5 New School Cheat Meal Rules
November 13, 2010 by Jamin Thompson
Filed under nutrition, Recent Posts
We all have defining moments. It is in these moments that we find our true characters. We become heroes or cowards; truth tellers or liars; we go forward or we go backward. – Robert T. Kiyosaki
Ahhh what a powerful quote, and it’s one of my all time favorites.
Hopefully for your sake though…your defining moments don’t happen too often at the dinner table…
BOOM!
I’ve heard it a thousand times…
“OMG you are such a health nut…”
“Jamin don’t you ever eat anything NORMAL?”
“Come on dude, live life a little!”
Usually I’ll just smile and glance down at the persons belly…because it usually reveals all of the “living” they have been doing lately. Burgers, nachos, beer, and brownies…yep just as I thought buddy you’re living the dream. Then I’ll think about my own physique and remember that I’m living MY dream. Excuse me sir while I make this paradigm shift.
Eating a bunch of crap whenever you want…hey I guess that’s what some people call living, and to be honest…yes sometimes I DO eat “bad food”, I just eat it much less frequently than the average person…and when I do, there’s a strategy behind it. So today I salute you, my opponent of self discipline, this post is for you.
Cheat day, treat day, whatever you want to call it…is actually a very underrated and completely mis-understood practice when it comes to fat loss and muscle building. Here is my take on it…there is no such thing as a cheat meal. Yes you heard me right…there’s no such thing as a cheat meal.
Here’s why.
When most people think “cheat meal” they are usually thinking about eating foods that aren’t on the “approved” list of their diet plan or foods that generally have an unhealthy stigma about them. And I bet you have probably experienced an enormous feeling of guilt after having a cheat meal, partly due to the fact that you felt as if you were doing something that you weren’t supposed to be doing. You felt like a diet sinner and you probably felt mountains of guilt. Trust me I’ve been there!
But I prefer to think of “cheat meals” as part of my strategic plan to lose fat, and build muscle, etc so I don’t really consider eating hot dogs, nachos, and pizza cheating. It’s all part of the plan baby! In this post I’m going to try and clear up some of the misconceptions you may have about cheat meals and give you a better insight about how and when to cheat for success. Here are my five new school cheat meal rules:
RULE #1. Have A Strategy.
As I said before, it is much better to think of your cheat meal as one of many components that goes into your complete diet plan. This means that eating foods that are not typically belly fat friendly (fries, cookies, cake, pizza, etc) can work to your advantage if you use them properly.
When it comes to my personal diet plan, nothing is left to chance and there is a method behind my madness. With that being said, I like to incorporate strategic cheating (Joel Marion also teaches this in his Cheat Your Way Thin Program), which refers to periodically allowing myself to eat basically whatever I want for a meal, two meals, or even an entire day depending on which plan (fat loss, muscle building, maintenance) I’m following at the time. If you are just starting out, Joel’s plan is a great way to get started with this.
So I’ll eat all of the things you’re typically not allowed to have on a “diet” (pizza, ice cream, fries, whatever I want) and I know it’s not cheating because it’s all part of my strategic nutrition plan. This helps me not freak out and feel guilty because I know that this is all part of my master plan to reach whatever goal I’m shooting for at the time.
RULE #2. Make Leptin Your Friend.
First of all let’s get into exactly what leptin is. Leptin is a hormone that communicates your nutritional status to your body and brain. From there, your body then makes decisions on what to do with things like fat burning and metabolism based on the messages it’s receiving from our friend leptin.
Leptin levels are mediated by two things. One is your level of body fat. All else being equal, people with higher levels of body fat will have higher leptin levels than those with lower levels of body fat and vice versa. Because leptin is secreted by fat cells, it makes sense that under normal conditions there is a direct correlation between leptin levels and the amount of fat you are carrying.
Leptin basically keeps your body from starving itself, and its main role in the body is to reduce the negative adaptations your body goes though when you aren’t eating enough food and/or when energy levels are low. Keep in mind that this aspect of leptin totally sucks if you’re on a restricted calorie diet.
Unfortunately, when you’re attempting to lose fat and begin to restrict calories, conditions are anything but “normal” and the body responds accordingly by lowering leptin levels. This is because the second mediator of blood leptin levels is your calorie intake. Lower your calorie intake and leptin will fall, independent of body fat.
Recent leptin research has shown that when you restrict calories for only a week, your leptin levels can drop to around 50% which means you are then at just 50% of your maximum fat burning capacity. If you think that’s bad…just imaging week two, three, and four. It can be the making of another failed diet.
The bottom line is, leptin can be your best friend in the world if you manipulate it properly and your worst enemy if you don’t.
High leptin levels = increased metabolism and fat burning.
Low leptin levels = decreased metabolism and fat burning (even obesity).
Of course there is a ton more science behind it than that, but you get the idea.
RULE #3. Stop Crashing.
“I’m going to enjoy this food today…then I’ll start on Monday.”
How many times have you heard THAT one?
For example, let’s say you say on Sunday, “Tomorrow I’m going to buckle down and go on a diet. I need to lose these last 10 pounds” Trust me, your Monday is going to SUCK big time! The entire day you are probably thinking to yourself…omg…no sushi…no cookies…no ice cream…no alcohol…nothing but lettuce and chicken! And then you get depressed. The light at the end of the tunnel seems to get farther and farther away.
