Cheat meal: what it is and how to make it part of your guilt-free diet
When you are on a diet, all you await immediately after your coveted goals is the long-awaited cheat meal: your time to go wrong and indulge in some pampering. It is important that you are indulgent with yourself: don't blame yourself when you don't stick to your strict schedule. The diet is a test of courage towards yourself and the fact that you have decided to undertake it already says a lot about you. Before you reflect on your day cheat, these are the 10 things to know before going on a diet!
Cheat day: what is that?
With cheat day literally means the free meal, the day you can afford a cheat. This day allows you to satisfy your whims and satisfy your palate by savoring something you love to eat, but which is not included in your diet. Whether for a single meal or for a whole day, the cheat meal (or cheat day) is suitable for a moment of sharing with friends, colleagues, companions or relatives, such as aperitifs, pizza, parties and so on.
For cheat day, therefore, we mean the day when you can afford to ingest a greater amount of food, under less binding conditions. In fact, you will be able to enjoy more choice and the possibility of not calculating calories.
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What is the difference with the cheat meal? What does it mean?
Unlike the cheat day, the cheat meal it is a single free meal proper. During a diet, therefore, you have the opportunity to enjoy a meal without the constraints of quantitative or qualitative choice of food to be consumed. Even more than in the previous case, the main purpose of the cheat meal it is psychological: knowing that you can indulge in a "sneaky" meal allows you to pursue the diet with more motivation.
You may be wondering what the impact of this is cheat meal at a metabolic or physiological level, but it's time to reassure yourself: the psychological benefit has the upper hand to the point that it doesn't make much difference this livelier meal.
The risks of the cheat meal
The psychological benefits of cheat meal are just one of the two sides of the coin of the sgarro, which in fact presents itself as a "double-edged sword as it could lead to the phenomenon of binge eating, literally frequent and uncontrolled binges, a real eating disorder. Like all DCAs, the binge eating it has a psychological reason, not a nutritional one, which could lead to the risk of living on the basis of that one free meal, which will not leave your mind for the rest of the week.
The benefits of the cheat meal he was born in cheat day
As mentioned, the meal or day off and sneakiness will not harm your diet, as your metabolism adjusts to what it receives. When you start a low-calorie diet, for example, the body receives less energy than it was used to previously, so it gives an adjustment to the new situation in response. A prolonged low-calorie diet leads to a lowering of the metabolism, and is in this very moment that the sgarro intervenes, the much loved one cheat meal / day: it will offer the caloric peak which will guarantee a sort of "parachute effect" towards the metabolism. This peak in nutrition favors not only the maintenance of lean mass, but also a further stimulus in the loss of fat, as if the sgarro "ignites" the metabolism: it will therefore be a double benefit, of greater utility for weight loss.
A good news? The cheat day is to be preferred to cheat meal, as 24 hours of recharging will be more effective than a single cheat meal. In this case we speak of the temporary inhibition of catabolic processes and the normalization of hormones involved in metabolic regulation, such as thyroid hormones and insulin.
The cheat meal and the cheat day make you fat?
This is probably the most coveted question and asked when you decide to interrupt your diet for a day or a meal in favor of a cheat. It could happen, after a day with a higher calorie intake than usual, that the body weight increases slightly, but do not worry: it is not fat. Rather, it is a question of glycogen stores that are filled with the glucose taken in the previous days and, in this, water plays an important role. This relationship can in fact be understood with this simple proportion: each gram of stored glycogen recalls 3 grams of water, which results in weight gain. On the other hand, if the meal is salty, sodium will tend to retain fluids, which will contribute to weight gain. However, this is a temporary situation. solved in a few days, depending on the subject, which will restore the weight before the free meal.
How to organize the cheat meal / day?
A tip before approaching a cheat meal or day is to choose easily digestible foods. The free meal, in fact, will almost certainly be very abundant, subjecting the gastro-intestinal tract to an effort that will have become accustomed to a restriction following the diet. This change in shape results in the early perception of the sense of satiety, because the stomach will easily fill with smaller quantities, being narrower. In fact, it could happen that you are unable to complete your cheat, precisely because the feeling of fullness will prevail and you will have to stop, not being used to eating such an amount.
For this reason, it is preferable to choose foods that are digestible, non-fibrous and too bulky, so as not to overload the digestive system.
As for the number of calories to consume, there is no fixed amount, but it is certainly greater than usual. If you want to be sure that you are preserving your low-calorie diet, you can find a way to manage the overuse by making sure that it fits into the calculation. calorie intake per week; this way, your meal or day off will not be a proper one cheat, but it's a good one.
How often do a cheat meal?
Even for this very legitimate and popular question, there is no univocal answer: it depends. First, we need to consider the metabolic descent mentioned earlier. The greater the caloric GAP, the greater the rate of descent of the metabolism. Conversely, the smaller the caloric deficit, the slower this decline will be. You may therefore need it every 4 days, such as once every week or 10 days. It all comes down to establishing a weekly quota and repeating it as it seems most convenient to you.
Training is certainly an essential fact: the higher the volume of training, there is an increase in energy expenditure, therefore a greater caloric GAP which leads to a more frequent recharge. Consequently, a useful tip is to consider 1 or maximum 2 free meals per week, preferably not consecutive. This frequency is also recommended in practical terms: more than 3 would mean having a low-calorie diet only half a week, which would not lead to the desired results.
Always keeping in mind the training, it is good to organize the week by making the coincide cheat day or meal with training days targeted to specific areas of the body. In this way, deficient muscle groups in the body will benefit not only from improved training, but also from increased metabolism.
However, if there is no "training", it is preferable to associate the free meal with specific times of the week, such as during the weekend, when an outing or an invitation during meals is more likely.
It is right and healthy to indulge in whims: not to live the diet as a constraint, but as something for you and for your health. Precisely for this reason, the cheats, if well organized and measured, are absolutely not to be condemned!
