The integration of cheat days or cheat meals into a weight loss diet plan helps you stick to healthy foods and habits without eliminating the foods you love. This sometimes becomes necessary when people get bored of eating the same “healthy” food again and again. Fitness experts believe that for people who are following a weight loss journey, it is hard to resist delicious foods.
So, relishing a cheat meal or cheat meal day is suggested as long as it keeps your weight balanced. In this post, we will learn more about the concept of cheat meals and cheat days, their effectiveness in your weight loss objectives, and whether or not you should incorporate them into your fitness journey.
What Is A Cheat Meal?
A meal that has a minimum of 500 calories more than what you consume daily is called a cheat meal. So, suppose if you are sticking to a 2000 calorie diet plan, then a cheat meal is one where you consume 2500 calories in a day. This meal is designed to have a greater number of macronutrients. So, this is a single high-calorie meal that you can incorporate in your daily diet.
This additional 500 calories can come from various foods such as pizza, bakery items, fries, or all that you crave for. In this way, you give yourself the freedom to consume a calculated number of extra calories to temporarily relax strict dieting guidelines.
What Are Cheat Days?
Now here is one more way in which you can give a little relaxation to yourself to eat foods of your choice. Unlike a cheat meal wherein you are permitted to eat only a single calorie-rich meal, on a cheat meal day, you can eat anything you like throughout the day.
Are cheat days ok?
Cheat days can be okay during weight loss, but they work best when approached intentionally rather than emotionally. In my experience, a full cheat day often leads to unnecessary overeating, blood sugar fluctuations, and feelings of guilt, while a single cheat meal provides satisfaction without derailing progress. A well-planned indulgence once a week can actually support weight loss by reducing cravings, improving adherence, and helping you stay consistent long term.
What’s important is keeping it mindful and controlled—enjoy the food without turning it into an all-day eating, hydrate well, and surround that meal with lighter, cleaner options. Before indulging, pause and ask yourself whether you’re craving the food or simply craving comfort; this simple mindfulness check prevents emotional eating and makes your weight-loss journey more balanced and sustainable.
What Is The Purpose Behind Cheat Diets?
The purpose behind a cheat meal or a cheat meal day is to reward yourself for sticking to a specified calorie diet throughout the week. It is seen that this temporary reward-based dieting encourages people to stick to their prescribed diet.
Differences Between A Cheat Meal And A Cheat Meal Day?
Cheat meals are considered as scheduled meals that are made by including indulgent foods that may not be advised on your weight loss diet. On the other hand, a cheat meal day is when you have an entire day to consume any kind of food of your choice to enjoy throughout the day.
A cheat meal refers to a single calorie-dense meal enjoyed occasionally, while a cheat day spans several hours—typically around twelve—during which a person can freely indulge in their favourite foods. Cheat meals are suitable for individuals who maintain a healthy diet and engage in regular, intensive workouts of at least a few hours each day.
In contrast, cheat days should be reserved only for highly active individuals such as bodybuilders or professional athletes, whose training demands are significantly higher.
Cheat diets are only for those who have an active lifestyle and can burn the extra number of calories that they consume on cheat days. If they do not work out or have a sedentary lifestyle, then these excess calories will result in weight gain.
How Does Cheating In Dieting Works?
A reward-based cheat diet strategy is effective only when you can execute a well-planned diet as well as maintain a low-calorie intake. It has been seen that cheat meals lead to enhanced metabolic function and measurable reductions in body weight due to variations in the levels of circulating hunger hormone, leptin in the body. Low levels of this hormone suppress the feelings of hunger that leads to considerable weight loss.
Intermittent periods of the introduction of higher-calorie foods in your diet tricks your hormone cycle and encourages it to produce more leptin temporarily. This action prevents the craving for rebound excessive eating. By following a low calorie and healthy diet most of the time and reducing calorie intake, it is possible to experience weight loss in the body.
Principles Of A Cheat Meal Work For Weight Reduction
Cheat meals are most suited to break the “weight loss plateau” wherein you consume fewer calories and perform regular exercise but fail to lose the flab in a sustained manner. The cause behind it is that your body has gotten accustomed to eating healthy and low-calorie foods for a considerable period, and now it has stopped responding.
