Stop Cheating on your Eating! One of my biggest current bug-bears is the incessant bandying about of the phrases “cheat meal”, “cheat day” and “it’s ok it’s my cheat”. Now don’t get me wrong – I fully advocate a sensible re-feed or a one-off “naughty” meal or something that swerves away from your normal diet when it is done sensibly i.e. at a sensible time, with forethought, planning, and doesn’t interfere with weight goals, competition planning or photo-shoots, and it can be a great way to kick-start your metabolism and shock your body. However, what I take major umbrage with is people bandying about “cheat meal” as if it is some sort of god-given right that over the weekend they stuff themselves stupid on junk food, narrowly missing out on a large serving of diabetes with a side serving of high-blood pressure under the guise that it is ok because it’s a factored in cheat meal. Get a grip people! Just because you are telling yourself “it’s ok, it’s my cheat day” as you stuff yet another KFC chicken wing down yourself, is not somehow magically reversing the effect of that chicken wing! It’s like people who give up smoking – you can’t suddenly smoke 20 cigarettes and tell yourself “it’s ok, this was the magic 5th Sunday of the month that falls on the same night as a crescent moon on the tenth night of winter, therefore cigarettes don’t count”. To anyone reading this that statement will sound ridiculous, because it is, and yet I bet there are large numbers of you who if I asked you directly could hold their hands up and admit that yes, you have uttered the words: “it’s ok, it’s my cheat”. It’s time to get a bit more real about our goals and what we’re trying to achieve – like I said, a cheat meal once in a while is fine – a lot of people advocate once a week: personally I don’t find that this works for me as I end up holding sugar and water and I bloat out for 2 days afterwards and only end up with 4 days of feeling good before the cheat will have rolled around again. I like to advocate a 2 week cheat, but never during competition prep time. Also, set yourself boundaries and try to be honest with yourself – I know so many people who use their “cheat meal” as a way to lie to themselves about what they’re doing and before they know it Saturday has rolled in to Sunday and Sunday has rolled in to Monday morning and they’re still eating cold, left-over dominos pizza out of the box for breakfast and trying to tell themselves that “it’s not that bad”. Well, no, it’s not that bad if you’re happy to accept that you are probably not going to achieve the physique or the goals that you want. It’s about exercising you willpower over yourself and your base desire for what you want to eat right now and your desire to look and feel a certain way and to achieve certain physical goals. Which is more important to you? I personally had a great cheat meal on Sunday afternoon: I’d eaten clean all weekend because I had a photo-shoot and on Sunday one friend invited me out for a roast dinner and another friend had bought me a family size box of Thorntons Chocolates. Now, this is a perfect example of exercising your right to cheat in a constructive manner: opening the box of chocolates would not have been a “meal”- they would have dragged out into the middle of next week with me giving myself insulin spikes every 5 minutes as I ate a chocolate every time I walked past the box and ate one! So what to do? I gave the box of chocolates away to a neighbour who has kids to get the temptation out of my house; I went to the gym, smashed a massive weights and HIIT cardio session and then went for the worlds BIGGEST roast within 40 minutes of my workout. The bottom line was my body was more important to me and I set myself the parameters around my cheat meal without blowing everything out of the water. The main thing I think that I am trying to say here is: you are EATING you are not CHEATING. What you put IN has a direct impact on what you are going to be able to get OUT, so have a good think about that and stop lying to yourself because the only person who’s results it’s damaging is yours. Eat Clean until next time, Love Georgia xxx #fitness #healthy #diet
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 08:40:40 +0000
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