Reverse Dieting After a Cut – Worth It or Just a Slow Bulk Transition?

[AlexDavis43]

me when I have to stay on diet AND only have 1 sexual partner in any given period of my life.

Adult ADHD is real

 

[AlexDavis43]

Agree, clean foods is never an issue for me. I always eat clean. I don’t get full neither on a bulk or cut, so I result to high volume clean foods 24/7.

Just started making these humongous low calorie soups. Great volume and also easiest way to add some clean carbs without any fats.

^This is the way

Also, I'm running GH, and carb & salt-rich meals cause water retention for me, so not eating clean is out of the question

 

[Slowww]

Adult ADHD is real

It’s hard having Adult ADHD because then I get distracted when there is a woman who sells socks in the DMs. I wish I didn’t have the adult version and just the regular all ages ADHD where I got distracted by squirrels or whatever and I could pay better attention to their toes instead of my nagging wife

 

[Slowww]

@Slowww has a great insight for you, keeping it clean would also be in your favor. Unless you’re going for athletic performance this is a good approach.

Yeah definitely agree. Unprocessed or minimally processed also helps keep you feel fuller on the reverse. Especially if you incorporate berries, yogurt and potatoes. Can definitely help stick to macros and not feel like you’re starving

 

[ve79]

me when I have to stay on diet AND only have 1 sexual partner in any given period of my life.

Gotta cheat to be happy

 

[Nunya]

6-8 week reverse. Add 20-40g carbs to start. Let weight go up and water stabilize over a week. Gym performance should increase. Once your weight plateaus or performance does, add another 50g-75g carbs. After 4 weeks you can add 50-125g depending on your hunger, and metabolism, then you will likely have to stay at this diet for several weeks while your body is able to go up more, in terms of performance and scale weight.
Slow reverse offers verh good improvement in training quality. By week 6 like this I am already hitting PRs, on minimal gear. Personally I do it this way every time. I am doing it now. I ended my cut very weak, doing 180kg on hack squat, and today I already got back to 300kg after 6/7 weeks.

The carbs do a lot of work, and refilling glycogen from a depleted state will make a lot of progress. I recommend also going down to trt or cruise. Out of the starving state the body will really effectively use the food as you fill out.
You just can’t get greedy about food or gear and have to stay hungry as you add food back in, and slowly move the dial into the off season.
If you can avoid adding cheat meals, you should also do this since your body is going to try to absorb everything and hold on to it. You just want to give it enough to grow muscle and spill over minimally. Week 6-8 maybe better to do cheats if you are a big cheater. If you do moderate stuff, like a bit of sushi or a steak and baked potato ok whatever. If you binge, better not.

You don’t really need to calculate shit, just have to slowly add food and you will get into the surplus that your body can actually use without wasting it, and storing it as fat.

So for a female or smaller frame you might stick to the lower end of these ranges and play it by ear from there? Getting ready to start a reverse pretty soon and I want to be smart about it. But also I want to get in on some Fall carb action

 

[Slowww]

So for a female or smaller frame you might stick to the lower end of these ranges and play it by ear from there? Getting ready to start a reverse pretty soon and I want to be smart about it. But also I want to get in on some Fall carb action

Definitely, for a female I would also reintroduce more fats as well to start to rebalance hormones. I don’t think this is as big of a deal with makes, so I skewed the carbs up harder. Idk your weight but i would probably say ~20g (again this really depends and could be more if you’re more muscular, i dont have a frame of reference) carbs and 5g fat as the lowest interval to see how the scale moves and then adjust, so might still be a tough first week

 

[malfeasance]

I’ve been trying to reverse diet for the last week. I ended my cut eating 1400-1500 calories (5’7, 27 years old, 165lb, prob 15-16% BF? Hard to tell) and I tried to start the reverse diet at 1800 calories and yesterday I even ate 2500 calories because I was at an event and I woke up 163lb this morning. I might have a hard time putting some weight back on. Lowered my reta dose to 4mg

Gonna need to figure this shit out lol

You do not need to "figure it out." Just respond to what you see on the scale.

But not day to day.

You made a wild swing with 700 extra calories in one day and saw a decrease on the scale one time.

Look for one to two week trends.

Add calories for your reverse out of the cut based on those one to two week trends on the scale, not based on one day's cutting loose on the diet and one single scale weight.

Day to day fluctuations could be water or extra poop in your intestines and are not really body fat changes. Little fluctuations like that do not matter to the long term trend.

Be consistent.

 

[Nunya]

Definitely, for a female I would also reintroduce more fats as well to start to rebalance hormones. I don’t think this is as big of a deal with makes, so I skewed the carbs up harder. Idk your weight but i would probably say ~20g (again this really depends and could be more if you’re more muscular, i dont have a frame of reference) carbs and 5g fat as the lowest interval to see how the scale moves and then adjust, so might still be a tough first week

Appreciate it, gives me something to think about.

 

[Turkeybuilder]

You do not need to "figure it out." Just respond to what you see on the scale.

But not day to day.

You made a wild swing with 700 extra calories in one day and saw a decrease on the scale one time.

Look for one to two week trends.

Add calories for your reverse out of the cut based on those one to two week trends on the scale, not based on one day's cutting loose on the diet and one single scale weight.

Day to day fluctuations could be water or extra poop in your intestines and are not really body fat changes. Little fluctuations like that do not matter to the long term trend.

Be consistent.

Thanks for the solid advice brother. During my cut I went by weekly averages so i’ll be doing the same during this “maintenance” phase and try to see what number calories I need to hit to gain back my water weight and start moving the scale up.

