Don’t forget to answer the QOTW!
If you’ve been a Slender Student since the beginning, you might be familiar with my cheat meal. You know, the delicious, greasy meal that shows up on Lazy Sunday posts. Once a week, I give myself a break from calorie restricting and eating (relatively) clean. I have two reasons for doing this, the first is to save my sanity, and the second is to save my metabolism.
I’m a nutrition major, and I love cooking healthy food, and I love eating healthy food, and blah, blah, blah. But, when it comes down to it, I love (real love, not The Bachelor love) bacon cheeseburgers. And, thanks to my cheat meal, it’s totally within the realm of my dieting morality to indulge in one once a week. This freedom, albeit a small one, makes me feel like I’m not totally depriving myself. It also allows me to not be that girl (“Yeah, can I get that with dressing on the side, no cheese, and the grilled chicken cooked with no oil?”) every time I eat socially. If I know a friend is having a birthday dinner or my family wants to try out a new restaurant, I designate that as my cheat meal and eat accordingly for the remainder of the week.
The cheat meal also keeps my weight loss from plateauing. The human body can adapt to almost any long-term set of circumstances you put it under. Due to my current meal plan, my body tries to adapt to a 1200-1300 calorie a day intake and hold on to the weight instead of losing it. Yeah, ok, like I’m gonna sit back and let that happen. By introducing that higher calorie meal once a week, I keep my body just a little bit confused, which is how I like it.
Lots of sites offer strict rules for how to do a cheat meal. It’d be really slender of me to come on here with a set of my own, but that’d be pretty hypocritical. I mean, this is what my last cheat meal looked like:
But, because I’m your friend, I’ll give you some unsolicited advice for your next dieting infidelity.
- Your cheat meal is a meal. A singular, individual meal. Don’t make a day of it, or you’ll lose all of the metabolic benefits and probably bum yourself out of your journey to slenderhood for awhile too.
- That being said, I’ve found that it’s easiest on me when my cheat meal is dinner. That way, I can motivate myself to eat healthily all day with the expectation of a big ol’ tasty meal at the end of it.
- Another benefit of eating my cheat meal for dinner is that it keeps me from eating too much. I have a really hard time sleeping when I’m disgustingly full, and since I love sleep as much as I love food, I can kinda reel it in for beauty rest’s sake.
- I wasn’t too good at this one from the beginning, but I’ve since learned to try and eat a comparable volume of food as I normally would in a meal, while not having to worry about the calories. Just another way to keep myself from eating too much.
Happy cheating, you dirty adulterers.
I just found your blog on Pinterest and love it! Nothing like a fellow smart-a** to help get me motivated! I’m a nurse, and a momma, and really want to set a good example for my kids, patients, and students and I think your blog may be my new “thinspiration”!
Thank you so much, Angie! Happy to supply you with sarcasm and thinspiration. ; )