How To Efficiently Plan Your Cheat Meals

Following the right nutritional plan is the key step towards adopting a healthy lifestyle and achieving your weight loss goal. However, it has been seen that sticking to the same plan can get a little monotonous and might result in a loss of motivation too.

Indulging in a cheat meal that can satisfy all the cravings that you have been having lately is a great way to stay on track. Not only does it give a boost to your metabolism but also helps you stay motivated to follow the plan that you have laid out for yourself. In fact, as per all the research, people who cheat with their diets once in a while actually produce better results than those who don’t.

But all this is only possible if you have the right strategy in place to manage the cheat meals that you have. The guide below will help you plan out your cheat meals more efficiently while ensuring that you still manage to produce the best results.

1. Plan ahead

Most of the times we are in the habit of having a cheat meal whenever we feel like having one. This is not the right approach. While most suggest that cheating once a week should make up for the feeling of deprivation, it is better than you decide on the day and frequency of your cheat meals in advance. It would help you stay focused and keep your cravings in check.

2. Make sure you have earned it

Don’t make cheat meals about bunking out on your diet but rather something that would be your reward to your body for the efforts it has been putting in. To help the cheat meal improve your fat burning process, you need to make sure that you have been thoroughly following your diet plan throughout the week and not skipping on it. Only then will a cheat meal confuse the metabolism system in your body and let it go on an overdrive to burn more fat for you.

3. Don’t overeat

Some people make the mistake of going for a cheat meal when they are already starving. This doesn’t seem to work in your favor. The body takes it as a queue to store in the food that you are eating as fats to make up for the energy deficit that you have created over the days. Moreover, this also leads you to overeat and do your diet more harm. Similarly, cheating too often will also disrupt the calorie deficit that you have created and will affect your weight loss journey.

4. Sweat before you indulge

Well, it is actually the best approach to handle a cheat meal well and ensure that it doesn’t disrupt your fitness in a massive way. By working out, you are creating a glycogen deficit in your body that shall work like a bank for all the carbs you will be having. The greater the deficit, the fewer the chances that it will all end up on your thighs or stomach even.

5. Pick the right meal

When cheating with your diet, be very cautious of what you decide to cheat it with. Meals that are rich in carbohydrates may sound harmful but are actually better than the ones that have more of the fat content. So, eat your favorite pasta or some steak with some mashed potatoes: as long as you stick to carbohydrates and proteins, you are in good hands here.

6. Fill up with water

Water acts as a buffer. Not only does it help digest the food but also fills up the stomach to leave a lesser appetite for the cheat meal that you might be having. Also, it should kickstart your weight loss journey once you are done and keep you feeling light and healthy.

7. Practice moderation

The biggest problem with following a healthy diet plan is not the cheat meals but the fact that we often tend to go overboard with our plans. What starts with just a meal becomes a whole day of multiple cheat meals which is wrong. As long as you eat in moderation and stick to your initial plan, cheat meals should do you no harm.

Cheat meals are a good way of staying on the right track and satisfying all sorts of cravings that have been piling up for a while. A diet is not just some meal plan that you follow but a lifestyle that should stay with you forever. With cheat meals, you can actually make this happen and still manage to adopt a healthy lifestyle with no issues at all.