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The REAL Story on Cheat Days

By Jolene Goring

A common question that I get asked is: “What do you think about cheat days?” My answer: cheat MEALS – yes, cheat DAYS – no. But before we go any further, we need everyone to know exactly what a cheat day and a cheat meal are.

A cheat day is one day a week that you are allowed to eat ANYTHING that you want. Pancakes and bacon for breakfast, a banana split for lunch, bags of chips and chocolate bars, pizza for dinner. Anything goes. The reasoning behind this is that it’s important to shock your body. When you eat clean all week long, your body gets used to the limited calories, so it gets more efficient at using them which can lead to weight loss plateaus. When you add a cheat meal into the mix, it shocks the body, the body resets its burn rate to accommodate more calories, and the net result is fat loss when you go back to your clean eating.

A cheat meal is like a mini cheat day. For one meal (I recommend the meal doesn’t last more than 1.5 hours, otherwise it can turn into a cheat day!) you can eat whatever you want. Anything. The same principle applies, to shock your body into the end result of burning more fat.

Using techniques to confuse the body is not a new method – we use it all the time in working out by often changing up the exercises. Our body is incredibly smart, and it adapts to be as efficient as possible – which unfortunately means that it tries to store fat whenever it can!

But this is where cheat meals come in - I have 4 reasons for preferring cheat meals over cheat days, besides the fact that this method has worked the best for myself and all of my clients.

1. The 80 / 20 rule.

Eat clean 80% of the time and you can eat whatever you want the other 20% of the time. First off – this is a loose rule for MAINTAINING a good physique, not for losing fat which is most people’s goal. So 1 day out of 7 means that for about 15% of the week (one day) you are eating crap. True, this is within the 80/20 parameters BUT...

2. Most people can’t eat perfectly clean for 6 days straight!

If you can – amazing, good for you, have your cheat DAY because you are probably at your ideal Bodyfat percentage already! But for most normal people – life gets in the way. There are birthday parties, business lunches, happy hour celebrations, the vending machine, the list goes on and on. So if a person is not eating perfectly clean, the cheat day plus the ‘mini cheats’ during the week will account for a lot more than 20% of their weekly intake. So how do we allow ourselves to indulge, yet still be moving towards our goal?

3. Eat 2 cheat MEALS per week, on separate days

The average person working with a trainer is instructed to eat 5 – 6 times per day. This works out to 35 – 42 meals a week. 2 meals a week works out to 4 – 6% crap meals...this gives alot more leeway for the mini cheats throughout the week that often happen.

4. The psychological factor

There have been many studies done on how the human psyche measures pleasure. The anticipation of pleasure (in our case, ice cream or chocolate or pizza) actually makes us feel almost as good as the actual event that we are looking forward to. So it makes more sense to have TWO cheat meals to look forward to every week, as opposed to just one. Most people can hold off on a craving for a couple of days, but much fewer people can hold off for a week. And if we can maximize pleasure AND get better results – why wouldn’t we do it!

So here is the challenge: For one month, try using cheat meals instead of cheat days. You will feel better, be happier, and get superior results!

About the Author:

Jolene Goring is a leading health and fitness expert based in Scottsdale, AZ. She has been featured in USA Today, on Sonoran Living TV, and has recently been named one of ‘America’s Premier Fitness Experts.’ She is also a featured personal trainer in various fitness videos, and is a co-author for the exciting new fitness book “Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger.”

Jolene has been involved in the health and fitness industry for 12 years. She has taught yoga on the beach in Mexico, studied belly dancing in Egypt, traveled the world as a fitness model, taught snowboarding in Canada, and studied yoga in an ashram in India. She has trained with personal trainers and participated in extreme sports worldwide. She has her Bachelor of Science degree, and numerous health, nutrition, and fitness certifications. Jolene is always looking for new challenges, and her next big adventures will be hiking to the base camp of Everest, and learning how to skydive!

Jolene is the Fitness Director of Geo-Fit Personal Training, an exclusive personal training company based in Scottsdale, AZ. Geo-Fit utilizes different fitness techniques from around the world, to provide the most fun, effective, and safest workouts available. Go to www.geo-fit.com for your FREE Celebrity Metabolism Boosters Report!