Muscle Building Essentials – Cheat Meals For Success

Cheat meals should be an essential part of your nutrition plan. This is because they help to reset your hormones, replenish your glycogen stores and boost your metabolism.

The ratio of your training diet and cheat meals should be 90:10. And if used correctly they can help you to chisel out your physique effectively. Remember to use our bulking guide the remaining 90% of the time.

Here are five key facts regarding cheats meals:

#1: Have A Clear Understanding Of The Science Behind Cheat Meals

Cutting calories and the carbs in a controlled manner within your diet plan can help you with your lean body goals, by dropping your % body fat.

This is a very similar approach to using cheat meals as hormones play a vital role within this strategy.

To have a clearer understanding of why cheat meals have the benefits mentioned above; the role of hormones within this process needs to be clarified.

Leptin is made by the adipose tissue. It helps to regulate appetite and energy balance within the body.

Leptin stimulates the hypothalamus to reduce food intake and increases the use of energy, in the form of calories.

Therefore, it is a key hormone in helping to maintain body weight and the right amount of fat mass, within the body.

Research has indicated that a prolonged reduced calorie intake will lower leptin levels by around 25% [1]. This can lead to overeating and weight gain.

In addition, ghrelin which is a peptide hormone is made predominantly in the stomach and can stimulate hunger.

Sustained low-calorie diets and high-intensity exercise over a longer period of time, can lead to weight gain and an increase in body mass. This has been partly attributed to an increase in ghrelin levels within the body.

Reduced calorie diets over a sustained period can also cause the body to conserve and hold onto its energy by reducing the T3 and T4 hormones [2].

Primarily, these thyroid hormones regulate metabolism and are major fat-burning hormones.

Therefore, you start to enter into a vicious cycle of holding onto the unwanted body fat. Your body also enters into a catabolic state.

Here comes the kicker, due to a restricted calorie intake you may start to find your training harder and you may feel sluggish. This a consequence of having depleted glycogen stores within your body.

Many competition diets are geared towards cutting and are based around a severe cut in calorie intake.

These diets are sometimes on the verge of starvation which causes a negative distribution in your hormonal balance and a reduction in your metabolism. This is because the body attempts to conserve energy.

As a competitor, you must have the right balance of training intensity with the restriction in calories.

A good strategy is to allow for weekly cheat meals into your diet schedule and sticking to the 90/10 ratio is also paramount in achieving your training goals.

#2: Learn How To Use Hormones To Your Advantage

After only 70 hours on a calorie-restricted diet, there are significant changes in the leptin and ghrelin levels. Weekly cheat meals that are higher in calories and carbs can help to increase both leptin and ghrelin levels.

It is this mechanism that will return the hormone levels back to normal. This reduces appetite, boosts your metabolism and energy expenditure.

An added bonus is that this boost in energy expenditure will increase the secretion of T3 and T5. Therefore revving up your metabolism even further.

This boost in metabolism can last between 24-26 hours post-consumption. This is caused by the digestion of the cheat meal and by the body offsetting the reduction in hormones when the low-calorie intake is resumed.

Therefore, a scheduled cheat meal can enhance your body’s hormones to promote weight loss, avoid plateaus in weight loss and stop you from entering into starvation mode.

#3: Creating The Right Cheat Meals For You

Be realistic when it comes to choosing and creating your cheat meal. I would recommend that you don’t go overboard with your food intake and calorie intake.

Another top tip is that you don’t overindulge in sugary junk foods and foods that are poor in their nutritional content. This will only set you back with your physique goals.

Instead, eat a cheat meal that is healthy, well balanced and has the right portion size of macros. It should also have a higher calorie/carbs percentage than the food you would normally eat and leaves you feeling satisfied.

One of the main aims of the cheat meal is to optimise its impact on leptin levels and to replenish your glycogen stores. A key point to remember is that leptin is stimulated by the secretion of insulin.

Insulin is released from the pancreas when your blood sugars are high after eating a meal high in complex carbs. When insulin levels are high, the body will automatically store fat. This is not good when building muscle.

#4: Plan Your Cheat Meals

Cheat meals are replacement meals that should fit smoothly into your eating schedule.

The best strategy for fitting cheat meals into your schedule is to plan ahead and the focus should be ‘cheat meals’ and not ‘cheat days’!

On the other hand, you should not be skipping meals before or after the cheat meal. This may be a trigger for you to eat more because you might be feeling hungry.

In terms of the logistics of the cheat meal. You should plan a meal that allows you to indulge in a controlled manner and not to go overboard with snacking for the rest of the day once you have finished.

#5: Have An Understanding Of Your Cheat Meal Tolerance

Unfortunately, cheat meals are not for everyone and the only way that you will determine whether they are for you or not by trial and error.

If you are finding it difficult to stick to your diet schedule and/or having cravings after eating a cheat meal then maybe it is time to reevaluate whether this strategy is working for you.

Be honest with yourself and by noting which foods are producing cravings could be pointing to a deficiency within the body.

These cravings are the body’s way of trying to sort itself out. Cravings for particular foods are increased when your macro intake is too low.

A solution could be to adjust or slightly tweak your macro intake. You should then see if this has any positive results on your physique goals.

In Conclusion

While cheat meals may have their place in a “dirty” bulking plan, it is certainly not for everyone.

Personally, I would prefer a clean bulk. Which would mean limiting the number of cheat meals and junk food you would consume.

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