How To PROPERLY Use Cheat Meals To Lose Fat Faster (3 Science-Based Tips)

For me, I mean, the cheat meals, it's like, it's like church, you know, it's like, because you work out hard and once a week you treat yourself, and then, you know, I partake in that.

Yeah. I think we're all pretty familiar with the Rock's epic cheat meals, where once a week, typically on Sundays, he indulges into massive amounts of food in one sitting. And at first glance, you'd probably think that based on how he looks, that incorporating cheat meals into your regimen is probably a good idea, right? Well, not so fast, because cheat meals are actually one of the most misunderstood concepts in fitness. And if you were to try to copy this and blindly incorporate one of these two, 3,000 calorie cheat meals into your routine, you could easily offset the last few weeks of dieting progress that you've made and the deficit that you've created. You see, what most people don't realize is that for guys like the Rock, their cheat meals are actually the furthest thing from that. It's instead a calculated part of his very carefully thought out program. If you, if you take a deeper look into the behind the scenes of his regimen, you discover that these weekly cheat meals are monitored by his coach and are a way for him to carb up and actually look fuller, more vascular and more striated during his shoots the following day without sabotaging his progress. Whereas on his other days he's on a strict lower carb regimen with carefully planned out meals. And there is a science to this. Cheat meals, when properly integrated, do have their benefits that can help boost your fat loss results as opposed to hinder them. How? Well, first off, and arguably most importantly, is the psychological benefit that they provide. This was shown in a 2016 paper that compared planned cheating once a week when dieting versus just strictly dieting seven days a week. They found that the cheat meal group exhibited greater long term adherence and enjoyment to their diet since they had these planned deviations or cheat meals to work towards and look forward to. Whereas the other group would develop irresistible urges and cravings that eventually led many of them to binge and get completely off track with their diet as a result. And second of all are the potential physiological benefits that they provide to help boost your fat loss, which becomes increasingly important the leaner you get and the longer that you've been dieting for. Because as you're dieting for longer and losing more and more body fat, your body tries to fight back by doing a few things. One, it decreases your leptin hormone levels which as a result increases your appetite. 2 It decreases your energy expenditure by causing you to move less and just burning less calories to function day to day, which leads to fat loss plateaus. And three, your muscle glycogen levels gradually decrease as you're being used more and more for energy, leading to tougher workouts and decrements in your performance, which all slows down your fat loss and just makes dieting less enjoyable. And this is where cheat meals can come in handy, because when done properly, the temporary increase in calories and carbs that they provide have been shown to partially counteract these various adaptations and lead to better appetite suppression, higher energy expenditure and increased performance in the following days. Not to mention the added muscle fullness that you also experience as well. Hence why guys like the ROC regularly incorporate them especially especially before their big shoots. But how can you not go about incorporating them into your plan to boost your results instead of hinder them? Well, there's a couple key points that you want to keep in mind. First of all, you need to ensure that you're planning this cheat meal into your weekly diet. And in my opinion, the best way to do this is by allocating one day of the week to be what's called a refeed day. This is simply a day where you take a quote unquote break from your diet by now eating at your maintenance calories or at least slight surplus as opposed to a deficit like you've been doing all week. This way you'll be able to create a deficit and burn fat throughout the week, and then on your refeed day you'll have 500 more calories or so to dedicate to your cheat meal to kick start your next week without gaining any additional fat in the process. And if you wanted to really indulge and have a very high calorie cheat meal, then you can make even more room for it by eating a little less on the days leading up to it and saving most of your calories for that day for your cheat meal. And this is exactly how the Rock is able to incorporate his massive cheat meals. It seems that when he's prepping for movies during the week, he follows a rigorous carb depletion diet with pre made meals all calculated for him and that as a result he's able to fit in a high calorie cheat meal once a week or so to benefit him as opposed to set him back. But the key is to fit them into your weekly calorie allowance such that you're still making progress every week with that being said, guys, be aware of how quickly your calories can add up during your cheat cheat meals. For example, if you were to head on over to five guys for your cheat meal and get yourself a bacon cheeseburger, a regular side of fries, and a vanilla milkshake to wash it all down, that would amount to a whopping 2,500 calorie meal. And this meal alone would be enough to almost completely offset the deficit that you created and the fat that you lost during that week. And this is why we even see in the research, like in this 2008 paper, individuals who successfully create a deficit by dieting and exercising throughout the week, yet on weekends mindlessly go off track with their eating, actually ended up either not losing any weight or even gained a bit of weight week after week due to the higher weekend calorie intake, offsetting their dieting efforts completely. Believe me, I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer here in your cheat meals, but I just want you to be mindful of how easily they can set you back if you don't structure them improperly. Next, let's talk about the actual composition of