Cheat meals

[rapz]

Just to add we have scheduled weekly cheats - we have upped cardio twice a day and carbs will now be 125g per day 

tonight was sushi, 2 snack wraps (mc ds), lollies

Excellent you have programmed in extra calories and this will make you feel better and not so drained good move!!!

This is now part of your diet program quantified and recorded I dont call this cheat meals !? This is simply a good plan.

Cheat meals break the rules, thats why they are cheating.

Anyway enough of my thinking you are looking good and I think you are very close to 10% body fat or less, doing great !!!!!

 

thank rebel

i still call them cheat meals cos in my books it aint really "bodybuilding" foods lol i think adding in cardio and the lower carbs, il be begging for the meal come next week.

 

[DIANABOL]

I only really wanted to post up this article about cheat meals and why they are beneficial.

Rebel101 I think you and I are going to always disagreee on this subject I think so no point harping on about it *dash1*

 

March 2013: Cheat Meals
By Bill Wills PhDc 

 

Whether you call it “strategic overeating”, “acutely spiking calories” “re-feeding”, “carbing up” or another other euphemism of your choice, cheat meals can be a powerful tool. When properly executed, cheat meals can help you become leaner, stronger, and more muscular. Get it wrong, and they can wreak havoc on an otherwise sound diet plan.  To successfully implement cheat meals into your nutritional plan, it’s important to understand a bit more about how they work, why they work, who should use them, and more importantly, when a cheat meal is warranted.

Definition of a “cheat” meal
For the purposes of this article, I will consider a “cheat meal” any planned increase in calories while you are dieting, regardless of their source.  Some authors have made the distinction between “carb-ups”, “refeeds”, etc. While this can be useful, these distinctions are mostly semantic for a general discussion on cheat meals and how to implement them.  Although macronutrients matter, all cheat meals- regardless of food source, macronutrient ratio, etc, exert their effect by acutely spiking calories well above maintenance level.  Whether this is in the form of lots of clean calories (a “reefed”) or whatever you want (a “cheat”), the physiological effects are mostly dependent on total energy intake.

The guilt factor
I have to admit: early on I was very resistant to the concept of “cheating” while on a diet.  While today I encourage people to get away with whatever they can while still getting in the best possible condition, in the past I was less enthusiastic about the practice.
While you are knee-deep in a strict diet, things can get uncomfortable. You can be tired, grumpy, and at times you can be very low on energy- while at the same you are pushing very hard in the gym. Naturally, you are also hungrier. To be successful, we have to embrace being uncomfortable on some level. Although ‘uncomfortable’ is a subjective thing, it does boil down to one question: If you can have only one but not both which would you choose?Pleasure or victory? If it was the latter, most of us would never spend several weeks to months dieting and training our asses off.  Naturally if you are reading this article, you subscribe to the “victory” side of the equation, and also recognize that “discipline”  is simply staying focused on what you need to do (perfect dietary execution) to get what you truly want (your best possible condition). 
Things aren’t always so black & white, however.  Contest prep is hard work, which can be uncomfortable, and we want to win.  So what to do… get uncomfortable, right?  Of course at the most basic level, we do what is necessary to get in the best shape possible, and comfort- or lack thereof, isn’t a variable in that equation. The problem is that hard work isn’t the best of barometers, in and of itself.  Because dieting is uncomfortable and generally increases cravings for food, we tend to condition ourselves to tune out any urges to ever go off the diet. This is good, in so far as you stick to the plan.  On the other hand, it is bad when you are reluctant to plan a needed cheat due to the guilt factor.

