You’ve Been Doing The Most Important Part Of Your Diet Wrong All These Years

To all you dieters out there, we salute you. Whether you’re Paleo-ing or just doing stuff your own way, it’s not an easy task.

And the one thing you look forward to the most when you’re dieting is the fact that you’re owed a cheat day each week for putting in six gruelling days.

But, what about if we told you that you’ve probably been doing cheat day wrong all of these years.

On this week’s episode of The Forty-Five, Eamon Fennell and Ross McConnell chatted all things nutrition and performance with Dr. Brendan Egan.

Dr. Egan is Associate Professor of Sport and Exercise Physiology in the School of Health and Human Performance at Dublin City University and has worked with top teams across GAA and a range of other sports. Brendan played Intercounty football with Sligo for eleven years.

The doctor wanted to describe to people that they are doing cheat day all wrong if they are not doing this:

Fennell: “I used to order a Domino’s Double Decker which is like 10,000 calories but I never would have saved up the calories during the week [for it]. Now, after the week I may have 600 calories to spare and that is what my cheat meal can consist of. People don’t understand what cheat day really is.”

Egan: The whole idea of the cheat meal drives me nuts because where it comes from historically is bodybuilders who used to go on weightcuts. And when you’re in this calories restriction for a long time you need what is called a ‘refeed’.

The refeed would involved eating slightly above the surplus and it was known out of of context as the ‘cheat day’. And now people seem to think that if they don’t eat junk food for a few days, they’re ‘entitled’ to a cheat day.

The cheat meal discussion starts around the 8:30 mark in the podcast above.