If you’re a competitive athlete with an event coming up within the next 2 months,  I’d suggest don’t cheat on your diet with unhealthy foods, just increase your daily intake or the type of food your having on your “Cheat” day. This is assuming you have been on a strict diet for at least one or two months.
Now if your just trying to maintain or even tone up but don’t have an event or say a photo shoot coming up then I’d do things a little different. If you’re looking at staying on a diet for a long time (Longer than 3 months) then you will soon see that your body and mind both will require a break at times. This can be a positive thing as I will explain to you. Your body always wants to maintain homeostasis, meaning it doesn’t like to change as it’s easier and use to staying the same. Now let’s throw in the diet factor and saying your dieting on either a low carb or low fat diet. If you’re taking in the same amount of food and ratios daily then your body will soon adjust to this and your metabolism will slow down. At this point your brain receives a signal, telling it that your body is now starving that it needs to conserve its energy level. So, if you throw in a cheat day this will again throw the body off by thinking you have excess of carbs or fat and it will prevent you from staying at that sticking point.
You might be shocked by this next statement but I have used this with many of my clients and it works. If you’re going to cheat don’t just eat one cookie or a small bag of chips. Instead eat as much as your desire. When you eat one say one cookie then within the next day or so your back craving things again, however if you eat all you want then your mind will be satisfied along with your body and you shouldn’t experience cravings very soon again. This will raise your carbs and fats for the day and get your body that bump to speed up again. I don’t encourage a cheat day until you have at least dieted three weeks.  Reason being is the first few weeks you tend to crave many things and you need to develop your will power to stay on the diet along with getting your metabolism revved up.
Tags: cheat day, diet, low carb diet