Lets not dilude ourselves into thinking we can be healthy pumping our bodies full of crap 24/7. That being said, a cheat day is essential for saving your sanity. All of the best food tends to be awful for us, and life is too short to not enjoy it. Cheat days let us live life to the fullest. However, cheat days have rules.

Cheat days can not start on Friday night and end Sunday night.  That’s cheat weekend and you’ll still have that belly on Monday.  You can get away with ONE day of pumping your body full of garbage.  It needs the next 6 days to recover from the bad behavior.  If you are already at a place where you’re satisfied with your weight then you can have 2 cheat days.  This will allow you to maintain.  Anything more than this and you’ll gain weight (or if you have a fast metabolism you’ll stress the hell out of your liver, kidneys, and pancreas at the very least). 

Cheat day is your day.  Eat and drink whatever you want, as much as you want.  At the end of cheat day, throw out the leftovers.  Don’t even let them be in your space.  Remove all temptation.  Also, its important to understand that throwing out ¼ bag of Doritos and half an ice-cream cake is not harming any of the starving children in the world (they never were going to get it and the rest of the world won’t even accept that as food in the first place). Many of us were raised to not waste food. Or perhaps we think “I paid for it so I’m going to eat it.” These mentalities are what get people in trouble. Let them go.

Finally, we need to talk damage control. Ideally, we still want to prevent our cheat day from destroying our body. This is going the extra mile but it makes a huge difference in your health. First of all, try to make sure you exercise on cheat day. The harder the better. This encourages your body to use the junk you consume as fuel. Second, I suggest taking a supplement with your cheat meals to keep your blood sugar levels in check. Cinnamon, green tea, and alpha-lipoic acid are good for this. My personal weapon of choice is APO-II (since it has both ALA and green tea in the correct dose). The third thing you can do is consume caffeine with your meals. The amount of caffeine in one cup of coffee will help speed up the time it takes food to get through your system. This gives your body less of a chance to absorb those calories!

What are some of your cheat day rituals? Does and don’ts? Share with us in the comments section!