You Didn’t Fail Your Reverse Diet — You Just Quit Too Soon

00:00This is the thing, like a reverse diet or retraining your metabolism, it isn't a quick reset. It's not a quote-unquote break from dieting. It is literally a full-on metabolic recovery phase. It is the process of slowly increasing your calories over time. What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with your host, Nikkie Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe.

00:34On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. So for today's episode, episode number 307, I'm going to talk about a topic that I've talked about before, but I'm hopefully going to say it in a little bit of a different way that will resonate with you guys, just maybe a little bit more. Or maybe you heard the topic before, it didn't really resonate with you, and this time, it will make some light bulbs go off. And that is doing a reverse diet and doing it the right way. Because I feel like I've heard women say, for the ones that have tried it, I've tried reverse dieting, but it didn't work.

01:15And if that's you, then this episode is for you. And if you are somebody that has never heard about reverse dieting, I have a few other episodes. So if you go to the macrohour.com, you can just hit control find if you're on a computer. And I'm sure you can do it some way on your iPhone, but just type in reverse dieting or retraining. And there's tons of episodes. There's like four or five on this topic that you can listen to and you can come to this one. Or, you know, if you've never done retraining or reversing, this episode still is going to serve you in one way or another.

01:46So especially if you've been under eating and doing cardio, okay, that's this the retraining reversing is bringing you up and eating more calories without you gaining the weight. So anyway, if you said that what I just said, reverse diet, you tried it before, but it didn't work, then hear me out. Because the truth is, it did work. You just didn't stay in it long enough for your body to actually fully heal. Because when you guys hear me say how long you should stay in this, depending on and very broadly speaking, depending on how long you have been under eating and doing tons and tons of cardio, you will be amazed at what that length may seem like.

02:30But some of you guys, you go two, three, four, six weeks max, trying something like this majority. And if it's not getting the result that you thought that it would, then it's like, okay, it's not working. And it's just like any or all, you know, diet plans or programs you've tried in the past. I'm not saying that to slight you. I'm saying it to just be honest. Because the one mistake that I see is like, when it's not working, quote unquote, that women say, then women just jump right back into not eating enough or deficit.

03:03And that is the exact reason why women stay stuck year after year on this hamster wheel, wondering why they're not getting the results that they see so many women getting. And I want to just be honest, right? You guys know I'm honest. I love you when I'm honest. I come from a tough love approach because I love you guys and I care about you guys and I want you guys to win. And I feel like what I've been successful over the years of coaching so many women is I just say it for what it is, direct. I do because I love you guys. So this is the thing. Most women don't reverse diet. They dabble in it.

03:39Like what I was just saying, you spend a few weeks slowly eating more. You heard about the concept. You listen to the episodes maybe before. Maybe I'm speaking directly to you. You listen to the episodes. You try it out. And then you stopped. You know, you maybe try for a couple weeks. You start feeling better. And then, you know, the second the scale like moves, this like overwhelming fear takes over because you've been conditioned your entire life. And what I mean to say moves like it goes up. And it's because you've been conditioned your entire life to if you see the scale go up, you panic.

04:10You think weight gain equals failure. You think, oh, no, I'm gaining weight. I need to stop what I'm doing and I just need to go back to eating less. But when you're reverse dieting, when you're quote unquote reversing, when you're retraining, that's not failure. That is literally your metabolism coming back to life. Like I need to say that louder. Your metabolism is literally coming back to life when you are giving it what it has been needing for so long. So that small weight fluctuation. And what I mean by that is food.

04:41And I know that eating more sounds scary. And it sounds like that, you know, I've been so conditioned to think that I'm just going to gain fat. I just want to rewire. I want to challenge those stories. I want to rewrite the narrative. That's not the case. If you eat the wrong types of foods and too much, then yes, there is a whole method to the madness when it comes to reverse dieting. I'm going to get to that later on the episode. But and I've shared it with you guys multiple times. And this is what we do at Worry Babe. There's actually a whole product that I will make sure that is linked. I've talked about it in a couple of the episodes.

