By Dayne Hudson
It's like hanging out for your favourite band, for the weekend, or a movie to be released.
You're anxious, and you just want as much of it as possible when you get the chance.
It's the cheat meal.
It's lovely, but can also stop you from losing weight.
When I sit down with people to find out why they're not losing fat, generally there's one common denominator.
WHY AM I NOT LOSING WEIGHT?
Blame it on the cheat meal?
In a lot of the cases, yeah, you can.
The trouble is that people diet so strictly for 5-6 days, and deprive themselves of the foods they like.
They stick to motivational sayings in the fitness industry like "nothing tastes as good as shredded feels" (which can be a bit silly) and then they basically crave, crave, crave, all up until their cheat meal.
Then, when the clock strikes on the weekend, it becomes a feeding frenzy - eating as much as one can muster and pasing it off as the cheat meal.
FAT LOSS: ARE CHEAT MEALS EFFECTIVE?
If done in moderation and in a controlled environment, absolutely.
But it all depends on the diet approach you're taking.
As you know, I'm a huge advocate of allowing yourself to freedom in your diet, whilst still accounting for overall calories and macronutrient intakes, staying in a calorie deficit and subsequently getting the results you want.
I did this recently to shed 11 kg in 9 weeks - and I never felt like I was really "dieting".
It's all about having a healthy relationship with food.
These results were achieved by having ZERO cheat meals and never feeling like I was really "dieting".
FAT LOSS: FLEXIBLE DIETING - THE BEST WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM?
As you know, I truely believe in flexible dieting for a lot of people for good health, fat loss, muscle growth and overall wellbeing.
Now let's get this straight - flexible dieting is not really a "diet" because diets don't work.
It's more a lifestyle approach that has been proven to be more efficient (1,2).
Flexible dieting has also recently been given the term IIFYM recently.
WHAT IS IIFYM?
Standing for IF IT FITS YOUR MACROS - the idea is to allow for flexibility within your macronutrients (fat, protein, carbohydrates) and enjoying some seemingly forbidden foods (chocolate, cookies, etc) whilst staying in your required "macros" for fat loss.
For more info on how to set up IIFYM, check out one of my articles on it here.
The alternative however, is planning a plain and boring diet where you just end up putting the weight back on.
I've written about this before in the article WHY DIETS DON'T WORK - it's a recipe for diaster.
HOW TO STICK TO YOUR DIET
I'm a big advocate of the refeed day as opposed to cheat meals.
FAT LOSS: LEPTIN AND THE REFEED DAY
The refeed day involves topping up your levels of muscle glycogen, whilst increasing your leptin.
Why would you want to increase your leptin?
Here's a snippet in regards to the hormone from my article on the refeed day:
A refeed day means you can get stuck into plenty of carbohydrate containing foods that you really crave for an entire day, whilst keeping fat content as low as possible.
This is because fats do not have an effect on leptin levels (3).
The refeed day allows for food you like and crave, with LESS chance of fat storage - because you're not going cheat meal crazy with carb and fat containing foods. The calorie content is therefore a lot less.
In addition to a flexible dieting approach, the chances of a crazy binge seem to be less (1,2).
FAT LOSS: WHY CHEAT MEALS CAN SLOW PROGRESS
We've established that a refeed day will keep you moving on your diet and is less likely to cause fat gain.
This is in comparison to the way many people take a "cheat meal."
For a start, it's not a cheat meal to some but rather a cheat DAY - eating what the hell they like from sunrise to sunset with the notion that it's "OK and serving me well."
I've seen people have catostrophic cheat meals with so many calories, Pythagoras would struggle to count them!
Let's say you set up a diet whereby you allow NO flexibilty and the plain and silly old "tuna with brocolli or chicken with brocolli" dish multiple times a day, which people still seem to do.
You might be in a calorie deficit for 200 calories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday - which is a deficit of 1200 calories for the week.
Then Sunday comes.
You easily eat on par with your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) on that day - then you get stuck into a crazy hamburger, chips, milkshake, desert with sauces that have more calories then you'd ever imagine, etc.
Burgers have on average 500 calories.
Then there's the milkshake. The chips. The desert.
Very quickly - you're up to the 1200 calories you've put towards your deficit for the week, ruining your week's work by finishing up either on par with your TDEE for the week, or even in a slight calorie surplus.
And what does that mean?
Fat gain.
All because of the cheat meal.
The solution is to allow for a burger once a week ALONE in your flexible program, even a milkshake on another day and have a refeed day everynow and then to keep leptin levels high and stay on the wagon.
The idea is to "cheat" within your daily macronutrient numbers everynow and again during the week - not splurge and go all out.
Not to mention how DESTROYED you are for the next day in the gym from the extreme calorie surplus courtesy of your cheat meal, which can really throw you around, especially the high intake of carbohydrates all at once.
COMING SOON TO fitnflexed.org - WHY DO CARBS MAKE ME TIRED?
FAT LOSS WITH FLEXIBLE DIETING
So be sure to stick to a flexible dieting approach to ensure no mad cravings that lead to a crazy cheat meal that causes a huge halt to your fat loss progress.
The secret to any "diet" is to be able to maintain it, to ensure you lose fat and better still, keep it off!
"Stay Fit, Stay Flexed!"
REFERENCES
(1) Smith CF, Williamson DA, Bray GA, Ryan DH. Flexible vs. Rigid dieting strategies: relationship with adverse behavioral outcomes. Appetite. 1999 Jun;32(3):295-305.
(2) Meule A, Westenhofer J, Kubler A. Food cravings mediate the relationship between rigid, but not flexible control of eating behaviour and dieting success. Appetite. 2011 Dec;57(3):582-4. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2011.07.013. Epub 2011 Jul 29.
(3) Dirlewanger M, di Vetta V, Guenat E, Battilana P, Seematter G, Schneiter P, Jequier E, Tappy L. Effects of short-term carbohydrate or fat overfeeding on energy expenditure and plasma leptin concentrations in healthy female subjects. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2000 Nov;24(11):1413-8.
