How to not gain weight back after losing it I How to increase calories without getting fat
In this educational video, Eric Roberts addresses the common fear of regaining weight after a successful weight‑loss journey and explains how to safely increase caloric intake without adding body fat. He begins by debunking the myth that daily weight must stay constant, illustrating with a live demonstration that a pound of water instantly raises scale weight without any fat gain. Roberts clarifies that scale fluctuations, water retention from extra carbohydrates, and the presence of food in the stomach can cause short‑term weight changes that are not fat. He emphasizes the psychological shift required after sustainable weight loss: viewers are now a different person with new habits, knowledge, and mindset, so they will not revert to old behaviors. The core practical content covers reverse dieting—gradually raising calories back to maintenance—presented as two strategies: the “turtle” (slow weekly increments) and the “rocket” (jump straight to maintenance). He explains how to calculate maintenance calories, how to monitor progress through weight trends, body measurements, and biofeedback, and when to choose a slow versus fast approach (e.g., poor biofeedback, hormonal issues, or extreme leanness). Throughout, Roberts stresses that eating at maintenance will not cause fat gain, that a modest weight fluctuation of 2‑5 lb is normal, and that consistent tracking over 4‑8 weeks is essential to confirm true maintenance. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to comment, like, and subscribe.
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YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the video. No, welcome back to the channel. Damn it. Welcome to the video. Hope you're doing super well. In this video today, we're going to be talking about how to increase your calories after you have reached roughly about where you want to be with your weight loss. And listen, even if you're somebody who is not at your goal body weight yet, or you're not, you know, you haven't lost the fat you wanted to lose yet, Still watch the video because you're going to get there, right? And this is something that a lot of people struggle with. And actually, the only reason I'm doing this video is shout out Mrs. G. So if you if you watched my last video, you probably heard me say I was running out of ideas. I didn't know what what to make for a YouTube video, right? So I asked people in the comment section, hey, drop a comment for what you might want to see a video made up of. And Mrs. G dropped her comment below, and there was a lot of. Thumbs up. So obviously, I guess in today's social media world, if you like something, that must mean it was really good. So a lot of people gave it a thumbs up, which I guess meant people wanted to see a video done on that. And so shout out Mrs. G, thank you for leaving your comment below, and this is why we're having this video today. And I'll say to that as well, if you want me to cover a topic on the channel, if you want me to make an in-depth video like I do— if you, if you watch me and my channel, you know I pretty much just do straight-up educational informational content. As of right now, that's really what I do. Who knows, might do other stuff in the future, but for right now, the reason I do this is not for me, it's for you. I want to make these videos to help you as much as I humanly possibly can. I don't— there's no other reason I spend my time doing this and editing the videos and doing whatever. I do this because I want to help you. So if you like, if you have any questions or if you have any ideas on a video, drop it below. As you can just see, I'm going to do a whole video just because Mrs. G Dropped her comment below. So please feel free to drop your comment below. I would. I'm gonna read over them. I always see them, and I'm gonna make a video. And who knows? I might just make a video on your question. So feel free to drop below. Now diving into today's video, we're gonna talk about a few things here, and not only from like the like I'm gonna give you practically. Hey, here's how to increase your calories without gaining body fat. Here's how to go from losing body fat to back increasing calories. While talking about the mental side of things as well. Because let's face it, if you're somebody who has lost a significant amount of weight— and this could be significant for you, could be anything, could be 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds— just from coaching literally thousands of people, the number one thing I know you might be struggling with is, how do I