For many people, the very first thing they want to know when they start up on a fat loss diet is can they have a cheat day.
Let's face it, very few people out there enjoy cutting out their favorite foods.
We as humans are conditioned to associate eating with pleasure and thus for many of us, this association is tightly ingrained in our minds to such an extent that if we want to experience pleasure, we simply eat.
Often times this pleasure-eating factor is what drives us to eat in the first place, not the actual physiological sensation of hunger taking place in the body.
So when you start up on the diet to lose weight and your favorite foods are threatened to be removed from your menu, anxiety tends to set in.
So while most of us will always want a cheat day in their diet, are cheat days really necessary or will they just hold back results? Let's have a quick look at the answer to this question so you can get the facts straight about what's going on when you decide to have a cheat day.
The Impact Of Diets On The Body The very first thing to assess is what the impact of a lower calorie diet is on the body.
Essentially, any time you put your body on a reduced calorie intake, it's going to start fighting you.
Your body would prefer to stay at its current body fat level.
To it, a reduced body fat means a decrease rate of survival since if food became scarce, it wouldn't have as many reserves to last it through until more food was found.
So when you self-impose a slight deficit, the body reacts.
It's going to cause you to become hungry, to feel incredibly fatigued, and you may even find that you start to get rather irritable.
Your body is doing all of these things to try and tempt you into eating again.
The Impact Of Diets On Your Hormonal Systems As you forge on with this lowered calorie fat loss diet, there is also an impact on a physiological level.
One particular hormone known as 'leptin' is a master-hormone that's used to gauge your body fat stores.
When you have a lot of fat mass present and are using a higher calorie diet, leptin remains high in the body, hunger levels are low, and energy is relatively high.
When you use a lower calorie diet however, things change.
Now leptin begins to drop down much lower, ravenous hunger sets in, and you, more than anything else, want that cheat day.
Additionally, those who are very over fat for longer periods of time may even begin to develop leptin resistance which can really set you up for problems down the road as far as fat loss is concerned.
Also, the leaner you get, the more serious this problem becomes.
Leptin is highly correlated to both total body fat stores and total daily calorie intake, with the lower either of these values go, the lower leptin will plummet as well.
The Impact Of A Cheat Day So how do you combat this? Is there a way you can actually trick leptin and get it to reset itself so those hunger pains will leave you alone for once? You bet there is - the cheat day.
A cheat day, when planned out properly is one of the most effective ways that you can boost up your leptin levels, reverse the seriously intense hunger signals the body is sending you, help boost up your metabolic rate so you burn off body fat faster, and help you stay sane as well.
After all, who doesn't like having a cheat day now and then? The problem is that often people don't go about planning their cheat day correctly so rather than seeing a whole slew of positive benefits from it, they just gain weight.
While a cheat day can definitely help you, if can also harm you if you aren't implementing it properly.
Let's face it, very few people out there enjoy cutting out their favorite foods.
We as humans are conditioned to associate eating with pleasure and thus for many of us, this association is tightly ingrained in our minds to such an extent that if we want to experience pleasure, we simply eat.
Often times this pleasure-eating factor is what drives us to eat in the first place, not the actual physiological sensation of hunger taking place in the body.
So when you start up on the diet to lose weight and your favorite foods are threatened to be removed from your menu, anxiety tends to set in.
So while most of us will always want a cheat day in their diet, are cheat days really necessary or will they just hold back results? Let's have a quick look at the answer to this question so you can get the facts straight about what's going on when you decide to have a cheat day.
The Impact Of Diets On The Body The very first thing to assess is what the impact of a lower calorie diet is on the body.
Essentially, any time you put your body on a reduced calorie intake, it's going to start fighting you.
Your body would prefer to stay at its current body fat level.
To it, a reduced body fat means a decrease rate of survival since if food became scarce, it wouldn't have as many reserves to last it through until more food was found.
So when you self-impose a slight deficit, the body reacts.
It's going to cause you to become hungry, to feel incredibly fatigued, and you may even find that you start to get rather irritable.
Your body is doing all of these things to try and tempt you into eating again.
The Impact Of Diets On Your Hormonal Systems As you forge on with this lowered calorie fat loss diet, there is also an impact on a physiological level.
One particular hormone known as 'leptin' is a master-hormone that's used to gauge your body fat stores.
When you have a lot of fat mass present and are using a higher calorie diet, leptin remains high in the body, hunger levels are low, and energy is relatively high.
When you use a lower calorie diet however, things change.
Now leptin begins to drop down much lower, ravenous hunger sets in, and you, more than anything else, want that cheat day.
Additionally, those who are very over fat for longer periods of time may even begin to develop leptin resistance which can really set you up for problems down the road as far as fat loss is concerned.
Also, the leaner you get, the more serious this problem becomes.
Leptin is highly correlated to both total body fat stores and total daily calorie intake, with the lower either of these values go, the lower leptin will plummet as well.
The Impact Of A Cheat Day So how do you combat this? Is there a way you can actually trick leptin and get it to reset itself so those hunger pains will leave you alone for once? You bet there is - the cheat day.
A cheat day, when planned out properly is one of the most effective ways that you can boost up your leptin levels, reverse the seriously intense hunger signals the body is sending you, help boost up your metabolic rate so you burn off body fat faster, and help you stay sane as well.
After all, who doesn't like having a cheat day now and then? The problem is that often people don't go about planning their cheat day correctly so rather than seeing a whole slew of positive benefits from it, they just gain weight.
While a cheat day can definitely help you, if can also harm you if you aren't implementing it properly.
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