This is step one of diet fail.
Step two of diet fail is cheating on your diet without a plan.
Step two usually begins when you just can’t take it anymore and give in to cravings and start to munch on everything you’ve wanted to eat since you started your diet. Don’t act like it won’t happen to you…it will and it will suck. Then those powerful feelings of failure, guilt, doubt, feeling sorry for yourself, etc start to creep in and you feel like a total loser.
But with “strategic cheating” your entire week is set up to ensure that each cheat day accelerates, not detracts, from progress. This doesn’t mean you can just go eat anything and everything when you cheat…because if you fail to properly set up the rest of the diet in an extremely strategic manner around a cheat day or overfeed day, these types of days will backfire and lead to the vicious cycle of one-step-forward one-step-backward.
So if you still think crash dieting is the fastest way to lose weight just remember this. For as long as you fail to provide your body with the energy it’s hoping to receive, adaptations get worse, leptin falls harder, and metabolism takes a huge hit. But luckily for you, it only takes one day of cheating/overfeeding to bring leptin levels back to baseline and restore things like plummeted thyroid hormones, fat burning enzymes, a manageable (not insatiable) appetite, and overall metabolism.
RULE #4. Keep It Real.
I advise everyone with 20% body fat or higher to use extreme caution when cheating. In fact, if you fall into this category your cheat meal size and/or frequency should be minimal. If you are overweight there is a really good chance your metabolism is slower than that of your thinner counterparts so you have a greater probability of having most of those extra cheat meal calories being converted into body fat.
Studies have consistently shown that leaner people burn more calories than fatter subjects in every circumstance (cheat meal, pre-workout meal, post-workout meal, etc).
I’m sure you’ve probably read a bunch of stuff on Google or various blogs stating that you can boost your metabolism by having a large cheat meal…and that may or may not be true. The main problem you need to worry about isn’t metabolism…it’s having the discipline to quit after your cheat meal is over.
I’ve seen it a thousand times, a person goes on a diet and does great. Then they start to incorporate cheat meals into their plan to maximize their results and they still look great. The next thing you know…their taste buds suddenly come back to life after a few cheat meals and then that Saturday cheat meal turns into the “It’s ok, you are doing great” cheat meal on Monday also. Then the “No worries you’ll just work it off” cheat meal on Thursday.
Here we go headed to diet fail again.
My body fat percentage hovers around 5% year round and I typically use cheat meals as part of my nutrition plan for most of the year. For the most part my diet stays the same all year but I will do 3-5 day depletion diets and the sorts to prepare for photoshoots and stuff like that, but nothing too extreme.
Trust me if you want to look ripped and muscular don’t kid yourself into thinking that cheat meals or even worse cheat days are the key to your success because they are not. Sure you’ll get a slight metabolic surge after a cheat meal but it will only last for a few hours at most. Without a proper plan in place to strategically use those cheat meals to your advantage all of those excess calories will just end up around your hips, waist, and thighs.
RULE #5. Use Damage Control.
So when should you eat your cheat meal? Before or after you workout? Many experts disagree on this subject and with good reason…the studies aren’t all that conclusive. From what the evidence shows us, it appears that having a cheat meal BEFORE you workout may be just a little bit better than having a cheat meal AFTER you workout.
There have been a bunch of studies done on this, but in one study, which compared the effects of pre-workout meals to post-workout meals, the researchers found that when the participant had a 910 calorie meal followed by a 25 minute run on the treadmill it resulted in a larger energy expenditure than the pre-run meal.
You can take from that what you want, but I typically have my cheat meal after I workout and I’ll use the following strategy. I will have my cheat meal around lunch time. 1 or 2pm or so. So around 11 am I’ll do a 30-45 minute high intensity workout. Then I’ll go pound my cheat meal. I’ll then go back to the gym later that day and do 30 minutes of HITT or perhaps a tough 30 minute bodyweight workout. This strategy is especially useful when I eat way too much food…it may not burn off all of those extra calories…but it definitely puts me in a more calm relaxed state of mind and I won’t feel as guilty about eating more food than my plan allows.
TIP: Don’t ruin your nutrition plan with alcohol!
Sure we all like to kick back and throw down a few cold ones and with that being said I’m not going to sit here and tell you to completely give up alcohol even though avoidance would be optimal when it comes to getting six pack abs and building muscle. But by no means does a cheat meal or a cheat day mean you should go drink alcohol. Alcohol is NEVER part of the plan! However, with the holidays coming up we need to think realistically about the situation.
I do suggest you try as hard as you possibly can to avoid alcohol as much as you can because drinking your calories is the fastest way to fail. The reason is because drinking alcohol creates a negative hormonal environment within your body which promotes additional fat storage. Hello beer belly!
If you aren’t sure how much alcohol will cause you to put on excess belly flab, here is the rule. If you drink enough to where you feel tipsy…you’ve probably ruined your diet that day. So try to stick with zero calorie drinks, preferably water, and save your alcohol consumption for the periodic celebratory toast or two.
So what are some of YOUR best cheat meal tips? Did any of these tips help you? If you have any tips you would like to share or have any feedback on this post please leave a comment below.
Jamin Thompson
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