increase my calories but I'm afraid to because I think I'm going to gain all of my weight back? Like The fear of you gaining all of your weight back is a real fear. You've just spent all this time trying to lose the weight. You just spent all this hard work losing the weight. You're finally down to where you want to be. How do you even comprehend eating more food? Because you associate eating more food with then you're going to go back to what you were. I totally get it. And we're going to talk about a few things here in this video today. So number one, I just want to make this very, very, very clear because I literally just had a conversation, I believe 2 days ago, with one of my Clubhouse members, Clubhouse member Lisa. Shout out Lisa. She would have to go to— I forget what exact thing it was. It was either Weight Watchers or it was like Bright Line Eating or something, something she went to where the people told her, hey, you have to weigh the same weight every, every day for 3 weeks in order for you to be in maintenance and for, in order to be able to, you know, successfully say you've lost this weight and now you're maintaining. And for lack of better terms, that's just quite frankly bullshit. And the reason I say this is because remember, maintenance is a range. You will never stay the same exact body weight for the rest of your life. It'll never happen. You will never stay the same exact body weight for the rest of your life. You're going to fluctuate up and down between anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds. Personally speaking, I can fluctuate anywhere from 10 pounds either way. I'm a bigger guy. I'm 6'4. Like right now I'm 240. So if I'm in— I'm sorry, I'm 250. So if I'm in like the, you know, 240 to 260-ish range, like that's kind of my maintenance range. And also I'm okay with not being like such a low body fat percentage. So my range might be a bit higher, but let's just say at the very least you have a range of 5 pounds either way. So if you're 150 right now, going up to 155 doesn't mean you've gained fat or doesn't mean you're a failure or doesn't mean you're gaining all your weight back. Or listen, you can have a weekend where, you know, you go to a wedding on Saturday, you have the party Saturday night, you enjoy the time with your friends on Sunday, you get back on Monday, you could easily be up 6 pounds on the scale. Who are we kidding?
Right?
Like that's easily going to happen because The scale fluctuates and you're never going to weigh just one number. And so for you to be able to understand first and foremost, when you increase calories, which again, we're going to talk about exactly how to do that later in the video. When you increase calories, just know that the scale, it might go up, but that does not mean you are gaining body fat. And I really need you to understand this. And the way I'm going to show you this is I'm gonna show you how I gained a pound on the scale right now.
All right, you are about to watch me step on the scale. You're gonna see how much I weigh. I am going to then drink 1 pound worth of water, and 1 pound worth is roughly 455 milliliters. As you can see right here, I have 1 pound of water. I'm gonna go ahead and swig this puppy down real quick. Chug, chug, chug. I added some ice cubes, but whatever. Now I'm gonna step right back on the scale. Remember, I weighed 249.6. Drum roll, please. 250.6. Legit exactly 1 pound more.
So as you can see, I drank a pound of water. I think it was 455 milliliters or however much it was. That equals 1 pound of water. You literally saw I stepped on the scale and weighed 249, drank the water, stepped on the scale again and weighed 250.6. Why? Why did that happen? I literally just had an extra pound of substance inside of my body. I didn't gain a pound of fat in 18 seconds when I drank that water. And I'm actually really— I'm glad. I'm not surprised because it's just basic math, but I'm glad you literally saw it was up an exact pound. It went from 249.6 to 250.6, an exact pound, because I drank An exact pound of water. I didn't gain any fat. I didn't. Just because your scale went up 2 or 3 pounds, you don't gain fat. There's a difference between gaining scale weight and gaining body fat. So just realize if you increase your calories, there's a difference between weight gain and fat gain. You might gain some weight on the scale. That might happen. It might, it might not, but it might happen. And if it does happen, just know It's number one because there's literally just more food inside of your stomach. Think about it. Think about if you ended your calorie deficit at 1,500 calories and you bump up your calories