How to arrange cheat days 

What is a cheat day? 

A cheat day is a day when you can eat and drink as much as you like and eat some cheating foods like sweets, biscuits, etc. I get asked about this a lot, no matter what diet I introduce, people will keep asking, can I arrange cheat days on a fasting diet? Is there a cheat day on the carbon cycle? It makes me feel that everyone seems to be losing weight painfully as if they must have a cheat day every week to survive. But I don't blame you because when I didn't know much about it in the past, I often saw some experts let loose with their cheat days, and then I would watch with great interest and want to imitate them. But after serious research, I realized that most people were doing it wrong, so today, I want to set the record straight. 

The theory behind cheat days 

Let's start with three theories that support cheat days and can help you lose weight more easily 

1. Cheat days are a form of intermittent restricted eating 

This paper shows that intermittent restriction of intake is more effective than daily restriction of intake in helping to lose weight and improve insulin sensitivity. Intermittent restriction of intake means eating less for a long time and then eating more for a short time. For example, you can eat very little for four days, then eat a lot for one day or three weeks of eating very little, followed by four days of eating very much, which is more effective for weight loss than eating less every day. Intermittent fasting, like the second week of our previous video, also has this effect, which is to not eat during long fasting periods and eat more during short eating periods. 

Research Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23591120 

2. Cheat days can increase your metabolism 

During weight loss, your metabolism will decrease. Eating a lot of high-carbohydrate foods suddenly can make your metabolism rise back up. 

This study can confirm that this theory is correct, but it takes three days of high-calorie intake to increase metabolism by 7%. 

However, I believe that during the weight loss process, arranging three rest days can increase it even more. It is not necessary to eat high-carbohydrate foods to increase metabolism because the paper used girls who had already lost weight as the experimental subjects and did not indicate whether there had been long-term restrictions on food intake before, nor did it indicate the previous eating habits. If you have been eating a low-carb or ketogenic diet, then your cheat day can also be low-carb or ketogenic, just with a little more calorie intake. This will not make it take you too long to return to a state of ketosis. 

Research source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11126336 

3. Cheat days make the weight loss process easier 

Research shows this, and most people think this way, too, but everyone feels differently. The above three theories make cheat days sound great, but most people fail when they try them. The way the general public implements cheat days is to eat more on one day of the week and eat less on the other six days. The ideal situation is that you can lose weight on those six days and then eat a bit more on cheat day to get your metabolism back up and prevent it from dropping during the weight loss process. But the problem is that cheating for one day will not boost your metabolism at all, and they simply don't eat enough on those six days. They even eat a lot of cheat food on those six days and then cheat again on the seventh day. Of course, some people can successfully lose weight by cheating frequently, but there are even more people who fail. Cheating doesn't sound very good, so I hope everyone understands what I'm about to say based on the theory of “intermittent eating.” 

Cheat day arrangement 

First of all, for the food eaten on cheat day, I would recommend sticking to what I taught in the previous video, except increasing the portion size. 

I still don't recommend eating too much junk food during the cheat period because you will lack nutrients. If you want to eat high-carb, please eat sweet potatoes, oatmeal, etc. If you are counting calories, you can eat TDE E just right or slightly more, and then you need to know that the frequency of cheating is determined by the amount of food you eat. You need to remember one important point, and that is that to succeed, you need to eat very little for a long time to qualify for cheat day. I would recommend that you decide based on the rate of weight loss. The faster the weight loss, the higher the cheat frequency can be. If I have lost the target weight in a week, that is, I have lost 1% of my total weight, I will eat more in the following days to maintain my weight. If your weight weight is not decreasing at all, it means you are not eating enough, and you are not eligible to cheat. Then there is the fat loss rest period, which you can think of as a longer cheat day. The purpose is to get your metabolism back up and your body pressure down. This fat loss rest period is three days where you can eat more, but counting calories is just eating the TDEE or a little more, and not counting calories is just eating a little more than usual. Then don't let your weight increase by more than 2% of your total weight. For someone weighing 60 kg, your weight should not increase by more than 1.2 kg after three days of rest.