What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, Athlean-X.com.
Today we're addressing that all too popular question about cheat meals.
How important are cheat meals?
Should I have cheat meals?
How often should I have cheat meals?
Jeff, do you ever have cheat meals?
We're going to cover it all today.
Now, first of all I think we should define what a cheat meal is to you.
You see, if you think things like steak, or pasta, potatoes, pumpkin pie, oatmeal, breakfast
burritos, chocolate chip mint frozen yogurt; if you think these are cheat meals then you,
my friend, are on the wrong eating plan.
Not only are these things that we actually endorse in our Athlean-X Factor Meal Plan,
but these are exactly what I ate yesterday.
I ate all of these foods yesterday.
In fact, I eat a lot of them all the time.
Maybe not steak as much, but the idea here is that I'm talking about cheat meals.
Things that you have to go sign a waiver for at a restaurant because they're worried about
your health, or foods that start with double stuffed, or extra-extra, or the super duper.
These are going to put super-duper amounts of fat on your ass if you eat them.
Those are the real cheat foods.
A lot of you guys have cravings for them, and that's great because it's a reality.
People don’t always follow very strict eating plans, or they can't follow all the time,
but I'll tell you this: that's based on the fact that those eating plans are too restrictive
and they're causing you to have the need for cheat meals.
With that being said I wanted to cover and ask a couple questions of you to determine
whether or not you feel that a cheat meal is actually something that’s going to benefit
you or not.
Okay, the first question you've got to ask yourself is whether or not you're feeling
deprived with the eating plan that you're on.
Do you feel that you're missing out on something?
Do you feel that you're on a diet?
I talk about that concept all the time.
The worst word is "diet" because everybody always says "I'm on a diet".
What that really means is that you're going to be off it at some point.
You're on it for a while, but you're off it eventually because nobody can stick to a deprivation
based plan for their lifetime.
At Athlean-X it's about sticking to a plan for a lifetime and creating lifetime changes,
not just looking to lose weight short term, not trying to come up here on a YouTube video
to look good for you guys every once in a while, but to be able to live this way and
look good year round.
365 days a year, every single video I do for you I try to practice what I preach.
Feeling deprived is not the way to have a long term, successful diet plan.
Now, most of our cheat meals are based around foods that are either rich in fats or carbohydrates.
If you were to take yourself away from some of those foods, based on deprivation, there's
not many people walking around with fat and carbohydrate deficiencies.
I can tell you that right now.
Eating healthier doesn’t mean that you have to feel deprived.
You can still get your carbs, you'll still get your fats, you're just doing it a bit
more responsibly and choosing a little bit wiser in terms of the foods that you eat and
not overindulging.
You won't ever feel deprived anymore.
You're going to feel fulfilled and at the same time you're going to actually start realizing
some of the fitness goals that you have.
That brings me to question number two.
Number two: What are your goals?
I mean your goals.
Your specific goals.
We all have different goals.
What level of goal are you trying to aspire to?
See, here, for me, not only am I the face of my brand and practicing what I preach and
leading you guys.
I feel if you're going to lead you'd better lead by example and I do that.
By doing that I'm restrictive with that I eat, but as you saw I eat all the things that
were up on that board before.
So how restrictive would you call it?
I'm not sitting here eating boiled chicken, I'll tell you that much.
I'm not eating steamed broccoli and that's it.
I never do that.
I never have.
That would never be something I could follow for the lifelong, but you guys have to say
"What are your goals?"
If you aren't trying to be what I'm trying to be here, or be the face of a brand, or
have a certain level of leanness you can actually cheat a little more often.
That would allow you to have some meals or things you might want to have a little more
frequently than I do.
The idea is that you have to define what your specific goal is and from there determine
how appropriate a cheat meal is to your game plan.
The third question is actually one of my favorite ones.
That is: "How motivated are you right now?"
I mean motivated by your own physique.
What is your reaction when you look in the mirror right now?
A lot of times it could be repulsion.
Let's call it the way it is.
"I hate the way I look.
I've got to do something about it."
A lot of times you have to balance the desire for that short term fix of whatever the cheat
food is to the long term goal – like we talked about in the last step – of how you
ultimately want to look.
When that short term fix is not as valuable to you as the long term goal, that's the moment
that you start to defeat your urge for cheat meals.
Not that it's a bad thing, it's just that you actually start to become motivated because,
for the first time, we have guys on Athlean-X all the time that write in and tell us that
for the first time ever they can see their abs.
For the first time ever they're building new muscle.
They couldn't build.
They were hard gainers.
They couldn't do it before.
For the first time ever they're getting compliments either from their spouse or their friends
who are noticing that they're training and they've been training for the last five years
and nobody noticed.
That right there gives you the extra motivation to want to hold onto those compliments and
hold onto those compliments that you're actually seeing for the first time.