to 2,000. That's 500 extra calories that are now inside of your body that weren't there before. So quite literally, you just have more food inside of your stomach, so of course The scale might weigh a bit more. Of course it would. You have more food in your stomach, man, just like I showed you. So that's the first reason. And the second reason is when you do this, you're probably going to increase your carbohydrates. For every 1 gram of carb that you eat, you're going to store 3 to 4 grams of water weight, which again, number one, not a bad thing. It's actually a good thing because the water weight gets stored inside of your muscles, which then makes you, you know, be able to go have better workouts. You can lift more weight, do more reps, have more energy. All things of that nature. But again, you might store some extra water weight, and this is why, again, let's just say you ended your, you know, you ended your weight loss journey, whatever the case may be, at 150. If you go back up to 153, you're doing nothing wrong, and that's literally just a maintenance range. And again, we'll talk about more so on a maintenance range here in a second when we talk about how to increase calories and what to look for and things of that nature. But keep that in mind, you're not gaining fat if you're You— it is impossible to gain fat if you're eating maintenance calories. It's impossible. You cannot gain fat if you're eating maintenance calories. In the same way you can't lose fat unless you're in a calorie deficit, you can't gain fat unless you're in a calorie surplus for an extended period of time. Please keep that in mind. Last but not least, I want to touch on this really, really quickly because I've done this so many times with my clients. Remember, you're, you're having this like anxiety about gaining all of your weight back. You're having this anxiety about, oh my God, I'm gonna go back to, you know, what I used to be and all this kind of stuff. Remember, let's— and this is, this is why, this is why I am so big on sustainable weight loss, healthy weight loss, doing it the right way, not just fucking cutting out all of your goddamn carbohydrates And losing 30 pounds in a month. That's fucking stupid. This is why I'm such an advocate for doing things the right way. Because let's take this for a second here, just logically speaking. Let's say you've spent the last 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 18, however many months you've spent on this journey. You've been tracking your calories, you've been watching your portion intake, you've been eating way more protein, you know, you've learned how to go out to eat and moderate your portion sizes. You've learned how to meal prep. You've gotten in a good routine of finding high-protein snacks and low-calorie snacks that you like to enjoy. You know, you've pretty much got the same breakfast down. You've pretty much got your lunch routine down. Your dinners can vary, but you know you're gonna have a protein, a carb, and a veg. Like, you have habits. You're not the same person you were 12 months ago when you were 40 pounds overweight. You're a different person. You've taken this entire time to change your habits. Again, you've learned about calories, you've learned about protein, you've learned about portion control, you've learned what foods make you feel really good versus what foods you might not have a lot of control over. And by the way, this is why I'm such an advocate for counting your calories and taking a sustainable approach, because you learn so much that actually allows you to see fucking sustainable progress as opposed to just doing this yo-yo bullshit all the time. That's why I'm such an advocate for this. And so if you've done it the right way, you're a new person. You're not the same person you were 12 months ago. You're never gonna go back to that. Never. Because you're a new person and you have different— you have a different mindset, you have different habits, your lifestyle is different. You're completely different. The what you were doing before got you to where you were, but what you— who you were before is not who you are right now. You're not going to go back to it because you're a completely different human being. Again, you have entirely different knowledge around food. You didn't know what 100 grams of chicken breast protein looks like. You didn't know that Greek yogurt was super high in protein. You didn't know how to, you know, control your stress eating or moderate portion intake or any of that stuff. If you've done it the right way, you know that now. And if you know that now, that's why your results are gonna be everlasting.
