How to have a proper cheat day while trying to lose weight

Won’t you love it if someone says that you just have to diet six days a week, and you are allowed to eat absolutely anything on the seventh day of the week? 

Yes, everything needs a break to stay motivated and dedicated similarly “Cheat days” are the break in the routine diet. 

These cheats days are actually an essential tool while dieting but they must be used correctly. Be carefull, junk food tends to carry more calories than it looks like. The following examples speak for themselfs:

Calories in Pizza - Thin Crust - Pepperoni Olive

Calories in Haagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream

Cheat days are used to serve a couple of devotions. A cheat day is most effective when an only meal that day is considered as the cheat. You need to hold down your nerves and not at all allow the whole of your hard work to get undo for an entire day because this would lead to null and void the progress you have been making all week especially if your goal is to lose the weight!  

Why are the cheat days important? 

Basically, The Cheat Days are required to refill your glycogen and “spirit” levels, especially if your diet plan has a solid workout plan.

It is also a pro-cheating claim that the cheat days are helpful in boosting the metabolism by upping leptin production and it helps the body burn and breaks out the more calories after overindulging or overeating. 

The most of the Psychologists and nutritionists often accept that allowing a cheat meal or cheat day lets the people satisfy their cravings once in a week which helps people to stick to otherwise restrictive diets.

Psychology says that it’s all about making your diet look like a more achievable act. Obviously, it is a human psychology that they start to hate the things that are either forcefully demanded or strict all the time. Human nature loves and practices the things with flexibility. 

Let it be Monday through Saturday for counting as healthy eating days and let’s just cheat on Sunday and make it the day for your cheat meal. Sticking to your diet six days out of the week seems a lot more manageable with some scoops of your favorite ice-creams waiting at the end.

Scientific approach

The Scientific approach claims that cheat occasional cheat meals are as important as a diet to lose weight. All this starts with leptin which is actually a protein produced by fat tissue that helps regulate body weight and fat mass by impacting appetite and the body’s energy balance. Continuous starving will ultimately lead to caloric discrepancies which cause our energy levels to plunge. Your cheat meal would prove to be a calorie bomb which would help the body sustain energy levels needed to continue dieting and exercising.

Don’t cheat too frequently

It is important that you refer to a cheat meal, not a cheat day and be conscious that an all-out binge could easily destroy a week’s long of efforts. Having a nightly binge on ice cream and donuts doesn’t necessarily qualify as a cheat meal so much as a bad habit. Although cheat meals can be beneficial, spread them out through a month. Especially, when you are at the initial stage of your diet plan.

Remember, that the regularity of binges can change depending on where you are in relation to your goal. Someone closer to their maintenance weight may be able to binge more often than someone just starting a diet.

Cheat honestly

Keep your cheat days within an acceptable calorie range. If you are restricting 1000 calories per day, then your entire cheat day should never go above 1000 calories of your maintenance. If your maintenance is 2500, your diet plan is 1500, and then your cheat day should never be more than 3500 calories in total or it will be considered as a binge day. (Understand your week will be a 6k deficit and not a 7k if you go in the upper range).

Because the calculated cheating can enhance the benefits of an otherwise strict diet. No holds banded bingeing, however, can be dangerous and may even set off a problematic psychological chain reaction. For those who wish to indulge without all the scientific calculations, focus on quenching a craving rather than substituting an entire meal of unhealthy foods for a healthy one.

Cheat carefully

Although by cheating it may seem that your goal should be to completely fulfill your junk food cravings but eventually, cheat meals require some self-control and compromise too. 

You need to keep in mind that your body still requires the three essential macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fat, for the get-up-and-go and to build your muscles. 

Just let your cheat meal be the time for you to enjoy “bad” protein, carbs, and fat. 

Skip the cheat meal/day for the first week of your diet. Occasionally, (about every 1-2 weeks), try to keep your cheat meal very minimal to about only half of your current restriction so that you will still be on your maintenance level or close from it.

Try and save your cheat meal for the post-workout because at the time the body is ready to make use of every macro be it “good” or “bad.”

One more way that your cheat meal can be used is by keeping a 1,400 per day calorie diet for four uninterrupted days and adding on 200-300 calories for the residual three days, this would help a lot in success. 

The 90/10 rule

The well-known nutrition experts around the globe came to an agreement that any diet should be followed according to the 90/10 rule. 

The rule states that the 90 percent of the diet should be concentrated exclusively on healthy food, while the residual 10 percent can be dedicated to the cheat meals. Let’s suppose, you’re planning to follow a diet plan that permits to have five slighter meals throughout the day, this means you would be consuming 35 meals a week. Simply if you follow the 90/10 rule, three to four meals a week can be dedicated for pampering your sweet tooth.