Why Cheat?
There are both physiological and psychological reasons to implement cheat meals.
On the psychology side of the equation, the cheat meal is a nice mental break from the rigors of dieting, which can really help with adherence.   Any reduced calorie diet will tend to cause a degree of anxiety.  It’s a basic survival mechanism; we are hard wired to become less active, think more about food, and to experience more overall anxiety when the calories come down. This played a big role in keeping us alive in the caveman days but in the present tense, when our best dieting efforts are registered as “famine” by our brains, it can be downright inconvenient. As calories come down and weight loss increases, an alarm sounds that we need to find food NOW. Appetite increases, thoughts of food increase, and the urge to move around as much decreases.  Sometimes you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and every champion has learned to do this in their own way. Thinking about a diet in its totality, however, can be daunting; it is easy to make a “mental monster” out of a long diet. Sometimes all that is needed to stay focused is a cheat to break-up the monotony. This gives you something to focus on no matter how you may be feeling: “all I have to do is make it through the week… ”. In this respect cheat meals can be a powerful incentive to stick to the plan. After all, the only diet that works is the diet that you will faithfully follow. Think of it this way too, if you eat say 6 times a day, and you get 41 out of 42 meals perfect for the week, do you really think that one meal will make you suddenly fat?
There are several sound physiological reasons for a properly timed and executed cheat. Make no mistake about it, the longer you diet and the leaner you get, the more you metabolic rate will start to lag. This decreases fat burning and energy expenditure. Protein breakdown is also amplified, and you start getting weaker.  On paper at least, the concept of a cheat meal is simple; cheat meals are supposed to work by increasing metabolic rate, waking up that sluggish metabolism and increasing fat burning. After the cheat meal, calories are decreased back to dieting-levels, while enjoying the increased fat burning effect of a stoked metabolic rate. The increase in metabolic rate as a result of acute overfeeding (i.e. a cheat meal) is known in the research world as “adaptive thermogenesis”, which is technically defined as the “regulated production of heat in response to environmental changes in temperature and diet, resulting in metabolic inefficiency”(1).

At least that’s how it is supposed to work on paper.  Overfeeding has been studied quite a bit in the research world, where the consensus as it relates to cheat meals and adaptive thermogenesis is less than convincing.  While it is well established that BMR increases in response to overfeeding (2-11), a number of studies have concluded that there is no elevation in metabolic rate that can’t be accounted for by the following: 

• increased body size and tissue gain  (2, 4, 12-14)
• increased energy cost of moving around at a heavier bodyweight (2, 9)

In other words, aside from the increased energy cost of digesting all that extra food, one cheat meal will do little to speed up that sluggish dieter’s metabolism. While I am mixing the results of different  studies here  that include both shorter and longer duration overfeeding models,  the results suggest that acutely increasing calories with a cheat meal at best has a neutral effect on metabolic rate,  when you account for the above factors. At worst, these studies suggest that throwing down all those calories in the context of an already lagging metabolism could make you even fatter.
Of course, extrapolating the results of experimental models to the “real world” needs to be performed with a degree of caution. There are other studies which have concluded that adaptive thermogenesis must be present during overfeeding, because weight gain is less than expected for a given amount of calories (15). There have also been studies that show thermogenesis did increase above obligatory costs, either in the form of dietary thermogenesis (8) ( i.e. the energy cost of processing/digesting food) or in non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) (7), which is basically the energy we expend during daily activities such as sitting, standing, or fidgeting.

So what’s the deal?  Is there a real physical benefit in terms of increased fat burning and metabolic rate, or is the whole concept of the cheat meal just a rationalization we use to feel better about blowing our diets?Too many athletes implement cheat meals into their diets with amazing results, so something else must be going on here.

The indirect effect of cheat meals

While cheat meals may or may not increase metabolic rate in any kind of stable way in an experimental setting,  a dieting athlete with loads of lean tissue is not your typical experimental subject. Acutely increasing calorie intake in this setting is analogous to throwing gasoline on smoldering ashes.  Moreover, many of the desirable outcomes in terms of the beneficial effects cheat meals in hard training athletes are seldom assessed experimentally. The first thing you might notice if you have implemented cheat meals in the past is that you actually get very hot, and may even sweat quite a bit. This is literally what increased thermogenesis feels like. Cheat meals also replenish glycogen levels in depleted muscle, increasing strength and restoring your ability to train at 100%.  Muscle is an extremely metabolically active tissue; the more of it you have and the harder it works, the more calories you will burn.  Cheat meals also arrest the catabolic cascade that becomes increasingly activated while dieting. Importantly, control of the cellular protein synthesis machinery is tightly coupled to energy levels, making it opportunistic. When energy levels increase acutely, much of the new protein synthesis is associated with ribosome biogenesis.  Ribosomes, which are the cellular protein factories that translate the messages encoded in mRNAs into protein, are only kept around in large numbers when needed. So not only do cheat meals temporarily arrest any catabolic activity, they also prime muscle cells for protein synthesis. Obviously this is very important, especially when you are training all out while dieting hard.