So—
That's something I really want you to understand. You're not the same person you were. You're not gonna go back to doing the same things you were if you've done this the right way. And if you're somebody who's watching this who hasn't yet gotten to their weight loss goal, this is why you gotta do shit the right way, because the same way you lose the weight is the same way you're gonna keep the weight off. So please keep that in mind. Now we've covered most of the mindset, and also now I hope you realize again, let's just say you got down to 150. You could very well fluctuate back up to 155 and that would be a maintenance range. You're never gonna weigh the same weight. Just because you do gain weight doesn't mean you gain fat and you're not the same person you were 6 months ago, 12 months ago, 24 months ago. So please keep that in mind. Now, going into how to practically actually apply this information and how to actually increase your calories and things of that nature, there is something called reverse dieting that you could potentially do here. And essentially what reverse dieting is, I've written an entire article on reverse dieting. I'll link it here below in the description of this show, or the description of this video, so feel free to check it out below. But dieting is you're taking your calories down, right? Like dieting, that's what dieting is. Reverse dieting is just bringing your calories back up. So you bring your calories back up slowly to your maintenance calories and that's what you can do. There's 2 ways you can go about doing this. I put turtle and a rocket. It's just first things that came to mind for me. Turtle is just like the slower approach, right? So essentially, again, let's just say for example, You are somebody who was eating 1,500 calories in order to lose body fat, right? And you've gotten to your goal body weight. Let's just say your maintenance calories are 2,000 calories, and we'll talk about how to find your maintenance calories and what your maintenance calories are and all that kind of stuff in a second, so bear with me. Um, let's say your maintenance calories are 2,000. Let's say week 1 you eat 1,500 calories, week 2 you eat 1,550 calories, week 3 you eat 1,600 calories. Week 4, you eat 1,700 calories. Week 5, you eat 1,800 calories. Week 6, 1,900. Week 7, 2,000. You've now taken 7 weeks to slowly add back in calories to work back up to your calorie maintenance. This is an option. You can do this if you would like to. I'm not going to say it's necessary. If you're somebody who's like, Freaked out about putting on body fat, you could take that approach. Um, I don't— I think people overhype that sometimes though, because remember, if you're going from 1,500 calories to 2,000 calories, those 7 weeks you're still in a calorie deficit. So just keep that in mind. You're still in a calorie deficit because you're not at your calorie maintenance yet. The calorie deficit is getting smaller, but you're still in a calorie deficit, which is Brings me to my next point. I would encourage, I would tell people, if you want to do that right there, slowly work your calories back up, you can. I would not do this if you are somebody who either you've gotten very lean or you've been in deficit for like 18 months. Like I can think of people right now in my head who I've worked with who they've, they've had significant weight to lose and I'm talking like 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 pounds and they've been able to be in a deficit for a while because they've had a lot of body fat to lose.
Right.
Which, by the way, I've done a video on that as well, on how long should you stay in a calorie deficit. So you can feel free to check that out if you want to. But, you know, if you've been in a deficit for 12 months or 18 months and you've actually lost a significant amount of body fat, or if you're somebody who's gotten very, very, very lean and like your energy sucks, your sleep sucks, your workouts suck, all your biofeedback, like what your body actually is feeling like, all that sucks, I would not slow Slowly work your way back up because your biofeedback is shit. Your body's telling you, "Hey, we need to make sure we eat more calories to get to a healthier place." And so, if you're one of those two scenarios where whether you've lost a significant amount of weight and you just feel like shit now, or if you're somebody who's gotten very lean and you feel like shit now, I would take the second approach, which is just going to be just go right up to your maintenance calories. And sometimes this scares people. And and here's what I'll say as well. And I apologize for kind of going all over the place with the video, but I hopefully you can kind of stay. Stick with me here. Let's just say, for example, you weigh 150, right, on week 1. And let's say throughout the course of 7 weeks when you slowly increased your calories, let's say from week 1 you went to 150 and then week 2, you know, you were 150, week 3 was 150.5, and like your average was kind of trending up, right? So over the course of 7 weeks, let's just say you ended at 154, right? Sometimes people, like, they'll be okay with that because it wasn't all at once. But let's just say for example, you do the fast approach where you just go right to your maintenance calories. Let's say week 1 you were 150 and then week 2 you're 154. Sometimes that can freak the fuck out of people because like seeing a 4-pound jump, especially when again, if you're afraid to, uh, go back to the way you were or gain body fat or things of that nature, it can be really scary. But remember whether you do it over 7 weeks or whether you do it