
I used to have cheat meals all the time I would put myself in a caloric deficit for a long period of time and then I would go one or two days eat a caloric Surplus and I was still losing fat but I would fluctuate a lot I was inconsistent water retention would be all over the place and ultimately I found that it was really hard for me to get to the body fat percentage that I wanted to be at especially to stay under 10% cuz I thought for the longest time that if I would just like put myself in a choric deficit then have a large cheat meal I could get the things that I want I could enjoy the food that I want and I would still be able to maintain because I'd for the most part be in a deficit what I didn't realize is that I was doing it wrong and I feel like I'm doing it better now where I I have little bits of food that I like every single day but you've got to hear This research cuz this this will change your perspective and will give you insight into to how to do it better but before we dive into that I put a link down below for 50% off of create creatine gummies these are sweetened with alose so they don't have added sugar or anything like that 1.5 gram of creatine per gummy so it allows you to dose it appropriately throughout the course of the day not just in one big bowas which is great because that seems to help some of the water retention that may come along with creatine supplementation I've noticed that if I take like 1 and a 12 grams in the morning in the lunch and in evening my water retention doesn't go up like I do if I take five or 10 grams in the morning plus they taste really good they have four delicious flavors they have a sour apple they have a watermelon a blue raspberry and an orange and it's 50% off so a great way to get creatine in when all the literature is starting to really come pouring out how awesome creatine is so that link is down below when it comes down to it a cheat meal has a more calorific effect what this means is because of adaptive thermogenesis as our calories decrease our resting energy expenditure our resting metabolic rate our base metabolic rate decreases and it can happen pretty fast and I'll explain this with a study that was published in the American journal of clinical nutrition the study had people do one week of overfeeding at a 50% Surplus and then it had them do 3 weeks in a caloric deficit and then went back to two weeks of refeeding in a surplus ultimately what they found is that the subjects that ended up going through the deficit when they went through a deficit ended up decreasing their resting energy expenditure their amount of calories they burn in a day by 108 calories 32 of these calories had to do with the loss of muscle mass but 76 of these calories were due to True adaptive thermogenesis what this means is true adaptive thermogenesis it wasn't a loss of muscle it was the fact that the body turned down how much they burn in an effort to maintain so we lost muscle sure that reduced the amount of calories burned but they also the whole system up top turned everything down and we've heard of this before it's the quote unquote slowing of the metabolism when you diet what's interesting is there was a study published in nutricion hospital area and this took a look at overweight people in a deficit so they put them in a deficit for three months and they compare them to people that lost 5% or didn't lose 5% they compared them to one another obese people ended up having about a loss of 164 calories it may be more intense with people that are overweight or obese so the impact of adaptive thermogenesis might even be more aggressive or your body's trying to preserve even more let's say 2 200 calories is your maintenance and you put yourself into a 500 calorie deficit so you're eating 2,000 calories a day at the end of the week you are in a 3,000 calorie deficit congratulations you lost almost a pound if this is true now considering the metabolic slowdown that occurred you would think okay I can consume 3,000 calories and then I'd be at break even right well that's wrong because your basal metabolic rate has decreased so if you were to consume 3,000 calories you'd actually gain weight you get what I'm saying because you've brought your basal metabolic rate down and then you're still consuming a cheap meal so you need to adjust your cheat meals which actually gets really really difficult I don't like to suffer for a week just to have one piece of enjoyment that's like living week to week it's almost like living paycheck to paycheck psychologically I don't like that so let's take a look at the physiological side though because there's a leptin discussion leptin is a hormone that is secreted by fat and when you eat higher amounts larger amounts of food that stimulates us to be our metabolism right but it may not be the case so let's take a look at this there's a study that was published in the journal obesity and related metabolic disorders what this study had them do is it had them consume 3 days of an isoenergetic diet so two groups ate the same amount of calories same Fuel and then they had them consume either a high fat diet for a few days or a high carbohydrate diet for a few days what they did find is that the group that overfed carbohydrates had a 28% increase in leptin the group that overfed fat did not have an increase in leptin now leptin in theory should secrete and it should stimulate the metabolism because it's leptin's job to be secreted from the fat to tell the brain hey brain we have enough fuel on hand feel