You might have seen The Rock, or your favourite bodybuilder, scarfing down a stack of pancakes and proudly labelling it as a ‘Cheat Meal’ or ‘Cheat Day’.
Some folks claim that these cheat meals lead to an increased ability to lose fat due to a “psychological break” from clean eating.
Others say that it helps to boost your metabolism while dieting, helping you burn more calories at rest.
In this article, we’ll unpack:
- What the science says about cheat meals
- Whether or not you should be including them when trying to lose fat
- An alternative approach that might be just flat out better for your fat loss progress
What exactly is a ‘cheat meal’?
First let’s take a look at how cheat meals are defined in the scientific literature.
In this 2022 paper on Canadian adolescents and young adults, the authors describe a cheat meal as:
“…eating episodes that temporarily deviate from one’s established dietary practices (i.e., restrictive and/or restraint) to consume prohibited foods momentarily.”
Most popularly, this structured as either a single meal or one cheat day. Calories are either not counted or intentionally increased, while highly processed and calorie-dense foods are consumed.
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So where does the magic happen with cheat meals?
Most people who dive into cheat meals aren’t actually interested in the benefits of eating junk food specifically.
It’s about the temporary reprieve from fat loss dieting, both from energy restriction and having to make strictly healthy food choices.
Lucky for us, we have a body of research that compares continuous and intermittent approaches to dieting.
To my knowledge, the first research we have on diet breaks – or taking a temporary detour from your diet – starts in 2003.
Believe it or not, the researcher’s goal wasn’t even to figure out how to use pizza to lose more fat!
They wanted to learn more about weight loss relapses, so they intentionally gave their subjects ‘breaks’ in energy restriction so they could observe the relapses more closely.
Since then, there have been a number of studies that put the diet break to the test, to see if we could keep more muscle around when we lose fat, or prevent weight regain after the diet.
The MATADOR Study
One study you’ll love is the MATADOR study – where they dieted two groups of obese men in parallel.
Group A‘s diet consisted of:
- 4 weeks of baseline eating at a maintenance level of calories.
- Followed by a 16-week continuous diet, at around a 950 calorie deficit per day.
- They then completed another 8 weeks of baseline eating.
Group B had the same 4 weeks of baseline eating at maintenance calories to start.
But here’s where it gets interesting.
Instead of a flat out diet, they instead ate in an alternating pattern:
- 2 weeks at a 950 calorie deficit
- 2 weeks of baseline eating
Group B totalled 30 weeks of dieting, before finishing with an 8-week period of baseline eating.
They recorded measurements along the way, after every 4 weeks of dieting, and at 6 months after the study, as a follow up.
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Can you guess which group did better?
The intermittent dieting group lost 14.1kg, and the continuous group lost 9.2kg.
That 10.8lb difference on average– is quite a lot!
Not only did the intermittent group lose more fat, they kept more of their fat loss results at the 6 month mark.
So…does this mean that taking more diet breaks will ‘protect your metabolism’ and help you burn fat faster?
Maybe – but it’s unlikely.
We don’t know for sure, since they didn’t measure the subjects daily activity levels throughout the study. This is the largest contributor to reduced metabolic rate due to dieting, and a key piece of the puzzle.
There were a number of limitations to this study, so this data isn’t conclusive.
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Here’s the more likely reason for the study’s results:
Dieting for fat loss is hard.
Especially when it’s 16-weeks flat out.
It gets even harder when you’re in a deficit of 1000 calories per day.
So taking breaks along the way makes it easier to adhere to the plan.
Better adherence means more weight is lost.
More weight lost means better buy-in.
Better buy-in means more adherence, and the cycle continues.
So there’s probably a real benefit of taking a detour from a strictly controlled diet temporarily, since you know it’s not just going to be an all-out war of bland chicken and broccoli for 16 weeks straight.
But it’s likely not due to a protection of metabolic slowdown or a reduction in ‘adaptive thermogenesis’.