05:12We call it the ultimate guide to macros or the macro method. I'm going to link it in the podcast description below this. But anyway, the small weight fluctuation that you guys see isn't fat. It's water weight. It's food volume. It's your body trying to metabolize this food. It's glycogen. It's salt. It's sugars. All the things. It's like your muscles are refilling. It's your digestion functioning again. It's your body literally entering in the mode of trusting you again. But if you interpret interrupt that process, if you mess it up and you think that, oh, I'm gaining fat.

05:50You literally can sabotage everything. Like you pull the plug way too soon. And then you cut your calories down because that's what you're used to. And then your body goes, oh, okay, I guess I'm entering in the same arena that I've been in for so long. I guess it's not safe to burn, you know, fat again. So I'm just going to go into adaptation mode and conserve everything. And you end up right back where you started. You end up tired. You end up bloated. You end up frustrated. And you end up in this cycle of like, why can't I get the results?

06:22So I want to clear that up. This is the thing like a reverse diet or retraining your metabolism, as you may have heard me or coaches at Warrior Babe or Warrior Babe say it. It isn't a quick reset. It's not a quote unquote break from dieting. It is literally a full on metabolic recovery phase. And I want you to just like let that just like sink in like a full on metabolic recovery phase. It is the process of slowly increasing your calories over time.

06:57It could be months on end. It could be a full 12 months that you could be doing this. And I know it doesn't sound sexy to say it, but it is a brutal honest truth. But broadly speaking, if you do this and do it consistently, you can see results within weeks to a month to three months. All the way up to sometimes a year, depending on how also not only how much your metabolism needs to heal, but how consistent you are with it. And it's doing these things. It's slowly increasing the calories to repair your metabolism after basically you being in long periods of restriction.

07:27And that takes time. Your body doesn't heal in just four weeks. Think about it. Like how long have you been under eating? And if you don't know how much you're eating in a day, you are more than likely under eating. How long have you been doing that? Four months, four years, four, maybe a decade. So your body isn't going to just turn around and heal that in four weeks. It takes months. It takes, you know, what I just said, takes sometimes longer to restore thyroid function, to restore hormonal balance, to restore metabolic flexibility. And when you've been in a deficit for years, under decades, eating 1200 calories, doing cardio daily, over training and wondering why you can't lose weight.

08:05That's when your metabolism adapts and slows down to, again, conserve, protect you, hold on to. So when you start reverse dieting, you're basically telling your body like, hey, I'm feeding you, giving you what you need and what you want and safe now. You can start burning fat again. But your body doesn't like instantly trust that message. And I want you guys to understand that. Like you literally have to prove it. It's just like being in a relationship. Think about that. You don't just trust someone out of the gate when you start talking to them in the first month, two months. That takes time, right?

08:36You got to prove it. You got to prove to gain trust through consistency, through nourishment, through love, through time, right? Same applies to your body. And that's why we call it the retraining phase, the healing phase, the reversing phase, reversing out of eating 1200 calories, the retraining of retraining your metabolism to trust you again, the healing phase to give you nourishment to your body again. It's not this isn't just about like, oh, how lean can I look at? How much weight can I lose during it? It's about what you're like literally internally, what you're rebuilding underneath internally to allow it's things you can't see.

09:12But inside your body is a very complex system and you're rebuilding that. Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, Warrior Babe is here for you. At Warrior Babe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle, and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more.

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10:19It's been decades and years and messagings and this and that and it's just how women are primed nowadays. And when you come into Warrior Babe, a majority of the coaches do this retraining reversing process. There's so many babies that come to us exhausted. Their weight hasn't budged in months. They're freezing because their thyroid is off. You know, they're doing tons of cardio. And then we hear, we say, hey, we're going to reverse diet. Okay, we're going to retrain your metabolism because we understand that eating 1100, 1200 calories a day is what's causing you to feel this way.

10:49And a lot of the babes are like, no, this doesn't logically make sense. You want me to eat more loose fat? That doesn't make any sense. I'm not wired that way. But the thing is, and what our coaches do so well is we, one of our mottos is trust us now, believe us later. And they, women come in, they trust the process. They build that relationship with their coach. They instantly, they gain that, you know, respect and understand that, hey, they're working with a professional. And they start to trust the process. It doesn't happen. Some of the babes, it happens immediately.

