7 Strategies to upgrade your Cheat Meals
We all have our weight loss goals and it’s important to work towards them every day. But let’s be honest, an impressive body transformation won’t happen overnight. It will take months of healthy lower carb choices to see drastic changes in body composition, but this doesn’t mean you must put your life on hold.
Here are 7 strategies that will help reduce the negative side effects of cheat meals.
Allowing you to enjoy those forbidden foods with your friends and family and have a better social life.
Before we dive into the strategic methods, we need to clarify the term
“Cheat Meal”
I prefer to call it a “Treat Meal” or even better a “Carb-up Meal”. The term “Cheat” gives it a negative overtone that makes you feel like you’re doing something bad, which you’re not.
Carb-up meals can be very beneficial on a weight loss journey. They can help rev-up your metabolism and get you past those plateaus by shocking your system.
They can help keep healthy levels of important hormones like leptin, which is the hormone that tells your brain when it’s full. (1)
Carb-up meals will also help keep you motivated and on track to see long-term weight loss. Knowing you have a Treat meal coming up will make it easier to stick to the plan in the days in between.
Any weight loss seen will only be long-term if the diet used becomes a lifestyle. That’s why it’s helpful to include carb-up meals into your Low-carb/Ketogenic diets.
let’s dive into the strategic methods to implement for a Smart Cheat meal
Strategy 1: Intermittent fasting
IF or Intermittent Fasting is a key strategy that has numerous health benefits that go far beyond weight loss. (2)(3) It is safe and can feel like a walk in the park when done correctly. IF allows you to save the majority of your daily calories for the much-anticipated cheat meal, and you do this by fasting in the morning.
Do this the smart way by having a cup of coffee with a tablespoon of MCT oil for breakfast. MCT or Medium-chain triglyceride is a healthy fat found in coconuts. It is a shorter-chain fat that by-passes the digestive system and goes straight to the liver where it is converted into Ketones. You can find a great brand on the recommendations page of the Burn it Nutrition website. MCT will help increase your cognitive ability and blunt your hunger for hours. You want to try and fast for most of the day, but if your treat meal happens to be a late dinner, then have your workout and after that’s done, have a very light meal. Maybe make yourself a small chicken salad or a Protein shake with MCT oil.
Strategy 2: Fasted Training before your Cheat meal
This is one of the most crucial strategies to implement. When you train fasted, especially with higher intensity exercises, you force your body to tap into its stored energy and deplete muscle glycogen. Glycogen is a stored form of glucose which comes from the breakdown of carbohydrate. Depleting your muscular glycogen before a carb-up meal with a fasted workout frees up room for the carbs that will be consumed later. Consuming a higher carb meal with full glycogen stores will cause excess glucose to be stored as fat. (4) Ideally, its best to do your fasted workout right before the carb-up meal to increase muscle growth, but if that’s not possible, then at least make sure it’s done sometime before the treat meal.
Strategy 3: Key Supplements to take
There are certain supplements that will give you the upper hand by reducing the negative side effects of higher carb cheat meals. One key supplement to take before your fasted training is BCAA or Branch Chain Amino Acids. This supplement helps provide the body with a good supply of amino acids that initiate protein synthesis and prevent muscle breakdown. Another helpful supplement is Chromium Picolinate, taking this will help the metabolic process that shuttles the glucose in carbs into the cells mitochondria to be used for energy. Turmeric Curcumin and Omega-3 fish oils are also key supplements to take with a Carb-up meal to help fight inflammation. Here are some great brands for the supplements I have mentioned. Also, make sure to check with your doctor before adding any supplements to your list.
Strategy 4: Save carbs for the end and make them good carbs
You want to save most of your calories especially the carbs for the end of the day. This will reduce the cravings that come from carbs and allow you to use less of your willpower during the day. (5) It’s also important to understand that if you are severally over weight, then you probably will have some form of insulin resistance so try to find healthy carbohydrates to eat on a carb-up day. You want to pick real whole food carbs that have micronutrients that can nourish the body. Don’t go straight for the junk food full of empty calories. Yes, this is a “cheat meal” but it’s best to still be smart about your choices. Go for some white rice, quinoa, sweet potato fries or even mashed potatoes. Try to stay away from pure sugar or highly processed junk food and sugary drinks. Once you have hit your weight loss goals and have healed your metabolism is when it would be ok to go for full on cheat meals, where you eat anything you want. When thing to note, when you raise the levels of carbs for your cheat meal, you also have to lower the dietary fat.
