How To Cheat On A Diet
We’re all humans with craven needs. And as hard as we may try to fight them, we often fall into temptation. That being the case, it behooves us to know how to minimize the damage when we do give into the desires of the flesh.
That’s why you should cheat as responsibly as possible.
You know, by always using protection, paying for everything with cash or getting a new credit card, and maintaining separate cell phones that only one partner has the number to and knowledge of. Oh, and most importantly, the person you’re creeping around with shouldn’t be someone you work with or you and your significant other have a mutual acquaintance with.
Those are just a few tips to avoid red flags and possible discovery of an extramarital affair.
You, however, don’t need those tips because you have no intention on ever cheating on your significant other whom you love so dearly. But if you were ever inclined to — which we both know you’re not! — you see that it’s certainly possible to cheat in a way that does little harm when precautions are taken.
Well, I’m here to tell you that the same goes for cheating on your diet!
Weight loss doesn’t have to be the miserable experience it’s commonly associated as.
You know, where you have to convince yourself that the cauliflower you’re using to substitute carbs is just as delicious as the carb that’s being substituted for. That’s completely unnecessary because, after all, a calorie is a calorie and a macro is a macro, irrespective of its source. So when trying to control your weight, you don’t have to give up the foods you enjoy but can and should incorporate them into your daily diet. Studies have repeatedly shown that this type of flexible eating approach yields better results and healthier eating outcomes than more strict and rigid approaches.
Despite the effort put into stressing that you can eat what you please so long as what you eat fits into the daily totals of whatever metric you’re tracking, some may be too inculcated by the fitness industry to believe that. So rather than cheating with so-called “bad” food every day, they may instead choose to go the more familiar route of atoning for sins of their past lives by way of dietary hell.
That’s alright.
As long as you’re aware of how much food you’re supposed to eat in accordance with your goal and regularly meet those nutritional needs, then you may achieve success with a more restrictive eating approach. Reaching that success, however, may just be an unpleasant endeavor, if you even reach it before deciding to eat a gun and go Private Pyle on yourself.1Wait, did I just spoil Full Metal Jacket for you? Oh well, pick another film for your “Netflix and chill”.
Because I recognize that some will be hesitant to go with as flexible an eating approach as is advocated, allow me to recommend something in respect of that unreadiness to fully stray from the traditional idea of what a diet should be for someone “serious” about their weight. If that’s you and you’re deciding instead to follow a more “disciplined” diet strategy that shuns so-called “bad” foods, then I can’t suggest strongly enough for you to at least set aside a cheat meal every few weeks. This is when you pick one meal to stray from your structured eating of clean food and just eat freely, even if it results in you going over your calories for the day.2Like undereating one day won’t make you thin the next day, overeating won’t make you fat either. What you have to do is routinely under- or overshoot your calorie needs for your weight management efforts to prove futile. So don’t worry about a one day blip. Instead, worry when that one day becomes a trend. That means chips, ice cream, fast food, donuts, soda, wine, etc. Basically, anything goes during this one meal. Once the meal is over, immediately resume your normal eating plan and continue eating clean and drinking water until the next time you’ve scheduled yourself to stray.
The main benefit of treating yourself to a cheat meal is psychological, as weeks and months of denying yourself of food you’d much rather eat can prove stressful and reduce the likelihood of you seeing your weight management goal through. As such, one solitary meal every now and then where you let loose can help keep away feelings of deprivation that can make your dietary compliance challenging. Moreover, if losing fat, occasional breaks from your diet where you eat above maintenance calories are also advantageous for helping to reset the metabolism so fat burning continues.3As you know, fat is a big deal. The body would rather hold onto it than lose it just because you want to look good naked when you have no one to look good naked for. So to preserve fat, the body lowers the production of hormones such as Triiodothyronine (T3) and leptin and raises the output of cortisol and ghrelin. This is troublesome because T3 regulates the metabolism and leptin is the chemical messenger that signals to the brain that you’ve eaten enough and it doesn’t have to conserve calories in order to prevent starvation. Ghrelin serves the opposite function of leptin, that of telling your brain that you’re hungry. As for cortisol, it’s a stress hormone that promotes fat storage. This series of hormonal events is all bad for fat loss. Occasionally eating over your calories when in a caloric deficit helps reverse it. Because of these hormonal effects, it’s also advised to try these diet break strategies if your fat loss efforts stall and you’ve determined your total daily calorie needs are not the problem.
NOTE (A):
Other break options are refeeds and extended breaks. Unlike a cheat meal that only applies to one particular feeding opportunity where you’re allowed to chow down whatever and however much of anything you like, a refeed is more structured. Rather than eating freely for a meal with no limitations, a refeed generally consists of an increase in your calorie intake by 20 to 30 percent, mostly via the increase of carbs, and can apply to an eating window lasting anywhere from one hour to an entire day. As a general rule, this increased consumption of food should take place on a training day when you’re working out a large muscle group. The same goes for a cheat meal.
An extended break is simply when you take a 1-2 week vacation from your eating plan and instead do as you please. If restricting your food intake for fat loss purposes, this would involve raising your calories by 500 every one or two days until you reached maintenance levels and then eating at maintenance for the duration of the break.
NOTE (B):
Diet breaks aren’t only for those eating clean all the time on calorie-restrictive diets. As touched on briefly in footnote #3, they’re a strategic tool for those in deficits who experience a weight loss plateau. Additionally, they work just as well for those in pursuit of weight gain. Similar to how diet breaks offer benefits beyond simple weight loss to those in deficits by allowing them to eat more food, a temporary break of eating at or below maintenance level calories when pursuing weight gain can help relieve some of the mental and physical stress of having to eat so much on a continuous basis when you may be unaccustomed to doing so.
NOTE (C):
When to have a cheat meal or other suspension of your diet is dependent on various factors, such as progress. For example, if practicing a strict eating approach, it wouldn’t make sense to blow your calorie needs out of the water with a cheat meal after your first week. You haven’t been dieting long enough to need one mentally or physiologically. Ideally, you should have your first one at a time after you’ve become consistent at hitting your nutritional needs on a daily basis and have seen sizable changes to your physique. That would possibly be after a month — NOT after the very first week of eating clean as a much deserved reward for punishing yourself by eating like that when you’ve been told countless times you don’t have to!
NOTE (D):
On a day when you’re scheduled to eat clean but you instead indulge in dirty food, don’t try to compensate for your cheating by missing a meal to make up for the calories. Missed meals can negatively impact your insulin sensitivity and lead to fat storage, muscle loss, lack of energy, and hunger pangs that can lead to binging.
Falling off the wagon and cheating is bound to happen. We want it to happen as infrequently as possible, though. So because it’s bound to happen like all mistakes are, what you shouldn’t do is compound it with the second mistake of restricting your food intake. Instead, get back on the wagon by resuming your scheduled diet as soon as possible. Simply put, if you have an impromptu lunch at Los Pollos Hermanos one day and you’re unaware of exactly how many extra calories it adds to your daily total, still eat everything you’re supposed to for the rest of the day. Or, if you binge on Wednesday, don’t use that as an excuse to eat garbage until Monday because you think that your entire week is messed up. No, get back on the planned diet ASAP!!!
Glossary: caloric deficit, calories, cheat, cheat meal, diet, discipline, fat, hormones, metabolism, Monday, muscle group, physique
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