Cheat Meals

A Cheat meal is the fitness jargon for a meal which usually wouldn’t be apart of your regular diet. It will be in most times something you buy out and high in fats/carbs/sugars.

So should you have a cheat meal during your fitness endeavour? YES.

There are benefits of having a cheat meal every so often as it will help increase your metabolism. It will also symbolise that you are enjoying the pleasures life has to offer in terms of food. Sometimes during our busy lifestyles we can’t predict what may turn up in the future and it is always important that you eat something slightly beneficial then eat nothing at all. You should be aiming to have at most 3 cheat meals every month; roughly one cheat meal a week. However, this also depends on your body fat levels, a good guide for how many cheat meals you can have is:

- If you are above 20% body fat - once every month.

- If you are between 15% and 20% body fat - once every 2 weeks.

- If you are between 8% and %15 body fat - once every week.

- If you are below 8% body fat – twice per week.

*The leaner you are the lower your leptin levels will be so the more frequent you can include cheat meals into your diet.

The science behind why cheat meals can benefit your metabolism:

When you are dieting and on a low calorie/low carb diet, your leptin hormone levels will drop dramatically in attempt by the body to spare body fat. It is a safety mechanism for the human body. With low leptin levels it becomes much harder to burn body fat. So including cheat meals or ‘cheat meal day’ into your cutting diet will be really beneficial and allow you to continue to burn body fat at an optimal rate.

In the Youtube clip below, RZfitness shows an example of a cheat meal:

               

Published by Kevin

References:

Image: http://darband.com.au/images/food/high/shahi.jpg

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrdhF-_rzY0