How To Have A Cheat Meal And Still Lose Weight

You clicked on this video to see how often you can have a cheat meal and not ruin your progress, right? Perfect. Because in this video, I'm going to tell you exactly how often you can be having pizza, cookies, French fries, ice cream, and yet still see the fat loss progress that you're looking to see. And no, this isn't clickbait. I promise you, just watch until the end of the video. I'm going to give you the exact strategies and frameworks that I have used with my clients over the past 7 years to allow you to How do you still eat your favorite foods and still see fat loss progress? We first have to start by defining what you are actually deeming what a cheat meal is, because everybody has a slightly different image in their head of what they mean when they say a cheat meal. If you are somebody who is identifying a cheat meal as having those typical bad foods, whether it's cookies, pizza, ice cream, Oreos, well then technically you could have a cheat meal Every single day and still make progress. Wait, what? Yes. And let me explain why. If you don't already know this, what you need to have happen in order for you to lose body fat is going to be eating in a calorie deficit. You've probably heard every Instagram influencer and every YouTuber and TikToker and every personal trainer just scream that at you. All a calorie deficit means is you just need to consume less calories than you are burning. And at the end of this video, I'm going to show you how to figure out how many calories you should be eating in order to lose body fat. But with knowing that it comes down to you eating in a calorie deficit, as long as you're eating in that calorie deficit, you can eat these bad foods and yet still see progress. So let's just say, for example, that your calorie deficit was 1,800 calories per day. That's how many calories that you needed to eat in order to lose body fat. And let's say that night for dinner you had 2 slices of pizza. Let's say that came out to roughly about 300 to 500 calories. If you had the 2 slices of pizza and yet you still stayed within your calorie deficit for that day by staying under your 1,800 calorie mark, well then you, my friend, would have just had a cheat meal and still actually stayed on track which would allow you to still continue to see progress. Now let me make this very clear. Is that an excuse just to go fill your entire diet with pizza and cookies and ice cream? No, it is not. Because while yes, you can eat anything in a calorie deficit and still make fat loss progress, if you filled your entire diet with that, it would be incredibly difficult to stick to your overall calories. You'd be very hungry. You would not be satisfied. You would have very low energy, very low willpower. So to be able to balance this out a bit, I like to follow something called the 80/20 rule. And basically what the 80/20 rule is, let's just say one more time, you're trying to eat 1,800 calories in order to lose body fat. 80% of those calories should come from nutrient-dense whole foods. Your typical salads, chicken breast, egg whites, oatmeal, fruits, veggies, and then 20% can come from your treats or your cheat foods or the foods that you enjoy. Call it cookies, call it pizza, call it ice cream, whatever. So in this example, 360 of your calories for the day could come from treats or things that you enjoy while the other 1,440 calories came from your more nutrient-dense typical clean foods. And so if you follow that and still stick within your calories, you can absolutely still make fat loss progress just like one of my clients Nicole here did, who is down over 75 pounds at this point by still incorporating and eating foods that she enjoyed. And so to wrap that first point up, if you're incorporating these foods into your diet, is it really even cheating at that point? No, it's not because you're not doing anything wrong by having a cookie or having some burgers or having some fries. You're just fitting it within your calories. Now let's say your definition of a cheat meal might be, Eric, I am not just having a little bit. I am having way more calories in that meal. Cool. Remember how I talked about you needed to be in a calorie deficit, right? What I didn't tell you, not because I was holding out on you, but I wanted to save it for this segment, is You need to be in an overall weekly calorie deficit in order for you to see fat loss progress. So let's take that same 1,800 calories per day as an example. If you take 1,800 calories and multiply it by 7 days of the week, that is going to get you 12,600 overall weekly calories. So with knowing this now, let's just say, for example, you know you are going out to eat on Saturday and you might have a little bit more calories and, and have a cheat meal on Saturday. What you could potentially do is, let's say Monday through Friday and Sunday, instead of eating 1,800 calories per day, you just slightly ate a bit less and had 1,700 calories the other 6 days out of the week. What you would then be able to do is, because you almost essentially saved 600 calories, you would be able to put an extra 600 calories on Saturday, eat 2,400 calories, and yet because you had 1,700 calories the other 6 days out of the week, you would actually still be in your weekly overall calorie deficit, and you would actually still be able to make fat loss progress. Now the one caveat here I want to make is just be sure you don't go too extreme. It's one thing to do something like I just mentioned in the example before where maybe you eat 100 or 150 less calories per day to kind of save up for one day throughout the week where you might have a bigger meal. But I do not want you eating, let's say, 1,200 calories per day and then just absolutely binging on 1 or 2 days because that cycle creates a very unhealthy relationship with food. And to be quite frank with you, you just won't see progress that way because it's too far in each direction. You want to still be able to practice that moderation. But if you can do that, then you can have 1 day where you're maybe having a little bit more calories and yet still being able to see progress. So again, Are you really cheating at this point, or are you simply just working it into your normal diet and your normal lifestyle? So again, it doesn't sound like to me you're cheating or doing anything wrong. It sounds like you're just taking a smarter approach to your nutrition, and you're pretty smart for watching this video. If you are liking it thus far, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. Now let's also say you're like Eric. I am not going to stick to my calories at all. I'm going out and I'm having whatever I want in eating whatever I want. You probably think right now that you have to be 100% perfect in order for you to see progress. And although that's probably been jammed down your throat for so long and that's what you truly believe, it's just not true. You do not have to be perfect with your diet in order to see progress. You just have to be consistent. So let's take 1 month for example. There's 31 days in a month. Your goal for for that month is to be 80 to 90% consistent in that month. So that means you should be looking to hit your calories 25 out of 28 days in a month. That would give you 80 to 90% consistency with hitting your calories for that month. And if you're able to do that, you, my friend, will be able to make weight loss progress. You do not have to be 100% perfect. So again, at this point, because your goal is not to be perfect, if you have a day or 2 or 3 where maybe you do eat a little bit over your calories, once again, are you really cheating on anything? And are you really doing anything wrong at that point? No, you're not. Because as long as you're consistent, you are not doing anything wrong whatsoever. You're actually right on plan, my friend. And so to sum this all up, cheat days are pretty much bullshit. There is no reason you need to feel guilty or bad or wrong about consuming a specific food or slightly going over your calories and not being perfect one day. We aren't in 2005 anymore where all the YouTubers and bodybuilders are calling it their cheat meal. We're much smarter than that. If you follow the frameworks that we laid out earlier in this video, you will be able to not completely hate your life and suffer 24/7 while losing body fat. Crazy concept, right? Hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, please feel free to give the video a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and let me know below which key takeaway was your favorite. And I did not forget, if you want to learn how many calories you should be eating to lose body fat, check out this video right here.