Cheat Days

As some of my clients have started their contest preparation, the topic of a cheat day (a day where you break away from your regular meal plan) has been brought up a few times. I have received questions like….

“Am I allowed to have a cheat day?”

“Should it be 1 meal or can I cheat for the entire day?”

“Are there any limitations to what I can eat?”

First, deviating from the regular meal plan is a good thing. It gives the athlete a mental release from eating the same foods every day, adds extra nutrients which may be lacking from the regular meal plan, and allows the athlete to attend social functions for which eating takes place. But does it retard progress. Well, we can look at the effects of a cheat day on both phases of the physique athlete’s training cycle (muscle building phase and the fat reduction phase).

In the muscle building phase, the physique athlete is generally eating more calories, performing less cardio, and getting stronger. Although the meal plan during this phase is not as strict as the fat reduction phase, the types of foods should still be your basic bodybuilding foods such as oatmeal, meat, fish, yam, potato, fish oil, etc. This phase does allow for the use of bread, more fruits, and pasta as lesser (but suitable) alternatives (yes fruit is healthy but fructose is not the best carbohydrate source for athletes). Cravings are usually not as strong during the muscle building phase and so the cheat day does not really act as a mental release. It is still nice however to have a snack like a chocolate bar or go out to dinner now and then. In the offseason therefore it is acceptable to have a cheat meal or snack once every week consisting of whatever the athlete desires without hindering muscle growth. Be wary however as it is very easy trick yourself into believing “I’m in the offseason so I can eat whatever I want”. Physique athletes who fall into this trap will find that they gain all of their offseason weight in 4 weeks and very little of it has been actual muscle. Remember muscle must be grown like a crop. You cannot force it to grow faster than it is capable of.

In the fat burning phase, the cheat day plays a much more important role. This phase involves restricting calories and performing a greater amount of cardio. The physique athlete will normally encounter strong cravings since they are on such a regimented meal plan. Often what happens is the athlete’s body will respond to the caloric restriction by slowing down metabolic processes. This causes the physique athlete to have less energy during the day and to feel tired. By having the cheat day, the extra influx of calories trick the body into thinking that the diet is over and that it can restore the basal metabolic rate to normal levels. Of course the cheat day during this phase also serves to satisfy cravings, provide a mental release, etc. The cheat day during this phase should be kept to a 3 hour window where the athlete can eat whatever they desire and as much as they want. I generally recommend that the physique athlete start their day with the regular meal plan, continue their workout for the day, and then omit the last 2 regularly scheduled meals and replace them with the 3 hours of cheating. The reason for this is that it is hard to stop once you have started. If you started the day cheating thinking you will cheat from 8am until 11am, you will find it very difficult to go back to eating yams and tuna for the rest of the day. It is very important to note that cheat days should never be used for the first 3 weeks and the last 3 weeks of the fat reduction phase. Lastly, cheat days during the fat reduction phase should be limited to once every 7 to 10 days.

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