Dave Asprey, Matt, and Wade explain how periodic diet breaks and reverse dieting (adding 50-100 calories weekly) help the body accept weight loss without metabolic damage. They discuss realistic body-fat percentages for competitors and why dropping below single digits triggers hunger and low energy. For muscle gain, they recommend a modest 300-calorie surplus with adequate protein.
Yeah. So one of the things we talk about is you need to make your body feel safe as you're losing weight.
Thank you for that.
And one of the strategies to do that is you can do refeeds, whether it's once a week or you can do diet breaks. Now, a diet break doesn't mean you're eating whatever you want or however much you want. You tend to go at maintenance. So calorie cycling, again, there's a lot of different ways. We have a whole chapter dedicated to that is one of the best strategies. Because when you go back to maintenance, your body's like, okay, I'm safe, I'm safe. And then once you're psychologically ready, you can go back into another dieting phase. And then once you reach your ideal weight, there's another diet you need to do, which is the reverse diet. So let's talk about homeostasis and breaking homeostasis. This is really important. So again, homeostasis means your body wants to be in balance. Your body, our bodies don't want to change.
Okay.
Change is a threat. If you gain too much weight, whether it's muscle mass or body fat, obviously it's more likely that animals are going to eat you.
Right.
Too much weight, again with the starvation, survival mechanisms kick in and fight back. So your body's always striving for homeostasis. With reverse dieting, we're taking advantage of that. And let's say you're down to 1200 calories, which for you would be obviously an extremely low calorie intake.
I might as well just fast.
Exactly.
Well, and again, when people bodybuild, they'll, they'll get down to really extremely low levels because, you know, that's what it takes sometimes to get to that incredible conditioning. The strategy is to add 50 to 100 calories a week until you go back to maintenance. Now, I know that sounds extreme, but, you know, one of my coaches, she would reverse diet as for the same amount of time that she took to get into shape.
That's, that's a bodybuilder, that's a fitness competitor shape, like a, you know, national level competitive.
And what's the body fat percentage for women as fitness competitors?
Usually if you can get down to 10% and then you get into single digits and that's where a lot of women. And it's going to vary. There's also set point data. So in other words, some people are just not predisposed to get to that, you know, single body fat percentages like.
Boob size Has a lot to do with that. Right. There's a substantial amount of fat. If you have large breasts then you're never going to get as low for total body. But everywhere, everywhere that's not a breast can do that.
And most and most fitness competitors are using breast augmentation strategy to, you know, create the feminine characteristics. And I would say suboptimal for health body fat levels for women. For a typical male competitor, you'll be in single digits in a natural competition, maybe between 8 and 10 if you get into, if you get into the professional level of, you know, the no restrictions on drug usage. So that's a natural competitor at 8% then you can get into that 5%, 4%, 3% range. I'm ratio seven really bad is really bad for your health.
I, I have, I'm doing strategies right now to increase my body fat because for longevity I think about nine is better. But with all the metabolic hacks I effortlessly am maintaining this. So I actually pay attention for longevity because too low is not good.
Well, I think everybody's got a sweet spot. And again one of the things to pay attention to back to biofeedback is how much is your body fighting back? Is hunger out of control? Do you feel good? Is your energy low? Is your energy high?
I feel great and I'm never hungry. Like I have to make myself eat.
I'll give you a great example for myself. So I don't have awesome genetics for bodybuilding. In fact, I have very poor genetics by the sport. And getting into an 8% body fat level for me is difficult. My body would regularly feel the best at around 12%. And recently when I did the, I decided to make a comeback and did the Olympia at 50 and afterwards I wanted to see how, how much weight would I gain post contest before I would start adding lean body mass. And that was, I was like what's really, what's my safe zone? And here's a shocking fact. I went from 8% body fat to 15 before I gained a single gram of lean body mass tissue on a DEXA scan.
I hate to. There's one word that comes to mind, vegetarian.
I think it's most mostly understanding your set point. Now I have friends who stay in single body fat percentages but have a very difficult time gaining weight. So they're on the inverse of that equation. So it really comes down to for me that 10 to 12 range is, is optimal. I feel really good at that range. My brain operates, I think at its optimal level at that range. And when I start getting into those single digits, my body starts creating these fighting mechanisms. And that's a something to become aware of in your own dietary journey.
Okay, and let's talk about the other side of breaking homeostasis. So the one strategy with reverse dieting is we want to maintain it. And as, again, as you're increasing calories, you're kind of fooling your body. Your body's not noticing, and people tend to not gain any body fat or very little. So you can kind of rebuild your metabolism. So for anybody who's got a destroyed or damaged metabolism, again, reverse dieting is amazing. But on the flip side, let's say you want to lose body fat or gain muscle mass, then you need to break homeostasis. So bodybuilders, you know, of course there's the stimuli, which comes from resistance training, but you also need a calorie surplus. And we Recommend Typically about 300 calories a day of surplus because your body needs that extra energy to synthesize the lean muscle mass. Of course, you need enough amino acids in your body, and you need MTOR activation. So typically, four meals a day is a good sweet spot. I mean, some bodybuilders back in the day used to do six meals. Your lifestyle gets so compromised.
You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
