How we're used to thinking: "I'm on a cut now and it's not easy, but my trainer allowed me to do cheat meals to boost metabolism when the diet stalls. It seems to work, and it lets me blow off steam too!"
How it really is. I'm quite often asked about cheat meals, but let's start with basic concepts.
Cheat meal - is an abundant food intake that goes beyond any diet framework.
Simply put, gluttony. When you "can't live like this anymore," and the body literally begs for a trip to McDonald's for a ton of additional calories.
"Why does this happen?"
If you've read the previous notes in this series, then you're starting to understand the full disastrousness and primitiveness of amateur-composed diets. In which, at best, you can guess the caloric content, and sometimes the PFC ratio. But certainly not the PFC sources, their combination, as well as vitamin-mineral balance.
Because of this, almost every person on a diet is a person on a stressful diet, with nutrient deficiency and imbalance. The body resists this as it can, which ultimately results in a plateau state. Weight loss stops.
What can help it? Right, a cheat meal. After severe stress and hunger, a complete, varied and abundant meal literally brings the body back to life. Metabolic processes speed up again, and with good health, weight loss reactivates. Even if nutrition is stressful again.
All this has spawned many reverent rumors about the miraculous nature of cheat meals. But there's a flip side to all this.
"Is this normal?"
Is a nutrition regimen normal in which the body experiences such severe stress that only a cheat meal can bring it to its senses?.. The question is rather rhetorical.
Of course, without sufficient experience and knowledge, for the overwhelming majority of people this is the only way to get in shape. But unfortunately, stressful nutrition always has its price. With each such experience, the body will be increasingly adapted to stressful diets, constantly slowing metabolism. Cheat meals will give increasingly worse results. Cutting will be harder, and gaining fat easier. This is a normal and inevitable process. The body protects itself from our unreasonable actions that can harm it.
"Who is this suitable for?"
Usually after I explain the complete dead-end nature of this approach, appeals follow. Someone always has a friend, acquaintance, or just some blogger who has been cutting like this for years and is in excellent shape!
The answer here is simple—metabolism speed is different for all people. There are guys with daily metabolism of 4000, 5000 and even 6000 kcal per day. Usually it's hard for them to gain fat in principle, but if it happens, they solve the issue simply. They can do any nonsense, even sit on a cucumber diet, and weight will leave perfectly. And if it stalls, a cheat meal will help.
Why don't they have problems? For the same reason—fast metabolism. To explain it simply, such guys just have a huge safety margin. There's almost no difference for normal full life if their metabolism drops, for example, from 5000 kcal to 3500 kcal. Both are quite a lot. This is the power of genetics, and there are lucky ones here.
But most people have a natural metabolism level around 2000-3000 kcal. And this is for men! Yes, you'll lose weight on stupid diets with cheat meals, but this chariot of success very quickly risks turning into a pumpkin. In my practice, I've very often encountered huge men weighing over 100kg who can't eat more than 1500-2000 kcal. Eat more—they start getting fat. And weight loss is altogether comparable to the Gestapo. What led them to this? Imitating those who really got lucky, and of course unwillingness to understand the basics of dietetics.
Conclusion
If you need a cheat meal—believe me, you're doing something wrong.
With complete and rational nutrition, a cheat meal is simply meaningless, since weight loss always goes in an even and stable background, without plateaus and difficulties. A cheat meal is simply not needed, and will be regarded by the body as ordinary overeating, not a miraculous kick.
Stressful diets suit very few. Therefore, in the next race "by any means," think whether this won't be shooting yourself in the foot.
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