You have to figure out where you are right now in that motivation scale to determine
whether or not you're looking for those short term fixes, or placing more value on those
long term goals.
That brings me to my final question.
That is: How mentally tough are you?
When it comes to deciding whether or not cheat meals should be part of your plan you have
to ask yourself how mentally tough you are.
Going back to the foods I showed you in the beginning, it doesn't take a lot of mental
toughness to be able to stick to an eating plan that has that many good tasting food
options available to you.
That's just a fraction of what we make available.
However, when we talk about cheat meals are you the type of person that could have a cheat
meal?
There's difference between cheat meals and cheat days.
I'm not an advocate of cheat days because cheat days turn into cheat weeks and cheat
weeks turn to cheat months and before you know it you're cheating all year round on
your diet.
You ask me "Jeff, is it okay for me to have a health meal every once in a while?"
If you're at that point you've got some serious issues.
So what we want to do is ask yourself if you indulge in that cheat meal, is that going
to turn into a cheat week and a cheat month?
Do you have the mental toughness to say "I'm going to have this because I want to have
it, but then I'm going to get right Back on my healthier eating plan and stay right back
focused on my goals again"?
You've got to ask yourself that question because that's going to vary from individual to individual.
Now, I want to give you a couple strategies.
If after this self-assessment you say to yourself "I can handle it.
I've got my goals in check.
I know where I'm heading, but I still want to have some cheat meals", then I'll give
you two big tips on what you might want to do and stay conscious of when you're making
decisions on when to have that meal.
The first big tip I can pass on to you if you decide you're going to have a cheat meal
every once in a while is: try to prepare your cheat meals at home.
You be the person in control of what you're eating.
You see, if you go out to a restaurant you don’t know what you're eating.
A lot of times you don’t.
You don’t know how bad what you're eating is and you don’t know how much that can
actually overload you and pull you away from your goals.
You do it at home and you're in control.
You know what you're putting in.
I would recommend, if you're going to do it, at all costs do that.
I do realize that sometimes part of the cheat is getting out of the house and letting someone
else do the work for you.
That's great, I just want you to be aware of the fact that doing it at home is likely
going to save you in the long run.
Tip number two here is actually very helpful.
That is, if possible, you want to schedule your cheat meal wisely.
You see, not all the time do you have the luxury of scheduling.
You find yourself out and a bout, the moment hits and you have your cheat meal.
That's the way it happens.
However, if you can schedule when you're going to have your cheat meal – which a lot of
us do have that control – you might want to think about when you're less likely to
allow that meal to turn into a day, to a week, to a month.
That might be having that cheat meal on a Sunday night for dinner because you know that
the structure of your work week, the structure of getting back to business on Monday – sometimes
getting back to the gym – that allows you to get back on track again.
Meanwhile, let's say if you did it on a Friday night that could easily turn into a weekend
long bender of cheat meals.
So you want to find, for you, where you're less likely to allow this thing to cascade
and where you can actually keep the reigns on it and control it.
Lastly, I want to leave you here with a lesson.
The old saying goes "You can't have your cake and eat it too."
I would say you can't have your cake and have great abs, too.
As one of my athletes actually put it so eloquently one time "You can't have your cake and not
be a fucking lard ass".
He said it, not me.
The idea here is that he's right.
You can have it in moderation.
Even I have my favorite carrot cake twice a year.
That's it, but I don’t indulge all the time because to me, what's important, is looking
a certain way, feeling a certain way, and being able to stand up here and practice what
I preach, as I've said to you before.
It isn't easy, but it doesn't have to be complicated.
If it was easy everyone would walk around looking the way everyone wants to look.
It's not, but it doesn't have to be complicated.
Guys, that's the whole thing that I preach here.
I will take you by the hand and show you exactly how to do it.
I'll show you exactly how I eat, I'll give you the workouts – exactly what I do.
I have it as part of our Athlean-X training system.
That's what we talk about and preach all the time.
It's step by step, meal by meal, and workout by workout.
It's not complicated.
I show you exactly what to do, but you've got to have that certain level of dedication.
You've got to do this little self-assessment to determine where you fall in terms of your
desire for cheat meals.
Maybe you're not ready to get in shape yet.
That's not a bad thing.
It happens to all of us.
I do know that this is the time of year when most of us will start to assess our health,
assess how we look, and want to start making changes.
I can help you make those changes, I guarantee it.
But we've got to start somewhere.
Head to AthleanX.com and in the meantime if you've found this video helpful, if you've
found it to be honest and truthful, let me know below and I promise I'll make more videos
that you guys want to see.
Just let me know what kind of videos you want to see and I'll do that.
All right, I'll be back here again guys in just a few days.
I'll talk to you soon.
Later.