A reverse diet, which involves slowly reintroducing calories post-diet, can feel like a diet because it lacks immediate visual feedback and requires weeks to show meaningful increases in calorie intake.

“so if you can slowly reintroduce your calories post diet um and unfortunately that means that that whole process still feels like the diet and I can say like as somebody that has you know just a few weeks ago finished my competition I didn't get as lean so the hunger response was not as severe as it's been in the past but it's still there it is really hard to continue to regulate when the goal is now out of sight or at least the the goal that you were getting close to is leaving because doing a reverse diet they you're not getting that positive visual response this is intrinsic and you can't see your metabolism improving the only data or evidence that you have when you're reversing is seeing the small little increases in calories like oh cool I get to eat 100 more calories this week you know so it takes a good number of weeks to be able to get your calories back up to a point where it's like oh it's mean it's made a meaningful difference to my life you know I can have you know a couple of glasses of wine now with you know my friends and I've been able to incorporate my dessert again so it's a really difficult um process”