free to ramp up that metabolism go right for it boom okay so that's great eating extra carbs after being in a deficit would stimulate leptin 28% sounds like good news but there's more to it no relationship between changes in leptin concentration and changes in energy exure suggesting leptin is not involved in the stimulation of energy metabolism during overfeeding what that means is yes there is an increase in leptin but there was no relationship with leptin and overall energy expenditure leptin did not stoke the metabolism so just because leptin increased it doesn't mean that it drove up the metabolism it may have been a very temporary increase so eating cheat meals to stimulate leptin not going to fly it's not the real way on the contrary there was a study published in obesity that found that having cheat meals might actually be detrimental even when it comes down to leptin what this study did is it had subjects consume a either high calorie or low calor diet for a little while and then for two days it had them consume either a high carb or a high fat or combination basically had them overc consume put themselves in a surplus for a couple of days what they found is that 2 days of eating in a surplus of cheat days ultimately ended up making them eat more for 4 days following that it increased the carb Cravings it increased the hunger and overall increased their actual food intake by changing the brain it may have to do with leptin it may be something completely different but bottom line is the cheap meals the cheap days after being in a deficit actually made them eat more so it was seriously problematic it actually has a longer term detriment I always thought cheat meals were good but then when I look back at my personal experience I do a lot better by just having little bits of cheat meals every day and keeping my metabolism elevated now I know that's easy to say but the biggest thing that I've learned is g-lux okay g-lux for me means I would rather eat a little bit more and move a little bit more then eat less and move less so now I've learned okay Thomas enjoy a little bit of the food that you like but go move a little bit more eat that food don't put yourself into such a deficit where it's miserable induce a deficit by eating a little bit more and then moving a little bit more to counterbalance it because that way you're not decreasing your met rate as much this is so important so now I don't have massive cheat meals I don't do that anymore that I I agree that messed me up it was harder to maintain my weight now I might have three or four little cheats throughout the week and I just balance it out and I don't crave a massive cheat meal okay now I want to continue on talking about this whole letin thing because most overweight people are leptin resistant so what good does it do you to have a cheat meal that stimulates leptin when you're lein resistant in the first place it's increasing circulating leptin but the leptin isn't docking anywhere it actually makes you more lein resistant think of leptin let's just call it an ex-girlfriend or something keeps calling you okay if they call you and call you and call you and call you constantly and you don't want to talk to them you're going to build resistance and you're going to eventually block them so they can't even contact you that's like leptin receptors and leptin that is letin resistance leptin's like hey I'm here I'm here hey increase metabolism increase metabolism finally the brain's just like shut up wall up friend zoned done right if there was a break from food for a long period of time I.E maybe some fasting things like that it can restore letin sensitivity maybe after a year apart from your ex-girlfriend she calls you and you're like yeah it's been a while kind of in the mood might be kind of nice all right and then it rekindles this beautiful relationship and you run off into the sunset whatever point is the thing that that ex-girlfriend should have done would be call you more during that time so by increasing leptin by eating bigger cheap meals all you're doing is making more pesky phone calls you're actually making the problem worse you're better off to exercise and just increase your calories a little bit here and there maybe try a slower deficit or go into a heavy deficit lose the fat but keep in mind that you do need to occasionally spike it here's a solution that I have found Works high calorie day low calorie day high calorie day low calorie day or fasting day non-fasting day fasting day non-fasting day these little things like that along with big amounts of movement will defeat this entire problem you don't need to have these massive massive cheat meals trust me as someone that has made those mistakes you are better off to enjoy the chocolate have the fun not to mention metabolically there was a study published scientific reports that found that like after being in a deficit and reducing calories this is done in mice but basically once the fuel comes back in in a surplus it can actually be metabolically damaging you can have issues with your vessels your blood vessels you can have issues with blood sugar because you're restricting so much and then you bring it back that is problematic so don't make the mistakes that I've made don't focus on one cheat meal that's putting the wrong goal in place deficit deficit deficit restrict restrict restrict go overboard restrict restrict restrict restrict go overboard nah better to little restriction little life little restriction little life I'll see you tomorrow