How Stuffing Your Face With Food is Killing Your Progress
3 Reasons You Need to Stop Using Cheat Meals & What to Do Instead
Sit down.
We need to talk.
Cheat meals are killing your progress and ruining your relationship with food. I know it sounds scary and it should be.
This isn’t an idle threat written to get views, but a public service announcement. Cheat meals need to go, they’re destructive, damaging and ineffective.
How do I know?
I’ve been there, done that, lived that life.
I vividly remember by soul-crushing Monday to Friday calorie deficits and my Saturday night binges followed by guilt-ridden Sundays.
For at least a year I spent every Saturday in my local supermarket buying everything that I wasn’t ‘allowed’ during my weekly diet so I could go home and ceremoniously binge eat it all…
Biscuits, chocolate, crisps, popcorn, sweets. Nothing was off-limits for my cheat day…
It didn’t start out like this and truth be told it was never meant to be this way but, when I got going there was little I could do to stop myself.
So, you see I’m not pretending, I know the lure of the cheat meal.
I know it intimately.
I know the struggle it brings and the damage it can do.
Which is why today I want to show you 3 reasons I stopped using cheat meals and why you should do the same.
I’ll then go on to show you what you should do instead.
But first…
What is a Cheat Meal?
Cheat meals are planned overindulgence.
The idea is that by increasing your calorie intake for one day or one meal you can reverse some of the side effects of being in a calorie deficit.
But whilst they sound like the best thing ever, especially to the restricted dieter, the reality is more akin to getting blind drunk to deal with a stressful day.
A good idea in theory.
A horrible idea in reality.
The cheat meal talks a big game, promising that you can eat whatever you want and in return, you’ll undo some of the side effects of dieting.
The problem is, cheat meals are an awful way to do this.
What are Cheat Meals Meant to Do?
The premise behind stuffing your face with abandon largely comes down to the role of 2 hormones, Leptin and Ghrelin.
These 2 hormones are responsible for controlling hunger in the body:
- Leptin makes you feel full after meals (1)
- Ghrelin makes you feel hungry when you haven’t eaten
When you eat at your maintenance calories these hormones help you balance eating too much and eating too little by either increasing or decreasing in response to being in a fasted or fed state. (2)
Problems occur when you eat in a calorie deficit and begin losing weight.
This is because your body’s response is to decrease the production of Leptin and increase the production of Ghrelin. As a result, hunger goes up and satiety from eating goes down.
The idea is that having a cheat meal will:
- Restore Leptin levels
- Reduce hunger
- Increase metabolic rate
The issue is, cheat meals are a horrible way at raising your Leptin levels which mean they suck at the one thing they’re meant to be good at.
3 Reasons You Should Stop Using Cheat Meals
I’m going to show you 3 reasons cheat meals are awful, followed by what to do instead and how to never want one again.
First, the reasons…
#1: Cheat Meals Reinforce the Good vs. Bad Food Mindset
There is this sneaky, insidious idea in the fitness and diet industry that some foods are magically good and some are magically bad.
- Eat the good ones and you’ll lose weight, feel great and get rich
- Eat the bad ones and you’ll gain weight, feel like crap and be poor
Ok, a bit of an exaggeration, but still, you get the point.
It creates a seemingly arbitrary* divide between different food items which over time can lead to a distorted relationship with and understanding of calories and food intake.
*keto says carbs are bad. paleo says refined foods are bad. restrictive diets say things you like to eat are bad. carnivore says everything but meat is bad…
Now, it’s important to say here that I’m not disputing the fact that some foods are naturally more nutritious for you than others.
What I am saying is that creating these categories and assigning foods to either the good or bad one is a mistake.
All it does is foster unproductive, damaging and unnecessary eating habits. Think about it…
How times have you said one of the following things:
- “It’s fine to eat a lot of it because it’s good for me”
- “I can’t each too much of that because it’s bad for me”
The problem lies in the fact that categorising foods as good or bad generally leads you to eat more of both.
If you see it as ‘good’ your tendency is to think you can eat a lot of it without gaining weight.
If you see it as ‘bad’ your tendency is to adopt an ‘in for a penny in for a pound’ mentality and overeat.
- Both lead to an increase in calories
- Both lead to weight gain
- Both create a bad relationship with food
- Both stem from a misguided understanding of food
Cheat meals only serve to reinforce this idea as the whole concept is built around treating yourself or giving yourself a break from your diet by eating foods you like.
Naturally, if you believe you need to take a break from your diet then your diet foods must be good and the foods you like must be bad.
Ask yourself how many times have you had a cheat meal or strayed from your diet only to wracked with guilt afterwards?
I mean god forbid you to eat cake outside a birthday party.
This whole concept of good and bad foods is ridiculous, particularly considering that if you were to view food neutrally it would allow you to include some of the stuff you like in your diet.
Better yet, you could do this whilst staying healthy, eating nutritious foods and getting results (more on this later).
#2: Cheat Meals Encourage Overconsumption & Binge Eating
Let’s kick this off with questions?
- How many times have you had cheat meal only for it to turn into a full-on binge session?
- How many times have you felt like utter crap the next day?