your cheat meal, which is important when it comes to counteracting the negative physiological adaptations from dieting most effectively. In this case, carbs are actually your best friend. Current scientific literature suggests that on your weekly refeed day where you fit your cheat meal into, preference should be given to increasing your carbohydrate intake as opposed to increasing your intake of fat or protein. This is because when compared to fat and protein, carbs not only have the greatest impact on boosting your leptin levels, which, as discussed earlier, can help with appetite suppression and increasing your energy expenditure when dieting. But they will also best help refill your muscle glycogen to create more muscle fullness and potentially augment your performance and the anabolic response that you experience in your following workouts. Which is why you'll notice that the rocks cheat meals are typically carb heavy with food foods like sushi for example. Aside from mountains of sushi though, some other great options for this meal include pasta, your favorite cereals, candy, ice cream and waffles or pancakes with syrup for example. Given that they're all high in carbs and relatively low in fat, and on the other hand, if the meal that you're really craving is quite high in fat, then it would be a good idea to try to limit the fat on it when possible by just minimizing extra sauces and oils, for example. Now, another potential bonus of Keeping your cheat meals carb dominant is that in the event that you do splurge on your calories and you do overeat by quite a bit. Research has found that in subjects who overate by the same amount of calories with either fat or carbs, both groups gained the same amount of total weight as a result. But a higher percentage of this weight gain was fat for subjects that predominantly overate with fat as opposed to carbs, with the difference averaging out to be around 10%. Meaning that theoretically you save 0.1 pounds of fat from being put on for every pound of weight gain that you gain from overeating, if you were to do so primarily with carbs, which is thought to be due to fats requiring the least energy to digest it and also having the least impact on boosting your movement and overall energy expenditure. What's interesting though, is that research has consistently shown that overeating with predominantly protein actually results in the least amount of added fat fat gain when compared to carbs and fats, which may be due to high protein diets inhibiting lipogenesis in the liver, or in other words, the formation of fat. Meaning that if you're going to splurge and overeat, then doing so with carbs and ideally protein rich foods has the greatest likelihood of minimizing fat gain, while also potentially preventing you from overeating in the first place due to its highly satiating effect. And lastly, it's important that you don't let your weekly cheat meals trigger you to completely abandon your goals and proceed to turn your cheat meal into a cheat day and then turn that into a cheat week and then fail to ever get back on track. Believe me, it's very easy for this to happen, especially as you've been dieting for longer. I mean, I even personally struggled with this and had slip ups after a long diet where a cheat meal did in fact turn into a cheat week. And I'd eat literally everything and anything with that what the hell mentality. And this failure cascade was very hard to break. And just honestly, it. It overwhelms you with tremendous guilt and regret by the end of it. So to prevent this from happening, first I want you to take the word cheat meal out of your vocabulary. I use it in this video just because it's a commonly understood term, but the very word itself has some negative connotations and guilt associated with it. Instead, I want you to name it a planned indulgence or a calculated splurge or celebration meal, for example, because it's not a meal that you should feel bad or guilty about at all. It's instead an integral part of your carefully calculated plan plant. And secondly, if all week you've been struggling with cravings and all you can think about is this upcoming cheat meal and reward for your diet, then what this implies is that your current diet just may not be sustainable for whatever reason, whether it be because you're in too much of a deficit or you're just on too strict of a diet. It's a sign that you need to consider restructuring your diet such that you're not completely depriving yourself and that you're eating meals and using recipes that you genuinely enjoy, find satisfying and hits those cravings. Otherwise you're just going to set yourself up for failure in the long run. So here is a summary of the main points that I want you to take home from this video. At the end of the day though, guys, don't overthink it too much. Be strategic with your planned indulgences if you choose to include them, but enjoy yourselves. And remember that at the end of the day what's most important is the calorie deficit that you create over time and your long term adherence to that calorie deficit. Which is why it's vital that you set up your diet based on what will enable you to accomplish those two factors most effectively. And if you do get off track, don't beat yourself up over it. Get back on the saddle and take it day by day. And for an easy to follow science based program that sets everything up for you, such that you know exactly how to train and what to eat week after week without depriving yourself of the foods that you love so you can lean down and burn off fat most effectively with science. And just like several other members have done with their Bill with science programs, then simply head on over to billwithscience.com and take the Analysis quiz to discover which program is best for you and where your body is currently at. Anyways guys, thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this one. Please don't forget to give the video a like leave a comment down below as to what you'd like to see me cover next subscribe to the channel and please don't forget to turn on notifications for my channel as well as this all really does help me out. Thank you so much everyone for your continued support and I'll see you next time.