Leptin: the most important- and least understood aspect of cheat meals.
The better shape you are in and the harder you are training, the better primed you will be to reap the benefits of cheat meals. You may have noticed, if you have experimented with cheat meals in the past, that they tend to work best when you have been dieting for some time while also pushing very hard in the gym. There are several reasons for this, and one which you might expect is increased insulin sensitivity. Hard training people in good shape are generally insulin sensitive, and starting your cheat meal with good insulin sensitivity is certainly important to ram plenty of glycogen into muscles.
While insulin is important, the ultimate pre-requisite for cheat meals is leptin sensitivity. Leptin is the most overlooked aspect of cheat meals, mostly because it tends to be the least understood. To put it simply, cheat-meals would be pointless without leptin. Leptin knocks out appetite, revs up fat burning, and keeps you from getting fat. In response to the bolus of calories from a cheat meal, a large pulse of leptin is initially released. Leptin also remains elevated for as long as 24hrs after the cheat (16). Most have experienced this before without realizing the cause; appetite can be depressed the entire next day after a big cheat meal.  This is leptin, doing its job. Your fuel gage is pegged on “full”, sending the signal to decrease appetite and increase energy expenditure. This temporary state of “hyperleptinemia” does several useful things. Fat burning is increases, and leptin action at the hypothalamus sends the signal to eat less, move around more, and burn more energy while doing it (i.e. increased adaptive thermogenesis and NEAT).  It is important to understand that as leptin levels go up, insulin sensitivity goes down. As we discussed in the previous article, “Understanding Insulin Resistance” we now know that this is a good thing. You burn more fat, store less fat, and are somewhat protected from the effects of cheat-induced nutrient-overload, a cause of oxidative stress and inflammation. 
Weeks of hard dieting keeps leptin levels very low. This is partly why you are hungrier with less energy; as calories and bodyfat levels drop, so do leptin levels.  Intense training also reduces leptin levels (17, 18), and as leptin decreases, leptin receptor sensitivity increases.  This is precisely why you shouldn’t do a cheat meal until you are already lean and training very hard. Chronic leptin levels are a barometer for bodyfat %; the more fat you have, the more leptin you will release. As leptin levels go up and stay up, leptin sensitivity decreases. So if you are not already lean, you won’t be leptin sensitive enough for maximal benefit from the cheat. 
This begs the question, what happens if you cheat when you are out of shape, and not very leptin sensitive? Best case scenario: for those with more ideal metabolisms, you break even. You haven’t gained any ground, but the cheat was not a huge setback either. Worst case scenario: instead of feeling hard, full, and pumped the next day, with a decreased appetite and tons of energy, you will feel lethargic, tired, and bloated. You will have lost ground on the diet, storing too many of the extra calories as fat. You will also generally feel like garbage, partly from increased inflammation in response to nutrient-overload driven oxidative stress.  Nutrient overload is the general cause of feeling like garbage from an ill-timed cheat and,  increased leptin + decreased insulin sensitivity is our number one defense against this (19, 20).

My Top 5 recommendations for Cheat meals:

Now that we have a basic understanding of how it all works, here are my top 5 recommendations to master the cheat:

1.  Cheat when you are leptin-sensitive
As explained above, leptin sensitivity is required for cheating to work but how do you know when you are leptin-sensitive? For the time being anyways, there is no simple test. Rest assured though; if you are already lean, have been dieting consistently, and are currently training very hard, then you are leptin-sensitive. Although insulin sensitivity is also important, if you are leptin sensitive, you will be plenty insulin sensitive as well. For this reason, I hesitate to recommend weakly cheat meals right from the start of a diet.  This is a very individual thing of course; some people with gifted metabolisms can get away with more. For the rest of us however, make sure you are already in good condition before adding a weekly or bi-weekly cheat. Whether that requires 2-4 weeks of dieting or 8 or more totally depends on the individual case and their starting condition, but always keep in mind: The more leptin sensitive you are, the better the cheat will work.

2.  Cheat during the last meal of the day.
There are a couple really good reasons to have your cheat at the end of the day. For one, you don’t waste a whole day of fat-burning, like you would if you had your cheat meal first thing. The other reason is that leptin is tightly regulated by the circadian rhythm, naturally peaking at night (21-23). This naturally evolved to suppress appetite at night, allowing us to sleep through the night instead of waking up hungry.  Timing your cheat to coincide with this natural leptin pulse aligns nicely with the natural circadian clock, and while counterintuitive, could also potentially help push more calories toward burning and away from storage as bodyfat.

3. Keep it short
This is ONE meal, not a multiple-hour binge!

4. Train the next day
The day after the cheat will be your best workout of the week. With glycogen stores full, muscle cells primed for protein synthesis, and leptin levels still elevated from the cheat, you will be in a very anabolic, fat burning, big-weight lifting state. Be sure to take advantage of it.

