Paleo Challenge  – Exit Strategy: Part 2 Cheat meals.

Notice the title. It’s says ‘cheat meals‘, not days. Cheat days are a bad, bad idea on many levels. The first and foremost being you feel like utter garbage the next day.
Seriously, eat well for any length of time, then have a bender of a day. You will feel hung over the next day. Been there done that, not worth it to me.
While we’re at it, let’s define a meal. A meal is food intake at one sitting. Once my butt is up for anything but a quick break to grab another drink, the meal is over. No “well lunch was only 3 hours ago, so this is part of that…”
Why are cheat meals important? Personally, I don’t think the 30-day challenge is sustainable indefinitely. Eventually, you’ll snap and may never get back on track. Having a cheat meal once in awhile is a great release.
It’s also nice to have a target in the distance. Knowing I have a cheat meal coming on Saturday night makes it very easy to keep things clean the rest of the week.
So how do you handle it? A cheat meal every 5-7 days is probably the tightest I would run with it. If you do it more frequently than that, you may find yourself slipping back into old habits before you know it.
Now if you’re completely happy with your current body composition and performance in the gym, you might go as high as two cheat meals a week, possibly three if you are very very active. (Personally, I tend to do ‘just’ enough damage at a sitting that I don’t want to do it again for another 5-7 day.)
Make sure your food intake matches activity. If you notice your pants are getting, snug or abs aren’t quite what they were on Day 30, dial back the intake a little.