A cheat day is the best way to lose weight steadily

First off, let’s get the terminology correct: you’re trying to lose fat, not weight. If you’re still the same weight when you’ve shifted five pounds of fat, that’s good – it means you’ve been building muscle at about the same rate. In fact, it’s more than good, it’s exceptional. If you lose five pounds of fat it’s unlikely you’ll also gain five pounds of muscle, but theoretically it’s possible.

So, why do you need a cheat day? The short answer is to trick your body. The long answer explains why that’s necessary and how it helps. And basically it all comes down to evolution.

Each animal evolves to become the most efficient and effective it can be. For some this means developing big teeth and long claws, for others it means becoming amphibious, and for still others it means diversifying, so that it can benefit, and indeed thrive, where other animals struggle. Humans are like that. We’ve developed so well that we populate virtually every part of this planet, and have virtually taken over (and not always to the benefit of the planet, or its other inhabitants).

We evolved to cope with famine conditions

Evolution is generally a very, very gradual process, taking place over many thousands of generations. Things like big teeth, for example, specially the extra-long teeth of the sabre-tooth tiger of prehistory, must have taken a vast amount of time to develop, but they made that animal a fearsome predator and top of the food chain. Some evolutionary developments are not so striking. In fact, they aren’t even visible. One of them is the ability to adapt to famine conditions.

Lots of animals cope with food shortages quite successfully. In fact, some animals have learned to exist quite well on eating only once every several days, even if food is not in short supply. Humans have also learned to cope with famine. The way humans do it is by storing energy more efficiently when there’s not much food to be had. That way they can survive the hard times. The problem for us in the modern world is that we’re stuck with that evolutionary ‘trick’ and it can work against us.

Here’s what I mean; you’re trying desperately to lose weight (sorry, to lose fat), but what you want is not what your body understands. All the body understands is what is actually happening. It doesn’t know the cause of it, only the effect. So it’s completely unaware of your dietary choices, or your motives, and all it’s aware of is a sudden shortage of food. It takes this as a warning sign of the onset of a famine.

Your body doesn’t know why you’re trying to lose weight

Suddenly food is in short supply. The body knows nothing about your desire to shed fat, all it knows is that it’s on the brink of a famine and it reacts appropriately. It starts to store as much energy as possible. And that means it becomes very difficult to lose that fat you’re so desperate to shift! In fact, the more you cut back on your food intake, the more pressing is the need to store energy (from the body’s point of view). That’s why you quickly hit a plateau when you’re trying to lose fat.

A cheat day is the answer. One day every so often, let’s say once a week, is enough to calm down the body’s impulse to hold on to its fat stores. A day when you relax and eat whatever you like achieves two things, both of them very important. Firstly it allows you to interrupt that famine reaction, where the body desperately clings to every last fat cell to cope with the impending famine, and secondly it gives you a much-needed psychological break. If you’re serious about losing fat you’re going to be cutting back pretty severely on your calorie intake, and let’s face it that can be hard. But if you know that at the end of the week you’re going to have a rest day, a day when you can eat whatever you crave, and as much of it as you like, then the deprivations of the week become a lot more bearable.

So that’s it, in a nutshell. Over millennia, we have developed the body wisdom to cope with the very real and life-threatening effects of a famine (thankfully), but when we try to lose fat we are, in effect, fighting against our very nature. We’re trying to override the very thing that has ensured our survival through the ages. So we have to be tricky!

Don’t let the cheat day become a cheat week!

We have to be aware that the body knows what’s best for us and will do whatever is necessary, and we have to play a little game with it. The cheat day is our best friend in this little game, and it allows us to keep losing fat at a more or less steady rate. Once we have pigged out for a day, the body’s knee-jerk famine reaction is stood down, and we can once again start cutting back dramatically on our calorie intake. And keep it really low until the next cheat day!

But be aware also that if you cheat during the week you’re only cheating yourself – you’ll bring the fat-loss process to a halt and all your previous hard work will be for nothing. Losing fat slowly and steadily is far better than starving yourself and sticking to silly fad diets in the hope of a miracle. Even a steady loss of a single pound of fat each week is a tremendous shift in the right direction … if you just hold steady and keep moving in that direction.