I’ve never in my life attempted to intentionally gain weight, so this will be a much more foreign concept to me than losing it. I don’t even know if I should be expecting a quick few lbs on the scale post cut and a bit indifferent on how to go about coming out of this cut and transitioning into my bulk. I could eat 2000 cals daily for a few weeks and then increase, which is 500 more than my cutting cals but even at 2000 i’m losing scale weight on a week to week average so that seems counter productive for trying to come out of a cut.

Foreign ground for me but i’ll have to figure it out. end goal is to start a lean bulk on 500mg test

 

[Slowww]

You do not need to "figure it out." Just respond to what you see on the scale.

But not day to day.

You made a wild swing with 700 extra calories in one day and saw a decrease on the scale one time.

Look for one to two week trends.

Add calories for your reverse out of the cut based on those one to two week trends on the scale, not based on one day's cutting loose on the diet and one single scale weight.

Day to day fluctuations could be water or extra poop in your intestines and are not really body fat changes. Little fluctuations like that do not matter to the long term trend.

Be consistent.

Yes this 100%. & You can weigh yourself daily but you need to see averages and your diet needs to cause a predictable pattern as it relates to your week or training microcycles. Then after you notice a trend you have the info you need to adjust, or you know if you have enough calories to sustain growth for several weeks.

 

[ThunderBear989]

Yes this 100%. & You can weigh yourself daily but you need to see averages and your diet needs to cause a predictable pattern as it relates to your week or training microcycles. Then after you notice a trend you have the info you need to adjust, or you know if you have enough calories to sustain growth for several weeks.

Absolutely to both of these. I’ve been using Cronometer since they came out and one feature I started to pay attention to was the avg’s over longer periods of time. Now I have years to see how my ups and down have lead to specific results or possibly trends that are specific to my body.

 

[Turkeybuilder]

Is there an appropriate length of time needed to re-acclimate before transitioning from a cut to a bulk?

Lets say hunger is a nonfactor and you know for certain you can hit your macros. Is the transition between the two simply a matter of finding your new maintenance calories and then you’re good to go?

 

[Wildcard781]

me when I have to stay on diet AND only have 1 sexual partner in any given period of my life.

 

[Slowww]

Absolutely to both of these. I’ve been using Cronometer since they came out and one feature I started to pay attention to was the avg’s over longer periods of time. Now I have years to see how my ups and down have lead to specific results or possibly trends that are specific to my body.

Yeah that is a great app for it, even just the health app every day is so good too, i can see from 2024 until now my yearly patterns and it’s nice to see how it changes. Pretty useful just to see what rate of gain i can shoot for or how much is too much

 

[Slowww]

Is there an appropriate length of time needed to re-acclimate before transitioning from a cut to a bulk?

Lets say hunger is a nonfactor and you know for certain you can hit your macros. Is the transition between the two simply a matter of finding your new maintenance calories and then you’re good to go?

I’d say 6-8 weeks to go into a full bulk where you can adjust calories maybe one time every few weeks or month+. But reqlly it is ad hoc. Your REAL maintenance is whatever it takes to stop losing weight so you should get to it very quickly. Then you just add slowly so you grow but don’t get fat. The macros yoi need to add to grow and fill up glycogen but avoid fat gains different for everyone

 

[Turkeybuilder]

I’d say 6-8 weeks to go into a full bulk where you can adjust calories maybe one time every few weeks or month+. But reqlly it is ad hoc. Your REAL maintenance is whatever it takes to stop losing weight so you should get to it very quickly. Then you just add slowly so you grow but don’t get fat. The macros yoi need to add to grow and fill up glycogen but avoid fat gains different for everyone

Im 8 days into ending my cut and trying to find my maintenance. Ended my cut at 164.4lb with that weekly avg being 165.2. I ate 1700 cals > 1800 cals > 2300 cals > yesterday i ate 2500 cals and this morning I woke up at 164.6 lol so im thinking i’m gonna try 2500 cals a day and get a weekly avg for a couple weeks and see what happens.

 

[BigDadd7]

Im 8 days into ending my cut and trying to find my maintenance. Ended my cut at 164.4lb with that weekly avg being 165.2. I ate 1700 cals > 1800 cals > 2300 cals > yesterday i ate 2500 cals and this morning I woke up at 164.6 lol so im thinking i’m gonna try 2500 cals a day and get a weekly avg for a couple weeks and see what happens.

8 days isnt a lot of time for all the up and down calories you're doing.

 

[Turkeybuilder]

8 days isnt a lot of time for all the up and down calories you're doing.

I know. This is seriously foreign ground for me. The thought process behind what I did is because I was losing 2 pounds a week during my cut so that means I was at a 1000 cal deficit at minimum so when I finished my cut and added 500 cal I was still losing weight which is the opposite of what i’m trying to do, so now I’m going to attempt to add another 500 (2500 cals a day) and maintain that for a couple weeks and see what my weight does

 

[Deadpool99]

Im 8 days into ending my cut and trying to find my maintenance. Ended my cut at 164.4lb with that weekly avg being 165.2. I ate 1700 cals > 1800 cals > 2300 cals > yesterday i ate 2500 cals and this morning I woke up at 164.6 lol so im thinking i’m gonna try 2500 cals a day and get a weekly avg for a couple weeks and see what happens.

I’m personally adding around 100 calories every 2 days.

I know. This is seriously foreign ground for me. The thought process behind what I did is because I was losing 2 pounds a week during my cut so that means I was at a 1000 cal deficit at minimum so when I finished my cut and added 500 cal I was still losing weight which is the opposite of what i’m trying to do, so now I’m going to attempt to add another 500 (2500 cals a day) and maintain that for a couple weeks and see what my weight does

theoretically yes you’ll still keep losing weight until you don’t. I’m halfway through my reverse and gaining weight even in a “deficit”. Just from the added glycogen stores/water weight.