Tips » Diet
How often should I have a cheat meal to keep my metabolism going?
A cheat day is not going to get your metabolism going again. I know a few popular programs that advocate this. The body, however, is a little smarter than that. It usually takes several days of eating with a new pattern to impact your overall metabolism.
The cheat day serves two purposes and only two: for the person who markets a program, it gives them a way to provide freedom to their customers/clients/book buyers by saying you don't have to give anything up. For the actual person on the plan, it gives them a psychological break from eating foods they may not have adjusted to before.
There is nothing wrong with a cheat day - many people use it to their success. It just isn't true that it will boost your metabolism and many people I have worked with actually sabotage their progress - they spend the whole week exercising and eating clean to make a 3500 caloric deficit to lose 1 pound, and then they overeat by 4000 calories on the cheat day. Not good.
Using a cheat day as an excuse to gorge yourself is also horrendous from a health perspective - you are 250% more likely to suffer from a heart attack when you overfeed yourself.
It's okay to have pizza, ice cream, etc. The key is to not stuff yourself. Eat enough to enjoy it, but don't over eat. As I have said before, use the cheat day or meal to eat anything you want, but not to eat everything you want.
I personally lived and died by my cheat day for awhile and ended up elminating it. I switched to one free meal per week. I found it changed my life ... and my wife's as well. Even months into our new lifestyle, we were still living a diet because we needed a cheat day. That meant we really did not think what we were eating was good - we were living 1 day a week and the other 6 were a "diet". Switching to just a cheat meal meant we had to focus on the foods for the rest of the week and learn to enjoy them ... and it helped move us from the diet mentality to the living healthy mentality.
I like to use the analogy of smoking. Eating clean for 6 days and then cheating for 1 is like saying you are quitting smoking by going 6 days and then smoking several packs on Saturday. It may be an improvement but it is still not what is in your body's best interest - it is just in the best interest of your cravings and desire to eat junk food.