The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly About Your Cheat Meal
Kate Irwin • March 3, 2020
That One Meal Can Undo Your Work For The Week
A typical fat loss meal plan has you consuming a set number of calories per day. Historically these diets have you consuming less calorie-dense foods like vegetables, fruit, and lean protein in order to fill your daily requirements. Adding in things like donuts, cake, chips, and higher calorie-dense foods has been frowned upon in the diet world.
In recent years the idea of a cheat meal has been encouraged as a way to get away from the mundane Monday to Friday chicken and vegetables. By scheduling a day where you can “cheat” on a meal it gives you the mental and physical break from being so strict and not enjoying your food.
But is this the answer to being able to maintain the diet? The answer is probably not.
When we determine your daily calorie goal we look at the number of calories you burn in a day, including exercise, and subtract a select number of calories from that to put you in a caloric deficit.
For this example let's set the daily calories burned to 2,000 calories, a conservative but maintainable caloric deficit would put the daily calorie goal around 1,800 calories. This 10% deficit will allow you to decrease fat and weight while still having the energy to function.
In this example, you consume 1,800 calories a day Monday through Friday. On Saturday when you indulge in your cheat meal - not only is it unlikely you track it but it is likely that it is a very high-calorie density meal. If you eat normally all day Saturday and indulge in a cheat meal Saturday for dinner (think a restaurant burger, fries, glass of wine and a couple of bites of an appetizer). While it’s only one day that you are going over calories you can easily undo your week’s worth of hard work.
Five days at a 10% caloric deficit is equal to 1000 calories. At that rate, you should lose just under half a pound a week. Once we account for the increase in calories in the cheat meal you can easily decrease your deficit by half or more! This means that you will work extremely hard all week to decrease your calories and one meal can undo all that hard work which then becomes frustrating and causes many people to give up on the plan.
So what now? If you want to lose weight do you have to stick to consuming only “clean” foods? The answer is no, but it is time to start changing the mindset. Rather than focusing on a cheat meal where all rules go out the window, you are better served to calculate the calories and macronutrients in all your meals and include them in your tracking. By tracking everything and making higher calorie density foods like french fries or a slice of cake fit into your meal plan you are both less likely to fall off the wagon and more likely to hit your goals!
If you need help learning how to incorporate less nutrient-dense and historically forbidden foods into your diet think about joining the Nova Health Club Nutrition Challenge that will be running at the end of March. During this challenge, we focus on increasing your awareness of what you are putting into your body and how to make less healthy foods fit into your daily routine but not take away from your goals!
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