Planning for Cheat Meals/Days

[dayvoh]

Hi Robert,
Do people plan for cheat meals and cheat days by lowering calories throughout the rest of the day or week?

I'm currently planning my meals with the goal of recomposition, as I got up to about 22% BF during and after my NLP, and would like to get back down to around 16% eventually. I'm pretty disciplined with my meals, and calories all through out the week, but always have difficulty eating right on Friday nights. My question is: is there a way to plan to allow for this? Throughout the week, my dinner is generally only in the 400 calorie range. But if I'm out on a Friday, 2-3 slices of pizza and 1 or 2 beers puts me a whopping 500-800 calories or so over for the day.

thanks for any info

[Robert Santana]

Hi Robert,
Do people plan for cheat meals and cheat days by lowering calories throughout the rest of the day or week?

I'm currently planning my meals with the goal of recomposition, as I got up to about 22% BF during and after my NLP, and would like to get back down to around 16% eventually. I'm pretty disciplined with my meals, and calories all through out the week, but always have difficulty eating right on Friday nights. My question is: is there a way to plan to allow for this? Throughout the week, my dinner is generally only in the 400 calorie range. But if I'm out on a Friday, 2-3 slices of pizza and 1 or 2 beers puts me a whopping 500-800 calories or so over for the day.

thanks for any info

Great question! So my thoughts with "cheat meals" is that you should just avoid them and include the foods you want in smaller portions. It may just be that the amount of food you listed there puts you at a point of no return. So maybe continue eating that stuff and cut it in half. You can try and create a weekly deficit by under eating on other days but i generally don't advocate this approach because it's not the best for glycemic control and also ramps cravings up to a point that can lead to cycles of overeating followed by undereating.

[SD3]

Hi Robert,
Do people plan for cheat meals and cheat days by lowering calories throughout the rest of the day or week?

I'm currently planning my meals with the goal of recomposition, as I got up to about 22% BF during and after my NLP, and would like to get back down to around 16% eventually. I'm pretty disciplined with my meals, and calories all through out the week, but always have difficulty eating right on Friday nights. My question is: is there a way to plan to allow for this? Throughout the week, my dinner is generally only in the 400 calorie range. But if I'm out on a Friday, 2-3 slices of pizza and 1 or 2 beers puts me a whopping 500-800 calories or so over for the day.

thanks for any info

Me personally I use an app to track calories/macros. If I know I'm going out to eat this weekend I search the menu online, find out what I want to order, and put that into the day first. Then at that point I can work the rest of the day around that so my macros are where they should be (or as close as possible), and I don't go over in calories.

[MattBraunstein]

This raises another question about the momentum of weight gain or weight loss. Do cheat meals impact that momentum when you are trying to cut weight? This is assuming that you account for the extra calories in your weekly totals, and do not exceed a net deficit.

[Robert Santana]

This raises another question about the momentum of weight gain or weight loss. Do cheat meals impact that momentum when you are trying to cut weight? This is assuming that you account for the extra calories in your weekly totals, and do not exceed a net deficit.

Although this hasn't been directly measured, in theory it sounds good but more often than not when people tell me they've went over there calories one day, they often don't lose in that week. that is not to say they gained fat but it usually interrupts weight loss and you'll get a maintenance of weight that week. Not always the case but generally what I've seen especially as folks get leaner. I think the leaner you get the more of a problem this becomes. As with anything though, we have biological variability to consider.

[Inverstone]

Ditto, what SD3 said. Works well for me. I also agree about cheat "bits" as opposed to cheat "meals" working for me in general. If I do have a cheat meal, I "pay the piper" later (or prior) with some conditioning/cardio-keeping recovery in mind.