How To Cheat A Cheat Meal

How To Cheat A Cheat Meal

Can you outrun a bad diet? Kinda…

By Travis Wade

We all need a cheat meal, even if it’s just for the sake of enjoying ourselves. Sometimes, cheat meals are necessary to level off hormones, like when you do a keto diet. Whatever your reasons, here are my suggestions on indulging as much as you want while gaining the least amount of weight.

#1 Preparation

Because of the highly addictive properties of a cheat meal, try to eat out for a cheat meal. For instance, if you have ice-cream in your house (the second most addictive food), eating the whole container is very tempting. Chocolate is the most addictive food, by the way.

The good news is, when eating these cheat meal foods, there are proven methods for damage control: You’ll need PGX fibre, alpha-lipoic-acid, green Tea, and cinnamon pills.

#2 Before the Cheat Meal

PGX fibre slows the rate at which glucose enters the bloodstream and speeds up the calories exiting the body. This helps eliminate toxins from the body, reduces your appetite by filling you up, and causes less uptake of calories into the body.

Dr. Mark Hyman recommends PGX fibre as a daily supplement, especially for those looking to reduce weight. However, it also has many other health benefits. For best results, take the supplement about a half-hour before a cheat meal.

Fat blunts jumps in blood glucose levels more than protein. For an appetizer, don’t go for flour or sugar, go for fat and protein. Most importantly, avoid deep-fried foods because of the trans-fats they are fried in!

Trans-fats are incredibly toxic, and you should never consume them in any situation. The government has agreed that food companies need to eliminate trans-fats. Still, they’ve given food companies as long as they need to find a replacement.

Alpha-lipoic-acid has many benefits, which is why Dr. Mark Hyman recommends it as a daily supplement. Timothy Ferriss (author of the “4 Hour Body”) uses it for fat loss. It works by diverting calories into muscles instead of fat cells. For best results, take 600 mg about 10 minutes before a cheat meal.

#3 During the Cheat Meal

Green Tea contains epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). ECGC also diverts calories away from fat cells and into muscle cells.

Apoptosis is the natural death of mature cells. ECGC increases the apoptosis of fat cells, which Dr. Mark Hyman recommends for daily health. However, as suggested above, you’ll have to invest in some pills when eating a cheat meal. Timothy Ferriss recommends 750mg dosage for the best effect.

Cinnamon slows the uptake of sugars and other fast-acting carbs (flour and other grains), to the blood and helps level off our blood glucose level. You can get cinnamon in a pill form to take with your meal.

Eating slow is the easiest way to decrease glucose spikes, yet it is foolishly overlooked. However, it has a profound effect, so always savour your desserts if you choose to have one. ‘Eat your veggies fast and savour your desserts,’ is one of my life’s mottos.

Citrus helps reduce insulin. Now, I realize a whole lemon is a lot, but if you can handle the juice from an entire lemon in a tall glass of water, that might be better than a shot of lemon juice. Essentially, it’s lemonade without the sugar. Also, make a special effort to drink more water with your cheat meal.

#4 After the Cheat Meal

Exercise after a cheat meal is the number one thing you can do for damage control! To keep things simple, plan a walk or some activity after you eat. However, if you’re motivated, do a full-body workout: squats, band-pulls, and push-ups.

Bonus tip: When you exercise, it produces chemicals in the body that store energy in muscles as opposed to fat cells. This is something Timothy Ferriss would do before and after cheat meals. I believe this is where most of his weight loss came from. It’s a type of frequency training.

Frequency training is exercising many times throughout the day. Mainly, the idea is to increase the heart rate as high as possible, keeping your metabolism consistently high. You can do this on a rebounder (mini-trampoline), or whatever exercise you choose as long as it increases the heart rate quickly. You can do 4 minutes once an hour, but I find that too much for me. Once after or before meals is all I could handle or I would be too hungry.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton.