Are Cheat Day's Important For Staying Lean?

If you have been reading my blogs or watching my videos you know that I love to experiment with different workouts, and different ways of eating.  About 2 months ago I decide I was going to start taking only 2 cheat days per month.  This sounded great on paper and I thought it would help me lean down and gain muscle in a better, more healthy way and also make me feel better because I would be eating more high vibration foods.

Although I did feel better from it I noticed that I started to gain some fat, nothing too major but it was fat nonetheless.  I feel as if the fat gain was in direct proportion to taking cheat days less frequently.

Now I know this may sound counterintuitive but hear me out.

Taking cheat days twice per month was actually not the best idea, and I should've followed my tracking calories advice, by moving my cheat days from once per week to once every 8 days then once every 9 days and so on.

By not pushing back my cheat day by one day per week I started to eat a couple hundred calories more per day, which isn't too bad but it was bad enough for me to gain a small amount of fat.

I thought I would be able to handle taking 2 cheat days per month without working up to it but I was wrong.  I actually discovered that losing fat or maintaining a leaner body fat percentage was easier when eating junk food once per week.

What does this mean for you?

Staying lean or at least maintaining a low body fat percentage can be very challenging.  Being able to cheat once per week has been a huge help for staying lean, but the problem is how you feel the day after.

Sure eating some ice cream or bread will be enjoyable, but the next day it always seems to catch up with you.  You start to feel tired and lazy which just leaves you drained all day.

The easy way is to do what I did and push your cheat days back another week or 2.  The only problem with this is that you will start to overeat (even if its just 100-300 calories per day).  Striking the balance is key!

Closing thoughts. 

Let us both try is this out together, lets push our next cheat day one day, yes only ONE day back, and continue to do this and see how it works for us!