by Chris Shugart
Stop the Regain After Dieting
Here's the real reason you regain body fat after a diet, plus three ways to fix the problem.
You've seen it. You've probably experienced it. It's called fat overshooting.
That's the sciency way of saying that after a fat-loss diet, most people gain all the fat back, plus a little bonus fluff. This is typically caused by hyperphagia, defined by Bill Campbell, PhD, as the obsessive and uncontrolled desire to eat. It seems to happen even more often when normal-weight people try to get ripped.
The question is, why does that happen? Well, according to Dr. Campbell, there are two theories:
- Through various mechanisms that kick in after a strict diet, including increased hunger, your body tries to regain the fat you worked so hard to lose. The over-the-top hunger remains until the body is back to "normal" – your pre-diet weight.
- This is the newer theory, promoted mainly by researcher Abdul Dulloo. It's not that your body is just trying to gain the fat back; it's trying to regain lost muscle mass. "Fat overshooting is a prerequisite to allow complete recovery of fat-free mass," he notes.
The gist: The hyperphagia effect doesn't wane after the lost fat is regained, but only after the lost muscle is regained. If the muscle isn't regained, as is the case with untrained individuals doing stupid crash diets, one could theorize that the overzealous hunger mechanisms stick around and lead to obesity. Even with weight-trained individuals like you, it's still easy to get lean, then get a little too chubby post-diet, diet again, and repeat the whole process until you hate yourself.
It's something to think about. And, if you think about it for more than a few seconds, your next question should be, "How do I prevent or minimize muscle loss when dieting?"
Three Ways to Stop the Muscle Loss
1. Eat More Protein
Low-protein diets are the single biggest reason that average people are overweight. Eat more protein and the rest of your diet autoregulates: you're not as hungry, you replace a lot of excess carbs and calorie-dense fats, and you're far less likely to lose muscle. For experienced lifters, the golden rule is a good baseline: eat about a gram of protein per pound of body weight, maybe a bit more if your fat-loss diet is strict.
Along with high-protein foods, consume micellar casein, which is both thermogenic (fat-burning), anti-catabolic (it prevents muscle loss), and satiating. MD Protein (Buy at Amazon) contains large amounts of micellar casein.
If you prefer a regimented approach to dieting, try the 5/2 Protein Diet. And if you just plan to increase your protein intake, try to have a micellar-containing shake after lifting and before bed.
2. Keep Lifting Weights
That's easy enough. But some people opt for higher rep lifting protocols during diets, often with the idea of burning more calories. Instead, you might opt for more heavy sets with fewer reps. No, you won't build tons of strength as an experienced lifter during a diet, but that's not the idea. Instead, the goal is to "encourage" your body to hang on to muscle by signaling that you need it.
3. Don't Crash Diet
All things being equal, a slower diet helps you retain more muscle. Instead of dropping 1200 calories below maintenance, subtract 300 to 500 calories and have some patience. (Try the 300-Calorie Fix strategy.) Want to display some abs in the summer? Don't start your diet in June.
