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Who doesn’t love a good cheat meal? Having that occasional indulgence can help satisfy some of our psychological desires and keep us from feeling deprived. You do need to be careful though, as one wrong move can completely throw your fitness program off track. Here are 5 cheat meal tips for keeping the fat gain in check.
Eat All Your Healthy Meals First
When we know our cheat meal is right around the corner, we can have a tendency to push up the schedule a bit. Many times that leads to people jumping the gun and gorging themselves all day long. When this happens, you completely miss out on all your nutrients. Remember, your cheat meal is supposed to work with you – not against you. Make a deal with yourself that you won’t have your cheat meal until you’ve eaten all your healthy food first. You’ll be much happier in the end that you had a productive day.
Work Around Your Food Addiction
Cheat meals and food addiction don’t go very well together – trust me, I know. However, I’ve learned to work with my binge eating disorder. At first, I told myself that I could never have any processed food again because it would throw me off track. I told myself it was like giving drugs to a drug addict just once a week. I didn’t think it could be done.
All that did was make me want the food more. Instead of depriving myself, I turned it into an opportunity to work on self control. I sat down and thought about what caused me to fall of track, and I set a plan in place to make sure that wouldn’t happen. The biggest thing for me? Going to the food instead of bringing it home.
Eat What You Can in a Single Sitting
Let’s not make a cheat meal into a whole cheat day. Yes, some people can get away with a cheat day, but they are far and few between. Eating processed food from breakfast to nighttime can easily rack up over 5000 calories or more – completely wiping out your hard week’s work. Instead of going one step forward and two steps back, eat what you can in a single sitting and keep your calories under control. Remind yourself that this isn’t your last meal ever and that if you stick to the rules, you’ll be able to do this again soon.
Think Before You Act
Today’s cheat day! Let’s go to the store and “window” shop for food! Bad idea. Don’t get me wrong, unplanned cheat meals can be a good thing. Not having such a rigid schedule can make you feel more free and keeps you from developing disordered eating habits. That’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about is mapping out a plan for what you’re going to do before, during, and after your cheat meal once you’ve made the decision to have one.
Think about what you’re going to eat and if it’s going to be worth it to you. Promise yourself that it’s only going to be one meal and that you’re going to make the next meal after your cheat meal a healthy one. Doing so will keep your cheat meal from turning into a weekend-long free-for-all. Be careful not to start rationalizing with yourself. Remember, one and done.
Forget About the Scale For a Few Days
The absolute worse thing you can do is weigh yourself the day after a cheat meal. Ouch! The scale could jump 5 pounds or more in just that one day. Have no fear though – that extra weight is not all fat. It is very common to add a lot of extra water weight after a processed cheat meal. Both intracellular water from glycogen storage in your muscles, and extracellular water retention from bloating are going to happen, and will take a couple of days to return back to normal levels.
Stepping on the scale and seeing that higher weight number is enough to throw many people into a tailspin and give up on their fitness program altogether. They wonder why they should work so hard all week for nothing. Don’t let this happen to you. In fact, just go ahead and put the scale away until it’s time to take body fat measurements. It’s the only thing it’s good for, and it will help keep your cheat meal a productive and beneficial action instead of a negative and discouraging decision.
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