11:20Some of them, it takes time. Again, as I was just did that analogy of a relationship, right? It's the same with coaching relationship with building trust. But what we do, like, we slowly increase that food. And guess what? Yeah, the scale is going to go out, but then it levels up. Their scale goes up and then it levels out. Let's just say that backwards. And then over time, like, the body started to change. Externally, you start to see that aesthetic result that you want with your body. You look leaner, you look tighter, you're losing weight, you're more alive. And I've heard babes say, and I know that you guys have listened to it on success stories that we share on these episodes,

11:50on these podcasts, that women go to eating either 700 calories more in a day or 1,000 calories more in a day or 500 more calories in a day. And they're lifting heavier. And their body composition is changing. Muscle definition is showing. Weight is dropping. Fat is dropping. And guess what? With that, we're not cutting calories. And that's what happens when you, like, fully trust the process and commit to a reverse retraining phase. You stop surviving. You start thriving in it. And I know. I get it. Like, I've heard so many women get triggered by that scale.

12:23You know, you spend decades being praised for making that number go down. Like, even in conversations with individuals, like, I want to get to 200 pounds. I'm like, ah. Like, I was actually talking to a male about it. He's like, I want to get to 200 pounds. I'm like, what about if you got to, like, 220 and you have muscle? It doesn't matter. Because, again, muscle weighs more than fat. So you could be changing your body composition but still weigh the same on the scale. I just want to just reiterate that. Like, but that's the thing. Like, you spend decades chasing that smaller number, being praised for the number going down, or emotionally feeling elating when it goes down.

12:55Like, you associate smaller with better. So when you finally start eating more and the scale moves up a few pounds, you're like, this old fear, this old identity, this old narrative, this old story starts to kick in. You think, I'm losing progress. This isn't working. But the truth is, is like, that small jump is the cost of long-term freedom. Like, you can't heal your metabolism while clinging to your diet identity. This isn't another diet. This is a metabolic repair. You can't build strength while you're chasing a smaller number.

13:29Because if you're chasing a smaller number, you're never going to have strength. You're not going to have that muscle if you're chasing a smaller number. As I just alluded to in that example, muscle weighs more than fat. Muscle and fat weigh the same. It's just that muscle is more dense than fat. So you can be smaller and step on the scale, but it not change. But your composition can be changing. So if you want your body to be in that trusting mode of burning fat again, then you need to show that it's safe to let go of conserving and holding on energy and being in,

14:01quote unquote, that survival mode. And that means, like, that you need to stay consistent. You need to stay the course even when those types of emotions come up around the scale and you start to feel uncomfortable. And I'm going to give you guys some, like, you know, ways of which you can go into this reverse dieting tactically. But that means a part of the process that you're measuring isn't just the scale. It's biofeedback. It's energy. It's sleep. It's how you feel. It's mood. It's your digestion.

14:32It's not just being identified by the scale. The scale doesn't tell you the whole story. And when those markers start improving, then your metabolism, that is, like, a clear indicator that your metabolism is repairing. Yeah, you can't put numbers to it or, you know, the data. But it's, like, it's how you feel. And that should be the most important thing. And that's a win. If your metabolism is repairing, that's a win. Okay? So I think in an episode before around this topic, I did, like, red flags and green flags. Just to break it down to in simple terms, similarly around that same concept, is that when you diet for too long, your thyroid hormones, your T3 and T4 drop.

15:08Your stress hormones, your cortisol spikes. Your hunger hormones, ghrelin and leptin, they get dysregulated. Meaning, like, I've heard so many women say, I don't know what it feels like to be hungry. They don't know what a hunger cue feels like. Like, that's, like, a first indicator. That's a red flag that your metabolism needs repair. Your metabolism is now slower because of all those things I just said. Because your body's trying to conserve energy and hold on to it. But when you reverse that, part of the green flags that you can experience is you actually raise your thyroid output.

15:42You reduce your cortisol and inflammation. You restore that leptin sensitivity, which helps your body to regulate hunger naturally. Again, you start to feel what a hunger cue feels like. You start to learn and listen to your body. You start to build lean muscle. Which then, when you have more lean muscle in your body, that naturally raises your metabolic rate for the long term. So, in other words, those green flags are basically, again, like you turning your metabolism back on.

