Cheat meals are a science on their own! It all depends where you are in dieting and comp prepping. And there is a difference between a cheat meal and a re-feed meal. Let me explain a bit. Cheat meals are generally off-season a bit of a “pig out” meal - you stuff yourself with as much food that is not usually on your diet sheet - this is done to break the routine of dieting. And you don’t actually care how much kCals you consume, as you are off-season and one such meal, is not going to disrail the apple cart. Mostly done every second week, as the rest of the time you are at least eating 85-90% clean. What do you reach by this type of meal? Basically to break the routine and boredom of dieting.
Cheats or re-feeds during comp prep, are a different kettle of fish. In this phase you are strictly calory counting and the cheat is a meal of more or less the same kCals of one of your day’s prep diet sheet meals. Sometimes I will have my athletes eat a good cheat meal replacing two meals’ worth of kCals from their existing day’s sheet. But by the end of that particular day, the kCals still must add up to the allowance of that day and certainly not exceed it. I generally run two cheats per week during prep time - that is 15-13 weeks out up to 6 weeks out from comp - Wednesday one and either Saturday or Sunday one cheat. We discuss beforehand what my athletes would like to eat - and we then work out more or less portion sizes. Some examples my athletes generally will “negotiate” for - pizza, nice saucy pasta, Big Mac burger, sushi or some kind of choc-brownie...... What are we trying to achive here? Primarily to upregulate thyroid function and to reward the athlete for sticking 100% to diet otherwise.
Right, now we get to re-feeds......those last 6 weeks pre-comp, we monitor weight and skin fold % very closely - kCals are titrated in accordance to weight training and cardio load, as well as to which endpoint we are aiming for. Regular pictures of physique initially weekly and closer to show every 3 days - now we start looking at clinical picture changes that follow to changes we make in stuff like diet, training load, meds, etc - if we notice sudden negative changes in lean mass values, we know we have pushed too hard (Sports Meds terms it is called “over-reaching”) and we then need to re-feed. That specific re-feed meal is then “designed” and given as part of that specific day’s meal plan strategy. It might even be that we over-reached way too much and I’ll give increased carb intake with all meals for a full day, or even 2-3 days consecutively if I see my athlete is “crashing”. We might even combine those re-feed meals with time off from training and give 2-3 hours more sleep per day.
So, you see - cheat meals and re-feeds are a science to their own - they differ in type, frequency and timing to where you are in what you are prepping or training for.
Knowledge is power!