A cheat meal provides a sudden calorie shock to the body that has a weakening effect on latent metabolism. The drastic rise in calorie levels in the body boosts the metabolic system to burn those additional calories.
1. Helps Balances The Hunger Hormones
Cheat diet impacts the level of the appetite-suppressing hormone, “leptin” and the appetite-stimulating hormone, “ghrelin”. When these hormones are balanced in the body, it leads to eating a high-calorie cheat meal. Single cheat meal once a week increases levels of leptin hormone and reduce the levels of ghrelin hormone.
The result is seen in the form of reduced hunger pangs. Along with it, the balance in hunger hormones enhances the operation of thyroid function and improves energy levels in the body too.
2. Breaks Boredom
Often boredom sets in when you follow strict weight-loss diets. As it is a long-term strategy you need to find ways to prevent such happening. A cheat meal is a good way to break that monotonous routine. The strategy works on the emotional levels and you feel more refreshed after eating your choice of foods occasionally.
How Is A Cheat Diet Implemented In A Weight Loss Diet Plan?
Cheat diet can be implemented in different ways depending on the individual needs of people, lifestyle, fitness goals, and diet preferences. Along with the extent of calorie relaxation, the foods that you eat in the form of a cheat meal also varies from one person to another. People who are vegetarian, non-vegetarian, vegan, etc. may have different dietary choices and they are prescribed different foods to eat on their cheat day.
The cheat meal works on the 90/10 Rule where a person needs to eat well-planned and calorie-restricted meals 90 percent of the time, and indulge in foods that are outside of the weight loss diet for 10 percent of the time.
Along with having a cheat meal, it is very important to incorporate a cheat meal post-workout to burn the extra calories consumed.
There is no fixed format as to how many times one should implement cheat meals and cheat days in their diet. It depends on individual weight loss and health goals that they wish to achieve.
Before you implement a cheat diet, you should ask your nutritionist how you can plan it appropriately. It should not be perceived as a license to excessive overeating. A cheat diet should serve its purpose of breaking down weight loss plateau and help people stick to their weight-loss diets with more vigor.
What Are The Side Effects Of Unhealthy Eating Behaviors?
The cheat meal strategy is closely linked to the psychology behind weight loss. Some people can resist their temptation as they know that their cheat meal day is nearing and they can fulfill their food cravings on that day. However, not everybody has self-control and discipline to regulate their eating behaviors.
Moreover, if you aren’t able to control your hunger desires, then you may eat more than what you should consume. This can nullify all your previous weight reduction efforts. So, cheat diets can encourage a person to fall into the same old eating pattern. He may show excessive eating behavior, disordered eating and food addiction tendencies. They may even face a hard time self-regulating their eating habits.
To save from these harmful side effects it is required that you perceive a cheat diet with a proper strategy. It does not imply that you can eat anything in any amount and at any time. It is very important to observe your hunger pangs and eat heathiest cheat foods while adhering to the calories that you are allowed to eat.
When Is It Permissible To Go For A Cheat Meal?
A Cheat meal is not for everyone who is on a weight loss diet. Certain pre-requisites should be fulfilled to be eligible for eating a delectable cheat meal.
- When you have successfully followed the dietary guidelines on all six days of the week.
- You have done a minimum of three hours of exercise a week.
- You have lost a minimum of 2500 calories a week.
Is Cheat Diet Really Successful In Weight Loss?
For a successful and continuous weight loss, you need to eat fewer calories than what you burn in one day. Your outlook towards food holds a lot of significance in impacting your capacity to resist enticement and normalize eating behaviors too.
According to a three-month study on the impact of people’s attitude on the food they eat, it was found that those who linked pastries with festivity gained more success in their weight reduction goals than those who had associated it with the feelings of guiltiness.
Where cheat meals can benefit people, who have control over their senses, it can cause harm to those who struggle with food addiction, eating disorders and emotional eating. So, this diet strategy can lead to unhealthy eating behaviors in them. It becomes necessary to approach this strategy with a healthy approach in conjunction with realistic objectives and expectations. In that way, it will contribute to physical and mental health in a person.
