Well that got your attention! Thing is it’s sort of true…

I write this latest entry on a Monday evening. You might be interested (possibly disgusted) by what I had to eat on Saturday:

Woke up, big glass of iced water, black coffee, bacon, sausages and baked beans (I would have had egg too, but we didn’t have any in the house). Nothing out of the ordinary there for a low carb diet.

Had another cup of black coffee with a couple of squares of 70% cocoa dark chocolate during the morning. Again, nothing odd there.

For lunch, I had lamb cutlets, loads of fine beans and broccoli and a small amount of brown rice. Again, nothing odd.

I then consumed the following over the course of the afternoon and evening:

5 shortbread biscuits (10g carbs each), 5 chocolate digestive biscuits (10g carbs each), quarter of a tub of cream of Cornish ice cream (30g carbs), 1 chocolate éclair (25g carbs), 2 cream and toffee macaroons (20g carbs each), half a Pizza Express pizza (40g of carbs), half a bottle of red wine (18g of carbs), and I’m sure some other carby things I can’t remember. So let me tot that all up…over 250g of carbs over an afternoon and evening! On a typical day, I have about 100g if that.

So what in God’s name is that all about??? Welcome to the “cheat day”, probably the single, most important revelation during this whole period of working out how to lose and keep weight off. I managed about 6 weeks of very strict low carb living, but I did start to miss the “naughty” things. And I knew there was no chance I could resist things from the above list for ever, as I blogged about in my last post. Thankfully, I started reading “The 4 hour body” by Tim Ferriss, who’s a bit of a legend in geekdom. (Yes, I am a geek if you hadn’t worked it out by now). He’s basically a geek who has carried out all sorts of tests, experiments on himself to see if you can effectively “hack” your body in the way you can a computer. He introduced me to the concept of a cheat day, which on further research, some other people talk about in the context of the “80:20” rule.

Basically, the cheat day is the one day of the week you allocate to yourself to effectively eat whatever the hell you want, in whatever quantity you want. It ONLY works if you are “good” and stay off the processed carbs the other 6 days of the week, if you don’t, you will get seriously fat! What a cheat day enables you to do is get through the other 6 days because you store up all your indulgences in one short time period, so whatever damage you do to yourself is very limited to that time period. No matter what or how much you consume in 1 day, it cannot undo the good you have achieved during the other 6 days.

Fancy a pizza? Leave it for the cheat day. Fancy a Chinese meal? Leave it for the cheat day. Fancy pigging out on biscuits, cakes, donuts and ice cream? Leave it for the cheat day.

When during the week you’re having a craving, just take a note and write down all those things that you want to have and write “Cheat day” against them. It’s a constant reminder that you’re not giving this food up forever, just for 4 days, 3 days, 2 days, 1 day and hurrah it’s your cheat day and you can do whatever you want!!!

It’s important you try and have the same day of the week as you cheat day, a Friday, Saturday or Sunday tends to work best. If you have to interchange between them, it’s probably ok, but make sure it’s only ONE day a week!

The benefits I’ve listed above are primarily psychological. I think there may be some physiological benefits too. Your body’s metabolism adapts to what you consume and what you expend, and sometimes you need to give your body a bit of a shock so that it doesn’t rest on its laurels so to speak. 6 days of low carb living, followed by a day of flushing your body will tons of sugary, starchy carbs will confuse the hell out of your metabolism, and then the day later you’re back eating much fewer carbs, you effectively keep your metabolism guessing.

There is a train of thought that suggests that a cheat day is a bad idea because it means you never wean yourself of sugary, starchy carbs… that might be true, but I certainly couldn’t spend the rest of my life not eating deep fried crispy beef with chilli and special fried rice! So sod that, I’ll take my cheat day thank you very much. But you really do need to be good the rest of the time.

One really important thing though – DO NOT WEIGH YOURSELF THE DAY AFTER YOUR CHEAT DAY – apologies for the caps, but I can’t emphasise this enough. If you do this, you will feel distraught as your weight will have increased by 3-4 pounds. Don’t worry, it’s just water – it’ll drop again after a couple of days of being back on low carb. I did say you should only weigh yourself once a week, so weigh yourself either on the morning of the cheat day or the day before.

Last thing – you don’t have to use your cheat day every week. It’s an option should you need it. When I first tried, I pigged out in a way that made what I did on Saturday look tame! And I think the second weekend, it was similar. By the third week, I didn’t feel the need to. Funnily enough, you’ll notice just how bloated you feel when you do! I do probably on average have a cheat day once, maybe twice a month. For me it’s about having the option. Also, as I like to go out on the lash every once in a while, I use my cheat day for this purpose too, as it means I can go out, have a few drinks without worrying!

Happy cheat day!