking will prevent overeating or make somebody less anxious about food.

For some people it may help. For others it may prolong the very preoccupation they're trying to leave behind.

That's why reverse dieting is probably best considered an optional transition strategy rather than a physiological requirement after every diet.

What about reverse dieting for athletes?

For athletes, the discussion changes slightly because body composition is rarely the only objective.

Training quality, recovery, strength, endurance and the ability to adapt to physical stress all depend upon adequate nutrition.

An athlete coming out of a fat-loss phase may need to increase food intake simply to support their next training block, particularly if training volume or intensity is rising.

Carbohydrate availability may be especially important where repeated high-intensity exercise is involved. Protein remains relevant for maintaining and developing lean tissue, while dietary fats, micronutrients and total energy intake need to be sufficient for general physiological function.

But increasing carbohydrates won't compensate for a substantial overall energy deficit if the athlete continues to under-eat.

Nor is it necessary to increase carbohydrates first in every situation. The appropriate balance depends on what was restricted during the diet, what the athlete is doing now and where their nutritional intake is inadequate.

Someone whose dietary fat intake has become unnecessarily low may need to address that. Another athlete may simply require considerably more total energy to support their workload.

This is why prescribing one reverse-dieting formula for all athletes doesn't make much sense.

A bodybuilder finishing contest preparation has different immediate objectives from a powerlifter beginning a strength block, or a fighter who's temporarily manipulated body water to make a competition weigh-in.

For example, recovery from acute dehydration and glycogen depletion after making weight isn't the same thing as gradually increasing calories after several months of body-fat reduction.

The nutritional strategies may overlap, but the physiology and timescales are different.

It's something explored in our guide to Making Weight: Fat Loss, Water Loss and Performance Risk, particularly the difference between temporary changes in scale weight and actual changes in body composition.

Ultimately, the appropriate approach should follow the demands of the sport and the individual's recovery requirements, not simply whichever protocol happens to be fashionable.

Reverse dieting, diet breaks and refeeds aren't the same thing

These three strategies often get discussed together, partly because they all involve increasing food intake after or during periods of restriction.

But they serve different purposes.

A refeed generally involves a relatively short increase in energy intake, often with an emphasis on carbohydrates, during a dieting phase.

A diet break is a longer planned period in which energy intake is raised towards maintenance before the individual returns to a calorie deficit.

Reverse dieting typically occurs after the fat-loss phase has ended and aims to increase intake towards maintenance.

There is some overlap, particularly where athletes use maintenance periods during a longer preparation, but the distinctions are useful.

We've covered the role of diet breaks and refeeds versus cheat meals separately, because neither should be treated as a magical way of avoiding the normal consequences of energy balance.

And that's essentially the same principle that applies to reverse dieting.

It's the nutritional context that determines whether a particular strategy is useful, not the impressive terminology attached to it.

The problem with turning recovery into another diet

There's something slightly contradictory about the way reverse dieting is sometimes presented.

Someone spends months developing strict eating habits, following calorie targets, monitoring body weight and maintaining a deficit. Then, when the diet finally ends, they're told the safest way to recover is to continue tracking everything and make incredibly small adjustments for another several months.

For some people, that structure may be helpful.

For others, it raises the question of whether the psychological demands of dieting are simply being extended long after the original objective has been achieved.

There's an important difference between monitoring something because it provides useful information and monitoring it because somebody has become frightened of what might happen if they stop.

The body-composition changes that follow prolonged dieting can be psychologically difficult, particularly for physique competitors who've spent months working towards a very specific appearance. Some will benefit from continued nutritional guidance, realistic expectations and planned increases in food intake.

But guidance shouldn't automatically mean maintaining the most restrictive elements of competition preparation.

And successful recovery shouldn't be judged exclusively by how little body fat somebody regains.

Normalising eating patterns, restoring training performance, reducing excessive food preoccupation and improving physiological health may all be more meaningful outcomes.

This is also where the limited research becomes important. There's some evidence about the physiological changes occurring after physique competition, but there still isn't enough to confidently prescribe one dietary transition that will produce the best physical and psychological outcome for everybody.

