What's the point of having a diet model if you can't eat cupcakes, pizza, burgers, ice cream, etc?
You put all this work into a. creating a diet model and b. adhering to that diet...what's the payoff aside from seeing results?
CHEAT MEALS!!!
I'm a big fan of the daily cheat meal and teach all of our clients flexible dieting.
Flexible dieting is basically allowing for all foods in your diet as long as it fits into your protein, carb, and fat targets.
So, how do we structure these into our diets?
Easy:
1. Find your calorie deficit - you can find an online calculator or use my approach HERE
2. Find your macronutrient targets (you can start with a basic 40%/30%/30% carbs/protein/fat ratio)
3. Choose your cheat meals! - I typically stay away from restaurants that aren't in my fitness pal, but other than that everything's game! Cookies, candy, ice cream, cupcakes...i'm a big dessert guy but also find myself at McDonald's from time to time
4. Pre log your food - Once you've chosen the cheat meal and before you eat it, input it into My Fitness Pal. Add in your other meals for the day that you will eat to put all the protein, fat, and carb grams at "zeros" (which tells you that you've hit all the macro targets precisely)
5. Don't binge - Fill up on plenty of water, sparkling water, and veggies for the day to suppress the appetite. I typically have my cheat meals last meal of the day and have my Burn PM supplement by Prestige Labs around 4-5pm to further suppress the appetite. If there are binge cheat meals you know you'll splurge on, just stay away from them
I love layering in cheats daily because it breaks up the monotony of dieting, and also because I have such an all in/all out mentality, structuring daily cheat meals gives me some gray area to make it feel like i'm not dieting.
You can also do full cheat days instead, as long as it fits into your macro targets (which will be pretty tough, but still doable).
-Dylan