Cheat Your Way To Diet Success
If your fitness plans include a fat-loss diet as part of your plan to get fit at last, you know sticking with it will probably to be hard. It's going to take a lot of discipline to stick with it consistently, and you're probably sad about the loss of some of your favorite foods. Well this may come as a surprise to you, but cheating (on your diet) is a necessity. At least, it can be when you do it right.
To lose weight (or more precisely to reduce your body fat percentage), you need to eat healthier foods and consume fewer calories. That's hard because it tends to leave you hungry, and you miss your favorite foods. Giving them up isn't easy psychologically. But eating less isn't easy physiologically. Let's talk about why.
Your body adapts to changes. You know that when you eat too much, your body adapts by storing the excess as fat. Your body will also adapt to a significant and sustained reduction in calories. If the number of calories you consume drops a lot, your body eventually adapts. It does so by acting as if there is a famine and you are in danger of starvation.
If your body is in starvation mode, it makes a number of changes to the way it works. First, it stores every calorie it can as fat, in case the "food shortage" lasts. Second, your metabolism slows way down to conserve energy. In this low energy state, you become listless and cranky as your metabolism goes down. Even worse, your body conserves more energy by cutting back on things like repairs and maintenance. Your joints start to get creaky and you get hurt more often. In extreme cases, your body starts to burn your muscles as fuel, as it tries to retain every bit of fat it can for later. The goal of your body is to survive until there's more food.
As you can imagine, the outcome of this adaptation isn't pleasant. You end up listless, with little energy to work out. If you do manage to work out, your workout suffers. You tend to get hurt quickly, and it takes a long time to recover. Any food you do eat gets stored as belly fat. Your muscles start to wither away. Not the best conditions for working out really hard and getting in shape. This is why you need to cheat.
Missing a few meals, or even going on short rations for a few days won't cause your body to go into starvation mode. It takes a sustained reduction in calories for that to happen. If you don't stay a low calorie levels for too long at a stretch, your body stays in its non-starvation mode and your diet will remain effective. You'll get the positive aspects of your diet without the nasty side effects of going into starvation mode.
So, to get the best results if you go on a strict diet, you need to cheat once in a while. At regular intervals, you need to consume many more calories than the plan calls for, to prevent your body from thinking you are starving. That makes life easier, and it gets even better. If you eat your favorite junk food on these cheating days, it is much easier to stay on your diet the other days. After all, there's a big difference between giving up pizza (or whatever) altogether, and still eating them on your cheating days.
The easiest way to do this is to just pig out once a week. However, there are more efficient ways to do this. For the best results possible, while still avoiding starvation mode, you should get expert advice on all aspects of the way you eat, including whether and how to cheat based on your specific diet, body type and so on.