The cheat meal. Every diet has one. “Oh, don’t worry, you can have a cheat day once a week.” What does this mean? What are you cheating? Well in the context of a calorie cutting diet, you’re cheating your calorie count for the day. In the context of a diet focusing on particular macronutrients, it might be cheating your macro plan for that day. But what does it REALLY mean…
cheat (verb)
1. act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage
2. avoid (something undesirable) by luck or skill
So the word cheat basically means to escape something or be dishonest in some way. When you actively tell yourself and others you’re having a “cheat” day or meal, you’re actively saying “I’m being dishonest, I’m trying to gain an advantage without actually following the path I know I need to, because that sounds like hard work.” Or you might be saying “I’m avoiding having to follow my healthy diet plan because that’s undesirable, so I am going to use this opportunity to indulge myself with the behaviours I know are acting against my journey toward my goal.”
At this point, don’t try and justify it any other way. If you are using “cheat meals”, you are using this principle. This may not be how you see it, but this is what your brain’s understanding of this word and consequently your action is.
But why is it that you need to do this? Why is it that dieting feels like hard work? Because it’s not sustainable. Because you don’t see it as a long-term journey. You see it as a quick fix to a short-term goal. It is assumed we all have to be on diets on and off throughout out life. It is assumed that weight will fluctuate and because we are glutenous humans, unable to control our innate drive towards fat, sugar and calories for survival and that therefore, we must periodically take up a quest to fight these reflexes and lose weight in order to fit into that nice pair of skinny jeans for one party (where we will inevitable undo much of our hard work by consuming several bottles of wine and too much food).
And why is healthy food considered undesirable? It’s considered bland, boring, dull. Unfortunately this is often because we have dampened our senses. Our natural taste for sugars and fats has been exploited by the big guns, who produce ever sweeter and more artificially enhanced flavours, so that apples that once tastes juicy and sweet, feel like only a texture. We have lost the ability to obtain the very freshest local produce which retains the nutrients and accompanying taste that our palate craves. Instead, we have replaced what we naturally appreciate, with over salted, over sugared foods, which suppress and confuse out basic chemistry and leave us without the ability to tell when we are full or what our body needs to function today.
So if this is how we view healthy eating – a short-term, dull, boring and extremely challenging quick fix to a short-term goal, then it is clear why we need a “cheat meal”. It is completely unsustainable to live in a world we find brings us sadness and disappointment. So we fall in line with this paradigm by reassuring our brains that we can have something to break up the monotony, our “cheat meal” at the weekend.
But what does this psychology REALLY do and why is it so dangerous?
When we act to “reassure” our brain in this paradigm, we simply reinforce the hopelessness of trying to eat unprocessed foods that have a benefit for our bodies. We reinforce that a healthy lifestyle is unnatural and unsustainable and is not for a long-term benefit, but simply for a short-term gain. But how do we break the cycle? How do we shift the paradigm?
I NEVER programme “cheat meals” for my clients. And yet they are successfully losing weight, getting stronger, leaner, faster and more importantly, happier. They are seeing long-term benefits and focusing on the longevity their lifestyle can give them. And that’s just it; I never put someone on a diet. I tell all my clients that when someone asks them if they’re “on a diet”, to say no. Instead, they tell their friends and family that they are “working towards a better and more sustainable future.” Telling others helps to cement this in their own heads and helps to reinforce that on a weight loss or fitness journey with me, clients are locking into long term independence.
That’s not to say my clients can never enjoy chocolate, doughnuts, fish and chips or any other of those indulgent favourites; I myself have a mug cake brownie recipe on standby for when the need arises! I shape a mindset that says there is no such thing as a cheat meal because everything has a different benefit at a different time. While of course, we need to focus on calorie defecits for fat loss or calorie surplus for building muscle and we need to ensure we are getting all the right nutrients at the right time, we also need to acknowledge that the human body was not designed to live off salad and lemon water! Sometimes your body really does need chocolate, pudding, biscuits, whatever. And sometimes, that food is not there to feed your physical form, but to maintain your mental state.
Modern day humans have an extremely complex and disordered relationship with food and that is different for every person. The changes in brain chemistry that food can bring about through hormones and control by gut bacteria, is massive and it is not something we can always deal with on our own. But it is also not something we can approach with a short-term mindset of boring healthy “diets” and “cheat meals”. Instead, we need a method that teaches us the benefits of nutrition to our entire lives and all aspects of that life including long term independence, success.
And finally, we need to understand that we can’t “cheat” our bodies. The day you decide to have a “day off” from nourishing yourself, looking after yourself, ignoring what your body is telling you, it isn’t written off. The functions and processes are still occurring, it’s just that you’re choosing to ignore them.