16:13But that takes time. Another, like, analogy that I could use is think about it when you break a bone. If you take the cast off too early because you, quote, unquote, feel fine. And I know there's some of you guys who've been there, done that. What happens? It probably will break again. And that's the same thing here. If you jump back into not eating enough or jump back into a deficit before your metabolism is fully healed and you restart the cycle of burnout again. Same analogy to a broken bone. You don't just heal a broken bone in four weeks, do you?

16:44A broken bone probably heal faster than your metabolism will, but you get the gist, right? One of the biggest mistakes that I see is when women do this reverse dieting is they treat it like it's a temporary pause instead of an actual phase. They'll say, like, I'll do this for a few weeks and then they get their energy back and then they go into a cut again. And I've heard coaches say this too. Coaches are like, I've started with a babe and then I just start here and when are we going to go into a cut? When are we going to go into a cut? When are we going to go into a cut? That's not a reverse. That's like you being in a diet in disguise.

17:16The reverse phase isn't a means to an end. It is like, I want you to think of it as like a season of rebuilding. And it deserves that same focus, that patience, that respect that the cut does. Maybe even more. I think that this is one of the most important phases that somebody could be in. Because the truth is, like, if you're in a cut, your cut will only ever be as successful as your reverse was. Let that just sink in. If you rush the healing process, if you rush the retraining process, reverse process, you'll never have the metabolism to sustain results for the long term.

17:53Literally, like, this is like a game changer for the future of your journey in fat loss. You can't skip steps and expect long term progress, right? You can either spend a few months healing now, or you just keep repeating the same lose, gain, repeat cycle over and over and over and over again. So, some quick tactical takeaways. As I probably mentioned in the episodes before, we just want to remind you of, know your starting point. To start reverse dieting the right way, just know your starting point. Track your intake for a full week before you even make any changes.

18:24And then once you see where you're at, you can gradually start to increase. Add, like, 100 to 150 calories per week. Mostly getting your protein up. And then adding in the carbs and fats. And then using that extra energy to train with purpose. To lift, to build stronger, to push that performance in the gym. Then monitor that biofeedback. Don't just look at the scale. Track how you're sleeping, how your energy, your mood, your digestion. Like, all of those things. That's how you keep your metabolism.

18:55That's how you know your metabolism is healing. And then staying long enough. Broadly speaking, like, if you've been dieting for years, you might need a true 6 to 12 months of repair before you go into another cut or deficit. The last thing that I can say is you need to mentally detach from the outcome. The reverse isn't about fat loss. It's about setting the foundation for every fat loss phase after this. For long-term success. You're building your metabolic engine so that you can finally drive without running out of gas.

19:29Think of it like that. Okay, so know your starting point is 1. 2. Increase gradually. 3. Train with purpose. 4. Monitor your biofeedback. 5. Stay in it long enough. And 6. Mentally detach from the outcome. So if you are new to understanding this or you've been in one before and you're getting impatient, just let me remind you of something. If you do implement this, you're not going backwards. You are rebuilding forward. Literally. Every single bite of food that you are intaking, you are fueling your body with what it needs right now to restore trust with your metabolism.

20:04The women who get the best results long-term aren't the ones who diet the hardest. They're the ones that implement this. They're the ones that have patience. And they built their foundation with implementing this very important step. Okay? So don't rush it. Don't fear the number on the scale and think that it's going to undo all of your progress because once your metabolism is repaired, once your hormones are balanced, once your energy and your strength is back, then you can start to cut and decrease and go back into a deficit.

20:35But you're doing it the right way at that point. And at that point, it's actually going to work. Trust me now. Believe me later. Okay? So if this episode helped you guys, I hope it did. Screenshot it. Put it on Instagram story. Tag me. Let me know what stood out the most. I would love to chat with you guys in DMs. Help you guys on your journey in any way possible that I can. But I hope you guys enjoyed it. And I will see you guys in the next episode. Peace out. Hey, really quick. Before you go, I have one small favor to ask.

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