Cheat meals. Cheat days. How do these impact your results? Should you use them? Do they help at all? All good questions, and while not a direct YES or NO, there are clear answers.
Cheat Meals and Cheat Days
Let’s start off by defining what a “cheat meal” is. I define cheats meals as a single MEAL where you don’t count your macros and calories for that meal. Typically that mean indulging in calorie dense (often carb and fat dense) foods as a cheat or treat. Example – you’ve been running 2,000 calories at Fat Shredder percentages and for Saturday dinner you eat a whole large pizza, 2 cans of Coke, and finish it off with some ice cream.
A “cheat day” is a whole day of those types of meals where you don’t track at all.
People in favor of cheat days or cheat meals will say that these meals allow them to focus on sticking to their plan the rest of the week. It’s having that upcoming CHEAT that allows them to stay dialed in. They are mental breaks. Etc, etc, etc.
While those might seem true for you, let’s consider what you are really doing.
Billy “I have to CHEAT” Johnson
Meet Billy. He doesn’t really like my take on not having cheat meals. So he is going to still follow me and treamRIPPED, but he is going to have his cheat meals! Billy is about 200#, wants to lose 20-25#. He’s running my Fat Shredder plan at 2000 calories and does a good job during the week.
That 2000 calorie plan is about an 800 calorie deficit for him. We know that on average, it take a cumulative -3,500 calories in a week to lose 1 LB. So in 6 days, Billy does awesome and racks up -4,800 calories! He should be on track to lose about 1.25 lbs this week.
On Sunday, he has a cheat meal. He eats his normal breakfast, snack, lunch, snack… he is in a routine, so that is good and he is at 1,450 calories. Dinner comes around and it’s pizza! He eats 5 slices of a large meat lovers (1,700 calories). Those were washed down with a couple glasses of Coke (24 oz – 280 cals – all sugar too). Finally, the ice cream comes out! If you are going to cheat, let’s cheat right? A nice big bowl of cookies and cream (2 cups – 560 calories). In all he has taken in: 2,440 calories.
- Up until dinner: 1,450
- Cheat Meal: 2,440
- Total: 3,890 calories
- Amount over?: 1,890 calories
That is over 2 days worth of his deficit. For the week, he will still be at roughly -3,000 and should lose some weight. That is provided the sodium doesn’t make him retain water and mess with his mind… totally another topic.
But do you see it? That big cheat meal undid more than 2 days of hard work and following his deficit.
What’s worse is that more times than not, I see these “cheat meal” advocates lose mentally. They don’t truly break bad habits or make a lifestyle change. So when they go off plan, THEY GO OFF PLAN! They binge, worse than my fictitious Billy. And I hope you can see how a full CHEAT DAY would be far worse and undo more hard work.
Should you have a CHEAT MEAL?
They throw away hard work. I would rather have you focus on tracking and using your macros to work in a little ice cream than just pretend its calories somehow don’t matter.
If you are just starting out or recommitting, I think it is really important to go all in and never cheat until you have a handle of how to track calories and macros, AND until you know that your old habits aren’t going to make you fall off the wagon.
In time, especially as you move to a maintenance mode or surplus, you won’t have the restriction of a deficit. You will be able to fit in almost all of your favorite foods in their proper portion. And that is the name of the game – FOOD HAS IT’S PROPER PORTION!
When you are a deficit, hitting high protein, those portions of carb rich and fat rich foods are small or even non-existent. On 3,000 calories, you can fit in some pizza or even some cake.
Remember the saying: “Your body is tracking macros even if you aren’t.”
Stay RIPPED my friends!
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
