The hidden power of cheat meals

A binge meal is the one thing, besides the goal of burning fat, that people look forward to in most calorie-restricting diets. The nice thing is that we can do this and support our body’s fat-burning process with occasional cheat meals.

Over the years, I have had a lot of people who were on strict diets tell me that it seemed that when they binged out a little, it seemed to spark their weight loss. There is a good reason for this, and the scale was not being deceptive to them.

Our body works in a neat way in detecting when we’re not getting as many calories as we need and when we’re getting too many, and when either of these happens for long enough, different mechanisms kick in. These mechanisms will either store the extra calories in our fat cells when we’re getting more than we need for our day-to-day energy needs or release them from storage on days when we’re not getting enough to cover our energy needs.

Our metabolism and energy levels will change, however, if we go low-calorie for too long (our fat-burning efficiency can drop as low as 50%) in 7 days! The reason is that our survival mechanisms start to go into defensive mode around the 2nd-3rd day of low-calorie intake and within 24 hours of complete fasting.

A prolonged low-calorie intake will slow our metabolism to conserve fuel, as it detects potential starvation. This process also includes burning muscle for energy, which slows our metabolism. Muscle burns lots of calories, and this loss of muscle is why someone has such trouble keeping weight down after a harsh crash diet. Much of our metabolism depends on how much we have and how toned our muscles are!

A high-calorie meal can be like a metabolism reset button: since our body’s fat-burning capability starts to slow down around the 3rd low-calorie day (or by the end of a 24-hour fast), I like to think of a cheat meal as simply a way to reset our metabolism back to peak levels!

The way the cheat meal works is simple: our body delivers energy from food to our vital organs and other body tissue necessary for daily function FIRST, and the fat cells LAST. Most times, after a cheat meal, we can feel the food disappear within an hour or so because of the energy deficit we have created from low-calorie days, which causes our body to suck up these extra calories. When all the cells of our vital and skeletal tissues throughout the body are once again fully stocked with fuel, our metabolism gets really fired up, which helps us to burn extra fat over the next few days of calorie restriction!  

So, after a few days of eating really lean, you don’t have to call a binge meal cheating on your diet, but instead, it can be called a meal with a fat-burning purpose!

Our metabolism works a lot like gears in a vehicle: if we learn to shift at the right time, our engine will not sputter as much, and the energy it produces will be much steadier and stronger!