5. Optional: Lower calories and/or carbs the following day
If you are in a hurry, this is a great window of opportunity. Leptin levels will remain elevated for as long as 24hrs after a cheat (16). This will keep fat burning and energy expenditure high while also reducing appetite, so this is a great time to painlessly cut calories to burn some extra fat. This is also a great day to do cardio if this is part of your plan.

Wrap-up: Master the cheat

If planned and executed properly, cheat meals can ultimately help you to get leaner, while retaining more quality muscle. When used inappropriately or at the wrong times, they can prevent you from ever getting in shape. It’s all in the execution, so use these guidelines to cheat for the right reasons and at the right times to take your physique to the next level.

Until Next time, 
Bill 

[Rebel101]

Hi Dianabol I am not so sure about you and I being at odds about this and the key is in the definition of "Cheat".

You see I deem a cheat meal to be an unplanned uncontrolled decision without basis in reason but rather an emotive decision, your definition of cheat meal is executed as above it is planned and resonably controlled.

What I hear from bodybuilders pushed to the absolut limits is "I wondered if it is worth it" they should not get to that stage. If executing a extra meal at that stage enables them to control that level of diet then I am all for it, but it should be a planned action as part of an overall plan.

 

[Rebel101]

Having said that I follow quite a different philosophy to my nutritional program and it is a little difficult for me to come to terms with others choices. But I do accept and respect them !!!!

In my program no I do not do cheat meals but thats me and my choices.

[Gym rat]

Cheat meals which I enjoy and when I came off from comp mode last year had many cheat meals which very nice

[Leeroid]

LOL Dianabol, when Rebel refers to cheat meals she is talking about binges that are unplanned, spur of the moment type things. Not cheat meals that are planned in advance. Why is that so hard to understand?

[Leeroid]

Having said that I follow quite a different philosophy to my nutritional program and it is a little difficult for me to come to terms with others choices. But I do accept and respect them !!!!

In my program no I do not do cheat meals but thats me and my choices.

Having seen you on stage, your conditioning was extremely sharp. Saw you at NABBA Waikatos and IFBB Aucklands last year. I was very impressed.

[Rebel101]

Thanks Leeroid last year was alot of hard work I dieted from February to August. Thankfully it set the ground work in place for what I am doing now, I am fortunate to have 10 months of solid heavy traing before I diet this year. I am enjoying the challenge and also look forward to cutting again in July, almost like having my cake and eating it too.

Next time we are at a competition you must come and introduce yourself it would be great to meet you. You have done alot with your physique too, are you going to compete this year?

 

[Leeroid]

Yes, I will introduce myself if I see you. I will be doing the IFBB waikatos, junior division.

[Rebel101]

Yes, I will introduce myself if I see you. I will be doing the IFBB waikatos, junior division.

Hmmmmm I might just have to come and have a look....

[AZIDE]

looks like marriage is on the cards

[Rebel101]

No sorry to disappoint u, l am a rebel and don't domesticate well hahaha, speak my mind too freely for mosts liking. Neither do l give out praise if its not deserved.

[rapz]

off topic:

you got photos from comp rebel?

[Rebel101]

off topic:

you got photos from comp rebel?

Yes though I have to ask which one absurdly I did 4 last year haha I wanted to figure out what each federation was like

[Rebel101]

off topic:

you got photos from comp rebel?

Yes though I have to ask which one absurdly I did 4 last year

[DIANABOL]

LOL Dianabol, when Rebel refers to cheat meals she is talking about binges that are unplanned, spur of the moment type things. Not cheat meals that are planned in advance. Why is that so hard to understand?

LOL Gookroid where the f*ck have I argued the definition of cheat meals? I dont give a f*ck what you call them, cheat meals, planned cheat meals, gook binge...whatever. 

I have always only disagreed with Rebels 10 days philosophy which is completely incorrect. 

[jimmybro1]

 

[rapz]

off topic:

you got photos from comp rebel?

Yes though I have to ask which one absurdly I did 4 last year haha I wanted to figure out what each federation was like

ahh i dunno post a few up or your favs

[Leeroid]

 

LOL Dianabol, when Rebel refers to cheat meals she is talking about binges that are unplanned, spur of the moment type things. Not cheat meals that are planned in advance. Why is that so hard to understand?

