Cheat meals can help break weight loss plateaus and prevent your metabolism from slowing down.

What is a cheat meal?

A cheat meal is that one meal where you get to eat whatever you want. Whatever your heart desires. No matter how “unhealthy” or how many calories, carbs and fats it has. Nothing is off limits.

Treat yourself. Eat a pizza, a bunch of doughnuts or a hamburger.

You read that right, the occasional junk food break will actually benefit your weight loss results.

Sticking with a calorically deficient diet for long periods of time is hard. It’s mentally taxing and makes it harder to stick to your diet.

Allowing yourself a cheat meal every 2 weeks can help break that mental barrier and give you something worth looking forward to. Making it easier to stick to your diet.

It also prevents you from being “that person” at social events. You know who I’m talking about.

Cheat meals have been shown to help “restart” your metabolic rate.

And are a great tool to help with increasing the levels of the appetite and metabolism regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin – with up to 30%.

As a rule-of-thumb, aim for a cheat meal that is about 1,000 – 1,500 calories. This can be anything – burgers, pizza, ice cream, cookies. You name it.

Summary:

Cheat meals are shown to help restart your metabolism, and improve levels of appetite and metabolic regulating hormones. Have a cheat meal once every 2 or 3 weeks.