Cheat meal

[Jdubz219]

so when youre pre-comp or just hard cutting with very few carbs, my question is how often you should have a "cheat meal" lets say on a 9 week cut.. any at all?

[Jdubz219]

also, what do you guys love to eat when you allow yourself to have a cheat meal

[Times Roman]

here's how I look at it.

The more strict the diet, the greater the need for an occasional cheat meal.

eating strictly wears me out.

only whole foods, no processed, keep your macros balanced, hit your caloric and protein targets. Plus I'm becoming very lactose intolerant, so pretty much no more whey protein powder, which is always an easy way out to fill in the cracks at the end of the day.

[Docd187123]

I beleive chest meals to be a misnomer. I refer to them as refeeds since a structured refeed would be planned into your diet and thus not technically cheating your diet.

Your question is difficult to answer. It depends on many variables some of which are outside your control or even awareness. When dieting down the body will go against you as it views dieting as a threat to it's survival. Leptin, ghrelin, peptide YY, thyroid hormones, etc will all begin to work against you the longer you diet and the leaner you are.

If you're obese or just very overweight you can cut for a while before needing a refeed. The body recognizes the more than sufficient stores of fat mass as an insurance policy to possible future famine and since you'd have plenty or too much fat mass, it will allow you an easier time cutting fat. Once you get to around 20% it will start fighting you more. At this point you may need a refeed and you may not...it depends in the individual. At around 15% you'd probably need one every 10-14days or so. Once getting to 12% and below you'd probably need a refeed every week and mid single digits body fat maybe twice a week in some extreme cases.

By refeed I mean a structured day of eating high carbs. Carbs are what up-regulate the previously mentioned hormones. You can't just eat more protein and/or fat. Their effects will be negligible on your hormones that will be down regulating during this time. I'd suggest no less than 150-200g of carbs and many will find they'll need 200+ grams of carbs to successfully refeed. You can maintain your protein intake, drop fat intake, and add the carbs to accomplish this or you could maintain protein and fat intake and just add the carbs in. The latter may help you more psychologically as you'd probably go over your TDEE in caloric intake and give your mind a break from the dieting.

Good luck