Although how often depends on what level you’re at and your goals! And yes that is me tucking into an insane amount of cream in the picture.

Why cheat?? Because you deserve it!

If you’ve been sticking to your diet plan 100% and things are running smoothly, you deserve to have a cheat meal if you fancy it. The reason is, it can actually help you succeed in hitting your main body composition goal. Here’s why:

• It takes the pressure off

Changing a routine or habit can be very challenging and stressful for most people and if you’re looking forward into the future of more chicken, veg and rice, it can be rather daunting! Especially if you love food like me. Adding something that excites you every now and again can alleviate a lot of the boredom.

• It actually helps make you slimmer

There’s plenty of research out there now showing that Leptin (a protein molecule) helps control metabolic rate and appetite. This drops dramatically while restricting calories but is boosted again after a ‘cheat meal’.

 

How to do a cheat meal?

How often?

At first, what I’d suggest is to look at what kind of level you’re at. If you’re an athlete and have the body of a Greek god or goddess, you can listen to what your body tells you it can handle and potentially have them every 4/5 days but if you have health concerns and are in need of some serious changes, then once every fortnight could be possible. It really depends.

Book it!

Just like your training days, book in your cheat meal days too or it could get out of control. A good one for me is to be more relaxed on a Sunday after 6 days of strict eating and so I know I’m allowed treats then.

Be clever.

Just because it is a cheat meal, it doesn’t mean you can order 3 courses of McDonald’s and wash it down with 2 litres of Ben and Jerry’s double chocolate dip. Plan it sensibly with high quality versions of the naughty stuff.

Eat well and enjoy the process

Rupert Hambly