Green & Lean: 20 Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for Building Muscle, Getting Lean, and Staying Healthy by Michael Matthews

Author:Michael Matthews [Matthews, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oculus Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2014-03-29T23:00:00+00:00

9. CHEAT CORRECTLY

Many people struggling with diets talk about “cheat days.” The idea is that if you’re good during the week, you can go buck wild on the weekends and somehow not gain fat. Well, unless you have a very fast metabolism, that’s not how it works. If you follow a strict diet and exercise, you can expect to lose 1 – 2 pounds per week. If you get too crazy, you can gain it right back over a weekend.

So don’t think cheat DAYS, think cheat MEALS—meals where you eat more or less anything you want (and all other meals of the week follow your meal plan). When done once or twice per week, a cheat meal is not only satisfying, but it can actually help you lose fat.

How?

Well, first there’s the psychological boost, which keeps you happy and motivated, which ultimately makes sticking to your diet easier.

But there’s also a physiological boost.

Studies on overfeeding (the scientific term for binging on food) show that doing so can boost your metabolic rate by anywhere from 3 – 10%. While this sounds good, it actually doesn’t mean much when you consider that you would need to eat anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand extra calories in a day to achieve this effect.

More important are the effects cheating has on a hormone called leptin, which regulates hunger, your metabolic rate, appetite, motivation, and libido, as well as serving other functions in your body.

When you’re in a caloric deficit and lose body fat, your leptin levels drop. This, in turn, causes your metabolism to slow down, your appetite to increase, your motivation to wane, and your mood to sour.

On the other hand, when you give your body more energy (calories) than it needs, leptin levels are boosted, which can then have positive effects on fat oxidation, thyroid activity, mood, and even testosterone levels.

So if it’s a leptin boost that you really want, how do you best achieve it?

Eating carbohydrates is the most effective way. Second to that is eating protein (high-protein meals also raise your metabolic rate). Dietary fats aren’t very effective at increasing leptin levels, and alcohol actually inhibits it.

So, if your weight is stuck and you’re irritable and demotivated, a nice kick of leptin might be all you need to get the scales moving again.

Have a nice cheat meal full of protein and carbs, and feel good about it.

(I would recommend, however, that you don’t go too overboard with your cheat meals—don’t eat 2,000 calories of junk food and desserts and think it won’t do anything.)

How many cheat meals you should eat per week depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

When you’re eating to stay lean and gain muscle slowly, two cheat meals per week is totally fine. When you’re dieting to lose weight, you can have one cheat meal per week.

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