Will a Cheat Weekend Ruin My Weight Loss Progress? Having a cheat weekend won't affect your journey as long as you have a calorie deficit at the end of the week. Calorie targets must be calculated based on weekly consumption rather than daily, to provide more flexibility.
Many people scoff at the notion that having just one cheat day per week will ruin their fat-loss efforts, but it absolutely can.
In order to gain a pound of fat, you would need to add about 500 calories a day on top of your normal diet, every day, for about 7 days. This makes gaining any significant amount of fat from even the craziest all-out cheat days extremely unlikely.
While overindulgence can be detrimental to your health, cheat meals themselves aren't harmful. If you've eaten clean foods all week, limited your sugar intake, and exercised regularly, one or two unhealthy meals on the weekend will not hurt you. In fact, they'll probably help.
You may gain weight
If you're indulging in most of your meals over a week long period, that's a LOT more calories you're tallying up each day. So, unless you're quadrupling your usual exercise routine, chances are you'll see the scales head upwards.
How Often Should Be Your Cheat Day? Since every weight loss program is unique, there is no conclusive response to this issue. However, most people recommend having a cheat day once a week. This will allow you to indulge without jeopardizing your diet or weight reduction objectives.
A good time to fast would be after a cheat day, when you've ingested extra calories and other toxins. It doesn't even need to be a whole dedicated to fasting. Instead, you can just skip a meal or consolidate eating all your calories into one window of time.
'There is not an exact number of calories that you can eat on a cheat day but a good guideline to follow is to not consume more than 150 per cent of your regular calorie intake/limit,' according to Bodies by Byrne, run by a nutritionist and fitness instructor.
Why does a cheat day cause you to gain weight? A cheat day causes some large weight increases, but weight because of water, not fat. Depending on what kind of diet you were on, loading up on carbs on a cheat day can increase your weight noticeably.
Since most of us can't eat so much in a day or two that we actually gain a couple of kilos a day, a dramatic increase in weight could be due to water retention. Eating, drinking, urinating, bowel movements, exercise—everything can affect your body's water composition and, therefore, weight.
The 2 kg that you gain right after a huge dinner is not fat. It's the actual weight of everything you've had to eat and drink. The added weight of the meal will be gone several hours later when you've finished digesting it.
The Benefits of Cheating
Research shows that after a cheat meal, the body increases its metabolism, causing you to burn calories faster. This is caused by increased levels of leptin, a hormone secreted by fat cells and responsible for maintaining energy balance in the body.
A cheat day is when you allow yourself an entire day of eating anything you want without counting calories or watching what you eat. It's something to look forward to, like a reward for being healthy and staying on track with your diet. Also, it helps to keep you from constantly feeling deprived.
Your levels of leptin (the hormone responsible for suppressing feelings of hunger) fall when you diet, and this can make it harder to resist eating. The theory goes that cheat days help keep your leptin levels up.
Eating 3000 calories a day can lead to weight gain. This is because three thousand calories a day are more than an average individual needs in a day. However, some people like athletes actually do need around these many calories or even more. It is advisable to consult a professional before you start this meal plan.
On a cheat day, you are allowed to eat whatever you want. It is possible that you may not count the calories as on a normal day. While some choose to go all out, some choose a less extreme version and increase their daily calorie intake with healthy, high-calorie foods.
If you eat 1500 calories daily and 3000 calories on Saturdays (or another cheat day of choice), your metabolism will experience a small boost and your will burn more calories on “normal” days. Just do your best to lower the glycemic index of the cheat meals so you burn them more slowly and absorb less as fat.
Suddenly, you've had a whole weekend of cheat meals...and potentially some bloating to show for it. Hey, it happens. But giving yourself just three cheat days a week is enough to impact your gut health as badly as a consistent diet of junk food, according to a study in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research.
This depends on the individual and what a regimen is, but it can vary. Some people can have cheat days once a week, others can do so once a month, while others should limit them even further. Lowe suggests once a year is good, because each day, people don't realize how many calories they are consuming.
Many people complain that they gain weight around the holidays, but you'll be happy to know that you can't really gain weight from a single meal or day of overeating.