It's probably better to acknowledge that uncertainty than pretend there's a scientifically validated formula involving 50 additional calories and an unusually patient Excel spreadsheet.

So, is reverse dieting worth doing?

Reverse dieting can be useful, but probably not for the reasons it's most commonly promoted.

Its main value appears to lie in the structure it can provide after a restrictive diet. Some people find that valuable, particularly when they're nervous about increasing food intake or uncertain about their new maintenance requirements.

What can't reasonably be claimed is that very slow calorie increases have been shown to repair metabolic damage, uniquely prevent fat regain or outperform a more direct return to adequate energy intake.

The science doesn't currently establish those benefits.

Metabolic adaptation is real, and prolonged dieting can produce meaningful physiological changes. But those changes aren't necessarily evidence of permanent damage, and restoring energy intake is part of recovery regardless of whether the calories arrive in tiny weekly increments or through a more substantial adjustment.

For someone who's finished a moderate diet and feels healthy, reverse dieting may simply be one perfectly reasonable way to return towards maintenance.

For someone experiencing significant under-fuelling, hormonal disruption, deteriorating performance or signs of REDs, a slow reverse could be entirely the wrong priority.

And for someone who's developed an unhealthy preoccupation with restricting food, another prolonged period of closely controlled eating may not be particularly helpful either.

The mistake is treating reverse dieting as something everybody needs to do, rather than asking whether it solves a genuine problem for the individual.

There's nothing particularly advanced about adding 50 calories to a meal plan.

Sometimes it's useful. Sometimes it's unnecessary. And sometimes it simply prolongs the very restriction the person is supposed to be recovering from.

Which leaves a rather interesting question.

If somebody has finished dieting, is recovering well, eating adequately and maintaining a healthy, sustainable body composition, why would the process need to be any more complicated than that?

Perhaps the most successful reverse diet is the one that eventually allows somebody to stop thinking about dieting altogether.

Key scientific references

1. Chica-Latorre S, Buechel C, Pumpa K, Etxebarria N, Minehan M. (2022). After the Spotlight: Are Evidence-Based Recommendations for Refeeding Post-Contest Energy Restriction Available for Physique Athletes? A Scoping Review. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 19(1), 505–528.
DOI: 10.1080/15502783.2022.2108333

2. Buechel C, Pumpa K, Etxebarria N, Helms ER, Ashton L, Mitchell L, Minehan M. (2026). Post-Competition Recovery in Natural Physique Athletes: Body Composition, Metabolic Adaptation, and Refeeding Responses. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 23(1), 2676190.
DOI: 10.1080/15502783.2026.2676190

3. Nunes CL, Casanova N, Francisco R, Bosy-Westphal A, Hopkins M, Sardinha LB, Silva AM. (2022). Does Adaptive Thermogenesis Occur After Weight Loss in Adults? A Systematic Review. British Journal of Nutrition, 127(3), 451–469.
DOI: 10.1017/S0007114521001094

4. Mountjoy M et al. (2023). 2023 International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Consensus Statement on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(17), 1073–1097.
DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2023-106994

Research on post-diet physiological recovery is still developing. In particular, there's insufficient high-quality comparative evidence to establish an optimal rate of calorie increase following a diet. The approaches discussed in this article should therefore be interpreted according to individual circumstances rather than as universally validated reverse-dieting protocols.

Written by

Chris Simon, Founder of One Life Foods.

Chris has worked in the supplement industry since 2009 and is known for seeking out exceptional ingredients, products, and formulations. Read more about Chris and the story behind One Life Foods.

Important information

This article is provided for educational purposes and doesn't constitute individual nutritional or medical advice. Prolonged energy restriction, severe under-fuelling and low energy availability can affect physical and psychological health. Anyone experiencing menstrual disruption, persistent fatigue, recurrent injuries, significant weight loss, disordered eating symptoms or other concerning changes should seek advice from an appropriately qualified healthcare professional or registered dietitian. People recovering from severe malnutrition may require medically supervised nutritional rehabilitation.