Day before Yesterday evening one of our patients asked me this question, and while she was asking this question, I remembered so many clients who had asked this same question in the past, countless times. So I thought of sharing the answer with you as well. So friends let’s find out how cheat days affect weight loss in a positive and negative way or does it really affects weight loss at all!
We all know what Cheating is…don’t we know that it means “dishonest act”. But can cheating with meal be helpful in losing weight?
People often discuss this with us “I want to have a cheat day once a week where I can eat whatever I want without worrying about my calories,” and the very next question without waiting for an answer is “But will this cheat day hurt my weight loss?”….LOL
If you ask me… cheat diet is a double edge sword, here’s how:
Suppose you had 600 extra calories in form of sweets and treats on a weekend you won’t gain weight because over next 6 days those treats would be equivalent to 100 extra calories per day which is not much and can be easily compensated by reducing negligible portion of food like 1 roti or 1 bread less than usual per day will do. A lot of people think that cheat day increases metabolism and help losing weight but the truth is, scientifically cheat diet has not been found having any beneficial effect on your body both short-term or the long-term. One benefit I have however seen in some people is that cheat diet breaks the monotony of diet and can motivate us to stick to our healthy diet for rest of the week.
Misuse the cheat diet concept and you will gain weight rather than losing it!.
Consider this:
Someone eats larger quantity of food on a cheat day. If you eat anything and everything you’ve been craving: a fast food at KFC, potato chips and burgers at McDonalds, a milkshake and some buttery popcorn in a theatre. You take in extra 3,000 calories end of the day which is just too much to handle for your body and will be stored as extra layer of fat, so forget about losing weight… even maintaining it would be difficult!
So it depends on how you cheat on a Cheat day and still maintain weight or lose it or gain it!!
Instead of saying “I want a cheat diet” say “I want to eat what I want to and I want to eat it more than I wanted to, but that happens to everyone once in a while”. It is normal and I won’t feel bad about it.
But if I make room for cheat day in my calander and am able to control for whole of the week after that cheat diet day, then I’ll go ahead. “Cheat But Cheat Smart” Don’t let your cheat day turn into a binge day which happens so often!
Eat Good Live Lite 🙂