What is cheat day? Is cheat day good for losing weight? |

In this article you will learn, among others:

• What is a cheat day?

• Is cheat day harmful?

• What are the effects of a cheat day?

• Can you gain weight from cheat day?

• Does cheat day boost metabolism?

What is a cheat day?

There are two cheat day concepts. One of them says that this is the day when you completely forget about the principles of healthy eating and eat whatever you want, e.g. pizza, chocolate, etc. not caring about the calorific value of the dishes. The second allows food “Forbidden products”, but only up to the daily calorie limit that he sets our demand. In both cases, such days are entered once every a week, 10 days or a month.

Examples of users

Two of you agreed to introduce me your one cheat day sample. Here’s what he looked like:

Kamaopr User – 1 cheat day variant

Estimated energy value:

User Nagellack – variant 2 cheat day

 Estimated energy value:

As you can see in the photo posted at the top of the page, a Nagellack user ate the amount of calories that corresponds to 1,6 kg of sugar! And the purchases themselves cost almost PLN 50! These are the costs cheat day.

Is cheat day harmful?

How does the body react to such portions of food?

I asked Iza Czajka, a physiologist, about it nutrition:

“Eating this amount of calories is associated with high volume and caloric content, which slows down gastrointestinal motility. This food can stay for about 7-10 days in digestive tract, which makes the next week of the diet bearable and more pleasant. However, this is very non-physiological. After that amount eating, unfortunately, is rather lying so that the liver and intestines can process it. Not it would be a problem to eat up to 500 kcal more for a total of about 2000 kcal. “

 As you can see, cheat day relying on eating the amount of calories that meets your needs is not especially dangerous. Worse when cheat day is about overeating huge portions that burden the liver, pancreas and stomach.

What’s more: “if we eat little for 10 days, the stomach shrinks and the body learns satisfy with a small amount of food, and here we suddenly have, for example, 3 times more gastric content in the stomach, all the work is wasted. ” – adds Czajka.

What are the effects of a cheat day?

What can happen when you overeat?

The body has a number of mechanisms overflow. The first is feeling unpleasant feeling of overeating. A signal is sent to the brain: “stop”. If we exceed this limit, the lower muscle relaxes esophageal sphincter (to expel air from the stomach) at may make you vomit.

It also comes after a heavy meal to a sharp increase in blood pressure. Additionally, the blood vessels become less flexible for a while, and the stuffed stomach puts pressure on the surrounding organs, which can cause unpleasant abdominal pain.

You can also observe sudden events insulin release. For example, if we eat a meal that contains about 100 g carbohydrates, the body will have to deal with huge doses sugar, because this amount is almost 10 times the amount of sugar that is circulating in blood. This is why the body needs to throw out large doses of insulin quickly. which increases the transport of glucose inside the cells.

Can you gain weight from cheat day?

If the amount of calories is consumed in line with the demand, it is unlikely to be possible, although research by Karpe and Frayne of the University of Oxford show that eating a meal containing 30 g of fat at one time causes w the body stores about 10-15 g of body fat. However, this is the only one a study of the type I found so you can’t be 100% sure that it happens every time.

And if during cheat day she’ll go crazy and eat a really large amount of food, that’s an excess of energy coming from carbohydrates can transform into triglycerides in the body, which can be stored in fat cells. Likewise, excess energy derived from proteins will be used in the process of gluconeogenesis and it can also be stored as adipose tissue.

You gain weight because these are not the amounts of food you will be consuming on movement. You eat 4000 calories and lie down.

Iza Czajka, nutrition physiologist 

Does cheat day boost metabolism?

“Eating this amount of calories may or may not speed up heat production and metabolism, because it depends on what you ate. If it will be above all the fats are then thread from speeding up your metabolism“. – emphasizes Czajka.

It is therefore, above all, about a specific dynamic the action of food, which means a momentary increase in metabolism matter caused not only by food consumption, but also its digestion, absorption and transport of nutrients. The most expensive pod the energy angle is proteins, increasing the metabolism by 25-40%, then fats by 14% and finally carbohydrates by 6%. It is, however temporary, so we cannot talk about turning up the metabolism for longer.

There is also a theory that after overeating, the level of leptin, which is a hormone, rises which is an indicator of the level of adipose tissue in the body. When she is behind little (as it happens in the case of a long diet) maybe lead to a slowdown in metabolism. Raising the level of this hormone so it should help and speed up your metabolism a bit. However, this effect also it is short-lived.

It is anyway no?

The advantage of cheat day is to release yourself temporarily diet and relaxation, which can help you stay weight-loss. The other side, it may be associated with negative health consequences and weight gain. In the supplement can lead to an eating disorder. Therefore, in my opinion, it is better use the so-called cheat meal, which consists in appointing one day in a week in which, instead of a selected meal from the diet, you will be able to eat it on what you want, while taking care of the appropriate portion size.

Do you use cheat day? What are your opinions on cheat day? Be sure to write in the comments!