These folks weren’t gorging themselves on cheat meals either, they were just eating a baseline level of calories.
I have a feeling we would’ve seen very different results if the subjects in the intermittent group were encouraged to hit up an all-you-can-eat buffet and get double their money’s worth each weekend.
It seems like the best fat loss diet is probably the one you’re most likely to stick to.
With all else being equal, your total calorie balance is going to be the largest determinant of how much weight you lose.
That’s a big red flag for an untracked cheat day, since it could throw off your calorie balance for the entire week.
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A Tale of Two Diets
Let’s imagine your total daily energy expenditure is 2500 calories per day.
You decide to lose fat by imposing a 750 calorie deficit.
If you stick to it for 7 days, you incur a 5250 calorie deficit for the week, and lose 1.5 lb of fat.
Great work!
For the graph-lovers, here’s what that might look like:
That would be a solid week of progress in scenario one.
But what if we threw a cheat meal in there…to help you ‘stick with it’.
You stick to it for 6 days.
Then go off the rails and eat 4500 calories on Sunday.
You just cut your deficit down to 2500 calories for the entire week…
Now you’re only losing 0.7 lb of fat that week.
For the visual learners:
Additionally, research has shown time and time again that that highly palatable and delicious foods tend to make us want more delicious food, instead of ‘scratching an itch’.
Why Eating Delicious Food Makes Dieting Harder
In case you ever felt like you always have room for dessert – you’re not alone.
There is now evidence suggesting that your brain literally produces less of the hormones that marks you feel satisfied and full when you eat things that taste amazing.
All of this contributes to the food palatability-reward hypothesis, which suggests that super tasty foods with incredibly pleasurable textures actually generate cravings, and tell your brain to want more of it, instead of ticking a box.
So you may want to consider limiting your attendance to a ecstasy-inducing-poutine-fest while you’re dieting for fat loss.
With all things considered, cheat meals are probably not a worthwhile inclusion for anyone who is taking a serious attempt at transforming their body.
Sure, temporarily going over your calories or veering off plan is bound to happen in life…but you don’t need to go out of your way each week to make it happen.
While you’re losing fat, you will significantly slow down your progress by including regular, untracked, high-calorie meals.
If you’re cool with that– knock yourself out! Personally, I’m not throwing away an entire week of hunger and dieting, just for a few tasty meals on a Sunday.
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So here are 2 strategies that I use personally to get the adherence boost of cheat meals, without unnecessarily slowing down my fat loss progress:
As long as you’re hitting your protein and/or calorie goals, it doesn’t matter if you squeeze a few Oreos in there.
In fact, all the power to you if that’s what you want to do.
This can help you stick to your diet plan for longer, which means you’ll make more progress.
All without slowing down your progress.
Just be aware of any foods that might cause you to overeat and go over your calorie goals because you can’t control yourself around them…
For me this is those kettle-cooked, Ms. Vickies potato chips and basically any pastry.
I just don’t buy them when I’m deep into a diet because I know that I’ll go overboard.
Think of this as a more… intentional series of “cheat meals”.
A diet break is a pre-planned period where you’re eating at a maintenance level of calories for at least a week.
This allows you to shake off some of the physiological and psychological side effects of dieting.
Things like:
mood disruptions
sleep disruptions
hunger
low energy
After finishing the diet break, you can be fresh and ready to go at it hard again.
This might look something like an 8 to 16-week fat loss diet, and then a 4 to 8 week period where you eat a baseline, or maintenance level, of calories.
By the end of this diet break, you’re going to almost forget what it feels like to be super hungry.
You’re not going to lose any weight while you’re on that diet break.
You might even see your weight bump up by 2 or 3 percent.
But it’s ultimately not a big deal because you’re providing yourself with so much more runway to push that fat loss diet even harder when you’re back on it.
Hopefully this helps you make better fat loss progress and make the whole process easier to stick to.
Until next time,
Matteo
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