LOL Gookroid where the f*ck have I argued the definition of cheat meals? I dont give a f*ck what you call them, cheat meals, planned cheat meals, gook binge...whatever. 

I have always only disagreed with Rebels 10 days philosophy which is completely incorrect. 

Gee, calm your tits

[DIANABOL]

 

LOL Dianabol, when Rebel refers to cheat meals she is talking about binges that are unplanned, spur of the moment type things. Not cheat meals that are planned in advance. Why is that so hard to understand?

LOL Gookroid where the f*ck have I argued the definition of cheat meals? I dont give a f*ck what you call them, cheat meals, planned cheat meals, gook binge...whatever. 

I have always only disagreed with Rebels 10 days philosophy which is completely incorrect. 

Gee, calm your tits

Whatever little boy

[Rebel101]

Guys let it go, you cannot dissagree with something you did not understand, and I apologise but I do not have the patience to try and explain it to you. I should have known better than to try and discuss something that requires a better mode of communication than writing in a forum.

[Rebel101]

 

off topic:

you got photos from comp rebel?

Yes though I have to ask which one absurdly I did 4 last year haha I wanted to figure out what each federation was like

ahh i dunno post a few up or your favs

I will have a look for you we have moved home recently so please be patient for a couple of days.

[DIANABOL]

Guys let it go, you cannot dissagree with something you did not understand, and I apologise but I do not have the patience to try and explain it to you. I should have known better than to try and discuss something that requires a better mode of communication than writing in a forum.

Its pretty hard to understand your theory when you contradict yourself:

 

The cheat meal you had will have set you back about 10 days (literally) which at this point in time is okay you are on track anyway, but it will also skrew your head up if you let it.

 

Only after 10 days will you now start to feel like you are moving ahead again (this is really only a mind set thing as you are moving ahead all the time) its just that until this 10 days are over you will not be able to see it.

 

Hi Dianabol just in response perhaps I should have been more specific in that instance, it does not set anyone physically back.

 

The 10 days is a physiological response, firstly it takes time to utilise the extra glycogen that has been consumed and then to fully deplete again takes a little more time.

 

 

[rapz]

 

Guys let it go, you cannot dissagree with something you did not understand, and I apologise but I do not have the patience to try and explain it to you. I should have known better than to try and discuss something that requires a better mode of communication than writing in a forum.

Its pretty hard to understand your theory when you contradict yourself:

 

The cheat meal you had will have set you back about 10 days (literally) which at this point in time is okay you are on track anyway, but it will also skrew your head up if you let it.

 

Only after 10 days will you now start to feel like you are moving ahead again (this is really only a mind set thing as you are moving ahead all the time) its just that until this 10 days are over you will not be able to see it.

 

Hi Dianabol just in response perhaps I should have been more specific in that instance, it does not set anyone physically back.

 

The 10 days is a physiological response, firstly it takes time to utilise the extra glycogen that has been consumed and then to fully deplete again takes a little more time.

 

 

i should have asked tihs long ago, but where does the 10 day time frame come from? it is so exact.

and lets say in theory there was a time frame surrounding a cheat/binge/whatever , how true would this hold for someone that is enhanced and especially on compounds that are known to chew through glycogen stores - tren ,t3 etc.

dont ask me for science papers, im talking real life experience here.

[Rebel101]

 

 

Guys let it go, you cannot dissagree with something you did not understand, and I apologise but I do not have the patience to try and explain it to you. I should have known better than to try and discuss something that requires a better mode of communication than writing in a forum.

Its pretty hard to understand your theory when you contradict yourself:

 

The cheat meal you had will have set you back about 10 days (literally) which at this point in time is okay you are on track anyway, but it will also skrew your head up if you let it.

 

Only after 10 days will you now start to feel like you are moving ahead again (this is really only a mind set thing as you are moving ahead all the time) its just that until this 10 days are over you will not be able to see it.

 

Hi Dianabol just in response perhaps I should have been more specific in that instance, it does not set anyone physically back.

 

The 10 days is a physiological response, firstly it takes time to utilise the extra glycogen that has been consumed and then to fully deplete again takes a little more time.

 

 

i should have asked tihs long ago, but where does the 10 day time frame come from? it is so exact.

and lets say in theory there was a time frame surrounding a cheat/binge/whatever , how true would this hold for someone that is enhanced and especially on compounds that are known to chew through glycogen stores - tren ,t3 etc.

dont ask me for science papers, im talking real life experience here.

If I take the time to explain, and people don't agree with me are they simply going to make fun of me?