Cheat Meal Without Getting Fat

More efficient ways to cheat meal

What if I tell you that I can sometimes eat badly and still lose body fat? Does it look like a dream if I say that diets shouldn't be as harsh as you see on the internet?

Over the years, I've experimented on myself and my clients' different nutritional plans, and I’ve found that there is “life” in dieting. As long as you follow some guidelines, I believe that for the average person is better to remove some temptations once in while by cheating on your diet.

What Is a Cheat Meal?

First of all cheat meals can be different for everybody, depending on your diet and objectives, but to clarify it I will define it to be “anything that exits your food spectrum you decided to follow.”

Some people have more restricted diets than others, depending on their current shape and on their plans for the future so this story is not about me trying to change your mind on what or how much to eat, but whether to make what you are currently doing more efficient!

With that out of the way I just want to say this first — “cheat” is a very ugly word. “Cheating on your partner, Cheat on the test”. We surely want to give some credit to cheat meals because I believe this can also be done right.

Benefits of a Cheat Meal

Bad news! You probably think cheat meal spikes your metabolism and that might not be entirely accurate. If done wrong, it may only spike your insulin, a cheat day might do you more harm than good health-wise and progress-wise.

In my opinion, the only benefit of cheat meals is simply for a mental boost only. They might help you continue your diet prison for “one more week” if you give your brain a small reward, just like we do with our pets after they complete a good task. This is how I see a cheat meal.

Refeeding with Cheat meals

When we are talking about losing weight diets, the muscles get depleted of stored carbohydrates called glycogen if done correctly. This can be temporarily restored by consuming larger than usual quantities of carbohydrates.

Studies say refeeds can preserve muscle mass or muscle wasting in the process of harsh calorie-restricted diets, but other than that, there is no advantage of using junk food over the quality carbohydrates if your goal is to refeed.

How much is too much?

As you probably noticed, we are talking about cheat meals, not cheat days, so this alone can be a good clue when discussing what is considered too much.

No answer can fit everyone. Of course, each of us has different genetics, goals, and self-control but if your target is to lose weight, you have to be in a caloric deficit. Don’t kill your entire week deficit by overeating because your progress will stop or slow down a lot.

Long story short, moderation is key whether you like to avoid gaining fat or just want to be a healthier person.

How I minimize fat gains from a cheat meal

#1: Fasting approach

Maybe your mother wouldn’t agree with skipping breakfast, but because the caloric intake will be significantly increased for the day, you might try to do intermittent fasting until you have your cheat meal so this way you can lower the total amount of calories eaten at the end of the day.

#2: Cardio helps

Just burn some extra calories, whenever you can, timing is not as important as the length/intensity of the cardio, so just do it!

#3: Digestion

You can improve digestion by chewing slowly, including fiber in your meal, and hydrate properly.

#4: Choosing Healthier Versions of Cheat Meals

• Hamburgers

A “guru” made hamburger is a hamburger that is prepared in a restaurant or at home and that is not purchased from a window from the comfort of your car. You want the healthier version with real 90%+ beef meat with the smallest amount of fat possible.

I might pause writing this article and make one for myself right now. You can also add lettuce, onion, pickles, tomatoes, and smaller or fewer sauces. Everything above can be applied to other foods like burritos, sandwiches, shawarmas, sushi, souvlakis, gyros.

Another good tip is to cook your potatoes or any veggies on an air fryer machine, this limits the calories because you don’t use oil.

Avoid processed foods because those are not fresh, don’t have micronutrients, have more calories because of the fat, digest hardly, and have many additives bad for your health.

• Pizza

Be careful with this one! For me personally, it’s one of the best taste-wise but one of the least favorites cheat wisely because it is a very nutrient-dense meal.

It has a lot of cheese (calories) which slows digestion and the protein quality of cheese and bacon is a lot worse than other high-quality meats so I am trying to avoid pizza unless I am very depleted.

• Junk you REALLY want to avoid

You significantly increase your caloric intake without gaining any nutritional benefit if you don’t avoid all these cookies, ice creams, sugar beverages, alcohol, desserts, and snacks the whole day.

I hope you’ve learned something useful and now you can plan your cheat day properly so you don’t undo all this hard diet and cardio sessions during the week because you can really set yourself back if you overeat with the excuse “is a cheat meal”.