The most impactful diet plan is the one that is targeted and that you can adhere to for longer periods. Cheat meals should be incorporated into your diet with other strategies that help to support your distinctive long-term personal needs.
1. Pre-Planning Helps
When you pre-plan what you are going to eat on your cheat meal day based on calorie relaxation limit, it prevents you from deviating from planned weight loss objective. You would stick to only those cheat foods and avoid unnecessary cravings.
2. Know Your Maximum Calorie Consumption
For sustained weight loss, it is required to know how many calories do you need to consume on a cheat meal day. This will help you stay within the limit and prevent overconsumption.
3. Earn It
The maximum satisfaction from a cheat meal comes when you earn it. It is when you have diligently followed weight loss goals throughout the week and now you are eligible to reward yourself. Eating your favourite foods in this manner gives you a happy feeling that is devoid of guilt.
4. Be Mindful
By being intuitive and mindful, you can lower tendencies that lead to emotional eating and indulge eating. When you pay attention to your hunger cues, then you only eat when you feel hungry and stop when you feel full. This eating style may assist you in reducing weight gain in the body and relish dining experience.
5. Choose only nutrient-dense and high-calorie cheat foods
One of the aspects of mindful eating is to choose foods that not just taste delicious but also healthy to incorporate in a cheat meal. These include homemade cake, sushi, brown rice, baked tortilla chips etc.
6. Preferably Keep Cheat Meals On The Weekend
People generally go to dine out and eat calorie-dense foods on weekends. So, it is a good decision to schedule your cheat foods on the weekends.
7. Do Not Eat Cheat Foods When Starving
When you feel hungry, then you will consume more. There is a possibility that you may miss your calorie goals. A good strategy is to have a fruit salad, vegetable salad, or digestive biscuit before you eat a cheat meal. It will reduce your hunger to some extent, so that you can enjoy your cheat food in moderate amounts.
8. Consider Only One Cheat Food A Week
Including several cheat foods may confuse your body and may even lead to going beyond the permissible calorie limit. Focus on one cheat food every week so that you enjoy it fully while maintaining a healthy level of calories in the body.
9. Engage in Workout
After a reward diet, you need to burn excess calories by doing a workout to prevent them from getting deposited in the form of fat in the body. A combination of strength training and cardio will help in burning excess calories from the body.
Frequently Asked Questions About Cheat Day and Cheat Meals
Below are some of the commonly asked questions on a Cheat Diet.
1. How Do You Feel After A Cheat Meal?
The sense of earning a cheat meal is incredibly rewarding, and enjoying your favourite food after staying committed to your weight-loss goals feels even better. This reward-based approach creates feelings of happiness, satisfaction, and renewed motivation, making it easier to stay consistent and enthusiastic about your diet. Including occasional cheat meals helps people maintain their weight-loss efforts because they don’t feel deprived or forced to give up the foods they love.
2. How Frequently Should You Indulge In A Cheat Meal?
A cheat meal is a temporary strategy until you get accustomed to healthy foods and do not crave for unhealthy foods. It is a practice to slowly reduce your consumption of such foods and increase your healthy eating habits. Cheat meal strategy is ideal in the initial stages of a weight loss journey when the person is new to a healthy eating plan. It is permissible to have a single cheat meal a week for a month.
3. Can Cheat Diet Be Incorporated In Any Diet Program?
As the cheat strategy is flexible, you can implement it with different types of diet patterns. However, ketogenic diet and other strict weight-loss diets are an exception. These diets require a person to strictly adhere to the diet and do not allow any room for cheating. This makes it clear that the cheat diet is appropriate to be utilized only in diets that permit some flexibility.
Conclusion
The concept of cheat meals or cheat meal days gives you a way to relish the delectable foods without putting on weight. The sudden increase of calories in your system break the phase when you stop reducing weight. This strategy increases the rate of fat burn and uplifts your mood too.
However, you need to follow some self-control and mindful eating practices.to prevent going back to the old disordered eating tendencies. A consultation with a nutritionist would be helpful to find out when and how to incorporate cheat meal/cheat days into your diet while sticking to your weight-loss objectives.
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