If your fitness plans include a fat-loss diet as part of your plan to get fit at last, you know that staying on your diet is going to be stressful. It's going to take plenty of will power to stick with it consistently, and you're probably sad about the loss of some of your favorite foods. So this may come as a shock to you, but cheating (on your diet) is sometimes helpful. At least, it can be when you do it right.
When you're trying to get your body fat down quickly, you need to work out more, but you also need to reduce the number of calories you eat. To get into really good shape, you will have to consume fewer calories than necessary to maintain your current weight. And your body isn't going to like that.
Your body adapts to changing situations. If you eat too much, your body stores the excess as fat. Your body also adapts to a significant and sustained reduction in the amount of food you eat. If the number of calories you eat drops significantly, your body eventually adapts. It adapts by going into starvation mode, as if you were in the midst of a famine.
When your body is in starvation mode, it behaves differently. It starts storing every calorie it can as fat, since it thinks there isn't enough food to go around. It dials down your metabolism slows, leaving you with less energy. It puts less effort into maintaining and repairing your joints and muscles, since the top priority is to survive until there's more food. If necessary, it starts consuming your muscles as fuel while preserving the fat for an even more dire emergency.
The outcome of this adaptation isn't pleasant. Because your body is conserving energy, you have little energy to exercise. If you do get up the energy to exercise, your workout suffers. You tend to get hurt quickly, and it takes a long time to recover. Any food you do eat seems to instantly turn into belly fat. Your muscles might actually start to wither away. Not the best conditions for working out really hard and building a muscular body. This is why you need to cheat.
Missing a few meals, or even going on short rations for a few days won't flip your body over into starvation mode. It takes a sustained reduction in calories for that to happen. If you don't have that sustained shortfall, your body will stay in its normal mode and your diet will continue to do its job. You'll get the positive aspects of your diet without the counterproductive side effects of going into starvation mode.
So, to get the best results if you go on a strict diet, you need to go off the plan once in a while. At regular intervals, you need to eat significantly more than the plan calls for, to prevent your body from thinking you are starving. That makes life easier, and there's another benefit. If you eat your favorite foods on thedays when you break the diet, it is much easier to stay on your diet the other days. After all, there's a big difference between giving up your favorite foods altogether, and still having them, say, once a week on your high-calorie days.
A simple way to cheat is to eat anything you want about once a week. However, there are more efficient ways to do this. For the best results possible, while still avoiding starvation mode, you should get expert advice on all aspects of your diet, including whether and how to go about cheating based on your specific diet, body type and so on.
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