Strategy 5: Slow Down while eating
Take your time and savor every bite! You have been anticipating this meal for some time, so slow down and enjoy the delightful pleasures of being alive. Startup interesting conversation with your dinner guest and use them as small breaks to your feasting. Slowing down the pace of how you eat should allow your brain to catch up with your stomach and get the signals that you are getting full and should stop eating. Try to be aware of changes in how you feel while eating these different foods. Make a mental note on how your energy and mood changes. Many will notice that they don’t feel as good as when they first sat down to eat. Use this as a reminder next time you are fighting an urge to have an uncontrolled cheat meal.
Strategy 6: Don’t confuse “Treat meals” with binging.
It’s important to remember that there is a big difference between a “Treat meal” and full blown binge eating. It’s ok to allow yourself to enjoy one meal and have some of those forbidden foods but don’t make it into a “Cheat day”. You don’t want to have extremely excess amounts of calories in one day, it could really set you back. The reason the 1st strategy (IF) is so key, is that it makes excessive over eating very hard to do in one sitting. Fasting most of the day should give you a big enough buffer in calories to enjoy a very satisfying meal without feeling like you left the table hungry.
Strategy 7: Fast the next morning and get back on track
Skip breakfast the morning after by fasting with the use of MCT coffee. This will help give your body some time to cleanse from the previous night’s choices. Also, make sure you get back on track the very next day, this is the most important strategy of them all. Many people get derailed off their low-carb or ketogenic diet because they tried Carb-up meals before they were ready. You have to get control of your cravings by staying on track for enough time that you give your body a chance to heal at a cellular level. Ideally, you should avoid higher carb meals until you have become fat-adapted. Once your fat adapted you raise the digestive enzymes in the body to better use fat as a fuel. A fat-adapted body has the enzymatic process in place to easily switch back to using fat as fuel the very next day. It takes several days of eating high-carb to shift out of being fat adapted so it’s smart to just put in the effort at the start of your journey and upgrade your metabolism.
Using carb-up meals is a great tool for a weight loss journey but I would not recommend them for people who are using Low-carb/Ketogenic diets to treat health issues like Cancer, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s & Epilepsy. (6)(7) It is best that they work with their doctors and stay on track with their diet for longer periods to give them the best chances in fighting their own personal health battles.
The holidays are just around the corner, consider using these strategies on your “Cheat Meals” and allow yourself to indulge the smart way.
Perfection is an uncommon road to success, real progress will be seen when you apply consistency towards your goals. Stay on track for most of your days so that when you do “cheat”, you earned it and you won’t feel bad.
Get a step-by-step guide that gives you the strategic methods I used to drop 60lbs of pure fat in 7months with the use of 5th Stage Keto.
References:
- Enriori PJ et al “Leptin Resistance and Obesity” Obesity (2006) 14, 254S–258S; doi: 10.1038/oby.2006.319.
- Alirexzae M, et al. “Short-term fasting induces profound neuronal autophagy.” 2010;6(6):702–710. Accessed June 15,2016.
- Safdie FM, et al. “Fasting and cancer treatment in humans: A case series report.” 2009;1(12):988–1007.
- Buyken AE, Flood V, Empson M, et al. “Carbohydrate nutrition and inflammatory disease mortality in older adults.” Am J Clin Nutr. 2010
- Sofer S1 et al “Greater weight loss and hormonal changes after 6 months diet with carbohydrates eaten mostly at dinner.” Obesity (Silver Spring). 2011 Oct;19(10):2006-14. doi: 10.1038/oby.2011.48. Epub 2011 Apr 7.
- Boling CL, Westman EC, Yancy WS, Jr. “Carbohydrate-restricted diets for obesity and related diseases: An update.” Curr Atheroscl Rep. 2008;11(6):462-469.
- Westman EC, Mavropoulos J, Yancy WS Jr., Volek JS. “A review of low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets.” Curr Atheroscl 2003;5(6:476-483.