over 1 week and it just kind of stabilizes. Because again, what can happen is if you just jump straight to your maintenance calories, the scale might tick up a bit more in the short term, but it would level out. So again, over the course of a 7-week span, you'd be the same either way. It's just you would increase your calories quicker that way to again just be able to eat more food, promote better biofeedback, have better energy, have better workouts, have better sleep, all that kind of stuff. So There's no right or wrong way to do it. Again, if you're somebody who has very poor biofeedback or like you've lost your period, for example, if you're a girl, I would not slowly increase your calories. I would go right to your maintenance calories. If you're somebody who like, listen, you're pretty healthy, you feel pretty good, like you want to make sure you don't put on any extra body fat and you're very, you know, you're, you're very conscientious of kind of like the scale and things of that nature and it's almost kind of scary. You can slowly increase your calories, but just remember, like whether you do it in 7 weeks or whether you do it in 1 week, either way you're going to get to the same place. So just kind of have the knowledge of that, so to speak, if that makes sense. Now, how do you find out what your maintenance calories are and how do you know if you're eating your maintenance calories? There's a few things that you look at. Um, number 1 is going to be your body weight and you look at this over a trend. So again, like I said earlier, if you increase, if and when you increase calories, The scale might tick up a bit. It's not abnormal to tick up anywhere from, you know, call it 2 to 5 pounds. That is not abnormal at all whatsoever. So just kind of keep that in mind. Number one, after the first initial, you know, tick up, right after you, you know, if let's just say you add in more food, add in more carbs, things of that nature, and you gain 4 pounds or whatever it is after that 4-pound gain, if you're in a maintenance calorie range, you should just be fluctuating. So again, let's just use the 150 example. Let's say you increase your— let's say you hit 150 and you're like, all right, sweet, all good, da da da, and then like, I don't know, you increase your calories and now you're fluctuating between, I don't know, call it 150 to 157, like 150 to 156, like anywhere in between 2 to 3 pounds either way, right? 2 to 3 pounds either way. So let's say you went from 150 to 153. If you go from 158 to 148, or 148, like anywhere in between there, If you do that, like you're in a maintenance range. If your weight's fluctuating around the same couple of pounds, you're at your maintenance calories. And so again, remember not looking at the first initial uptake. So once you hit like where you think your maintenance calories are, if you're roughly maintaining your weight, you're at maintenance calories. If you find that you're still losing weight, you're probably still in it. You're not probably, you are still in a calorie deficit. So you'll probably have to go up a little bit higher. If you find that over the course of, call it 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 weeks, if after like 8 weeks, like let's say the first 2 weeks your weight kind of jumped up a little bit and then like it went up again a pound and then up again a pound and up again a pound and up again a pound. It's like if you consistently gain a pound a week, like, all right, you probably overshot your maintenance calories a bit and just pull back a bit. That's all. And nothing, nothing crazy to do, you know, kind of freak the fuck out, right? Like you would just pull back your calories a little bit. And that way you know what your maintenance calories are. If you want to find out what your maintenance calories are, I did a video on that as well. I'll link it here above. So in terms of like the number and things of that nature, feel free to check it out. But again, you know, the best way to do this is just increase your calories, see what the data tells you, and then not only with your body weight but also with your measurements. And so you should be taking measurements, and I have a video on how to take your measurements. Um, take your measurements, and if your measurements are roughly staying around the same, like they're not going to be the— they might not be the exact same, they might, but Let's just say you finished your calorie deficit with a 30-inch waist, 22-inch quads, and 40-inch hips. If after 4 to 8 weeks you have a 30-inch waist or a 30.5-inch waist and 22-inch quads and 40.5-inch glutes, you're probably roughly around your maintenance calorie range because your measurements aren't changing that drastically. Again, number 3, the thing I wrote here is just You gotta give it time. Like, you have to be able to give it time. You're not gonna know in a week. You're not gonna know in 2 weeks. Like, take a 4 to 8 week view. 4 to 8 week view. Just like, give yourself 4 to 8 weeks, increase your calories, see what happens, see how you feel, see what your body weight does, and from there you will know that you're in your maintenance calories and you can kinda keep rocking out from there. So, I hope this video helped you. If it did, please feel free to give the video a thumbs up, let me know below, and subscribe to the channel. And again, if you want me to cover a question you have, drop a comment below with what video topic you would like to see covered. I will try to, you know, get to as many as I possibly can. Thank you again, Mrs. G, for the video, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and we'll chat soon.
Bye.