- How often have you responded by cutting calories and increasing exercises to make up for it?
- How soon after this did you quit?
It’s a familiar chain of events, one I’ve been through my fair share of times and is because the use of cheat meals is generally coupled with a strict, boring, restrictive weekly diet.
A diet where you can only eat rice, chicken breast and a green vegetable of your choice.
A diet where salads are the order of the day, every day.
A diet where when you reach the weekend and can have your cheat meal and find yourself losing all self-control.
After all, you’ve been fighting to hold it together all week for the promise of the things you like at the weekend.
This isn’t too surprising.
Particularly when you consider that research shows restricted eaters consume significantly more than non-restrictive eaters. (3)
Add to this the fact that restricted eaters also showed greater cravings, liking and desire to eat cued (seen or smelt) foods it’s even easy to see why a cheat meal get out of control.
Instead of building a relationship with and understanding of food and calories that will serve you for the rest of your life, by using cheat meals you’re trapping yourself in this cycle of overconsumption and binge eating.
On top this, even if you could control yourself during a cheat (and it’s a big if) they still wouldn’t be the most effective way to restore your Leptin levels.
Which remember, is kind of the whole point.
#3: Cheat Meals are Ineffective at Raising Leptin Levels
The supposed point of cheat meals is to give you a mental and physical break from the rigours of dieting.
Which means you might be tempted to ask why your Leptin levels matter if you’re just after a reset.
After all cheat meals are a convenient way to escape your shitty, restrictive weekday diet and stuff your face whilst maintaining the illusion that it’s doing some good.
But it does matter.
It matters because the purpose of cheat meals is primarily to raise your Leptin levels, not just provide some respite.
This is important to counteract the side effects of being in a calorie deficit, namely hunger.
The problem is cheat meals plain suck at doing this.
This is because all the foods you love to eat are high-fat and high-carb, which makes them super tasty, hyper-palatable and easy to overeat.
This is problematic because it’s an increase in carbohydrate, not fat that raises your Leptin levels. (4)
In fact, fat overfeeding has no notable effect on Leptin levels at all. (5)
More than this, research shows carbohydrate overfeeding not only raises Leptin levels but also increases energy expenditure over a 24 hour period. (6)
Fat overfeeding does not.
In other words, eating more carbohydrates than normal raises your Leptin levels and help you burn more calories, fat doesn’t. (7)
Add to this the fact that your body is predisposed to use carbohydrate over fat (when both are present) as its primary energy source and you can see why it’s time to do away with cheat meals.
Time to do away with the sloppy, uncontrolled binges that lead to overindulgence and weight gain.
Refeed Days (Your Cheat Meal Alternative)
A refeed day is a planned increase in calories to offset the side effects of being in a calorie deficit by restoring your Leptin levels.
A refeed is different from a cheat meal because it requires you to increase carbohydrate intake within a set calorie goal.
This means even though you will be able to eat more than normal, you’re given a structure to stick to.
This helps create an ‘all of the benefits none of the negatives’ type situation and decreases the likelihood that you’ll slip into binge eating behaviours.
How Do You Do A Refeed Day?
Fortunately, doing a refeed is pretty straightforward and can be executed in 4 simples steps:
- Step 1: Increase your calorie intake to maintenance or just above, for most people this will be a 20–30% increase in calories
- Step 2: Maintain your usual protein intake (this should be between 0.7–1 g per lb of bodyweight)
- Step 3: Keep fat as low as possible, aim for something like 20–40 g
- Step 4: Use all your remaining calories for carbohydrates
It’s as simple as that.
Aim to eat foods that will help keep you satiated and don’t just rely on cereal, popcorn, and pancakes. Of course, you can include these types of foods but be sensible and get a variety of foods with a mix of high and low nutritional value.
Note that it’s common to see a temporary increase in weight the day after a refeed. This is due to the increase in food intake, muscle glycogen and water weight.
This is completely normal and will disappear within 1–2 days or returning to your diet.
Do What You Can Maintain
Everything I’ve written here only works if you sort out your diet, this includes not only what you eat but your attitude towards it.
If you don’t then it’ll all be for nothing and you’ll quickly find yourself back at square one.
Restricting yourself all week only to let loose at the weekend and expecting things not to go to shit is like depriving yourself of sleep all week and expecting to only have a short nap at the weekend.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
As soon you get to the weekend and lie down for your nap, you fall into the deepest sleep only to wake up 72 hours later wondering what the f**k happened.
A much better approach is dietary moderation and finding a way of eating you can maintain.
This means no restrictions but also making smart, informed choices.
In a practical sense, this means allowing room in your calorie allowance for some of the foods you like whilst ensuring the bulk of your diet is both nutritionally rich and appropriate for your goals.
Or in other words…
Stop treating yourself like an asshole.
Stop eating like an idiot.
Find a system that you can maintain and do away with destructive cheat meals and everything associated with them.
Get most of your calories from whole food sources that provide the macro and micronutrients you need.
Then if you want a pizza or burger and chips from time to time, have it. Equally, if you want ice cream or a couple of biscuits most evenings then do that too.
The key is balance.
If you can find it then you’ll be unstoppable.
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Thanks for reading.
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