Cheat Day

Hello Team,

We are nearing the end of the challenge and as most of you know, even though the challenge officially ends at the end of the week, most of you will not be measured until Monday at the earliest. So I know a few of you may be freaking out and thinking whether or not you should cheat this weekend. That maybe a binge day or two will ruin your results and harm your team. So should you cheat?

You have worked very hard for six weeks and MOST of you haven't had ONE cheat in that time. And now it's memorial day weekend. So should you be the person politely declining Grandma's homemade brownies? Hell no. You knock over Aunt Sissy and Uncle Bob to get to those brownies and you devour them before anyone knows what happened. Eat the cookies. Drink the wine. Relax and have fun.

Many people believe that calories do not matter. That it's the food that matters. That is wrong. They both matter. Quality foods, timing, and calories all matter. I am one of the biggest haters of systems that involve counting anything, but I also don't think you can sit around eating bacon and avocados all day and think that is a weight loss or a healthy diet. Remember, everything is balance. 

Even though I despise counting calories, it is sometimes important to mention them to prove a point. In this case, for the average person, you would have to consume between 3000-3500 calories OVER what you burn in a day to gain a pound of fat. An individual can burn somewhere between 1300-2000 calories a day doing absolutely nothing. Sitting on your ass. A waste of space. So now we are talking about consuming 4300-5500 calories a day to gain that pound of fat. 

So let's look at some typical cheats but in epic proportions. If you ate:

An entire box of peanut butter cheerios with whole milk: 2816 calories

An entire carton of oreos: 2400 calories

A 24 pack of bud light (cough, MALMBERG!): 2880 calories

2 PINTS of Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby (one of their most caloric flavors): 2640 calories

A entire MEAT LOVERS Pizza from Pizza Hut: 3840 calories

You get the point. You have to be one sick hedonist to rack up the calories needed to gain that pound of fat.  And remember, this is assuming you are doing nothing. The moment you start to play horseshoes with Uncle Bob or bake some bitchin brownies with grandma, you burn more calories, and in turn, up the amount needed to gain fat. 

Fat is gained over time. Extra calories in the form of 2 beers a day (cough, MALMBERG!) or a scoop of ice cream a day build up over time and make you fat. A binge here and there will not hurt. And let's be honest here. You are crossfitters. You are not going to binge. Your cheat day will be reasonable. So instead of worrying about it, just go enjoy your weekend. Then return after the weekend and get back to what I call a 90/10 diet. If you eat 3 meals a day (21 in a week), 3 of them can have reasonable cheats in them and if you eat clean the rest of the time, you will continue to see loss of bodyfat and gains at the gym. You may decide you need to spread them out or you might be like me and choose to cheat all on one day. I feel like having a cheat day instead of them separated allows for me to stay clean the whole week, train hard and then psychologically relax on my cheat day and eat whatever I want. 

For anyone looking to binge hard, Martin Berkhan at leangains has an interesting post. He seems to be pretty knowledgeable and knows quite a bit about intermittent fasting. Martin and I definitely have different ideas of the ideal physique (mostly because I could care less about being ripped and just want to perform better), but it's worth a read. If you don't have the time, his cheat day strategy goes something like this:

1. The day before a binge eat high protein/high vegetable fiber meals

2. The day of the binge either fast up to your binge or have a few small, high protein meals before

3. Binge

Here is the link for those interested. Don't bother with all of this if you cheat "normal". You can scroll down to "Cheat Day Strategies" in orange if the science bores you. http://www.leangains.com/2010/11/cheat-day-strategies-for-hedonist.html