Double cheat results

Hey guys, I know the Cheater’s Diet has been a hot topic of debate as of late, so I just wanted to let y’all know about my real-life results. Thursday night I measured my bodyfat at 8.8%. Later, my fiancee convinced me to go in on a family-size pizza with her, of which I ate more than half. In addition to that, she oh-so-maliciously twisted my arm (strong girl!) until I agreed to consume two full orders of honey cajun chicken wings, two large biscuits with butter AND almost an entire half gallon of butter pecan ice cream. I totally blew it! Or did I? Friday afternoon my bodyfat measured 8.7!!

But here’s where I screwed up, and I’m sure all of you will mutter a collective “Well, DUH!” - Friday night rolls around and what happens to land on my dinner plate? If you guessed fried chicken and garlic mashed potatoes with gravy, then you’re absolutely right! Needless to say, the calipers flipped me the bird with a reading of 9.3 today.
I just thought you’d all be curious about the aftershock, that’s all.

Aaah, the things we do for science :slight_smile:

You should have cut yourself off after I sent you that bitterly sarcastic, “I’m carb intolerant and you’re rubbing it in my face” email that I sent you!

Okay, I think some individuals are misunderstanding the diet and the benefits thereof. Eating a whole bunch of food does not directly result in fat loss. I’ve seen a bunch of posts that say “I totally pigged out and looked better the next day!” Well, that is probably due to the fact that you look fuller, more vascular etc, and didn’t gain an appreciable amount of fat; not that the cheat translated into immediate fat loss. In the above case, I believe that what happened with Chris is that he cheated and experienced no fat gain (a .1% difference could very well be margin of error, time of day difference, etc.) which is highly probable given that he has been on a hypocaloric diet and his body was primed for it.

Just for clarification, what the cheating does is allow you to continually lose fat without plateauing. Plateaus are normally caused by plumeted leptin levels (which is the product of a severe hypocaloric diet, a continued hypocaloric diet, or simply low levels of body fat). Leptin is an antistarvation hormone that basically tells ur body to downregulate your metabolism and stop using fat for energy. The cheat upregulates leptin and therefore fat loss is continued. It is not unlikely that you cheat and then the next morning the calipers read a few tenths of a percentage higher...don't worry; because leptin has been raised, and if you get back to your diet and training you will get leaner over the course of the next few days. Although you may gain a neglible amount of fat from the cheat, you get leaner; that is the benefit of cheating and the diet, etc. Keep in mind, however, that you may not gain any fat (like Chris) as a result of the cheat. You have to find the optimal protocol in which causes you the least amount of fat gain, the greatest leptin response, and some psychological benefit. Not everyone will be able to eat all the fat that Chris ate and not put on substantial fat; that is why i have given the option of extended carbohyrate refeeds. I have been stressing this on the forum over and over again.

When on a severe diet, most people will quickly plateau because of low levels of leptin; the result is that their body fat stays the same. No one wants that; no one wants their bf% to remain the same when they are putting in loads of effort and dieting and training hard.

If on a moderatly restricted diet, leptin does not crash as quickly, glycogen is not as depleted, and you have to cheat less frequently and be more controlled when you do. Hopefully this gives some insight.

i’ve been that bad before too. i’d bet $5 you’ll be lower than 8.7 by wednesday, if you kept clean until then.

Five bucks, huh? YOU’RE ON, BUDDY!!!

Joel, while I am not following your Cheater’s Diet protocols, I just wanted to add that when I do go “all out” it is usually done the night before a strenuous training day (i.e., deadlifts, etc). I used to do the weekend carb-up (which was very uncomfortable for me) but since reading a Coach Poliquin article i began to just take a full cheat meal about every five days. The rest of the week I basically eat nothing more than protein and vegetables. This has worked very well for me, as in the last two months I’ve remained below 10% bodyfat and have experienced drastic changes in my body composition. Anyway, cheers to you for trying to help others make this happen! I just happened to stumble upon what works for my body type purely by trial and error and a little bit of dumb luck :slight_smile:

Man I haven’t cheated like that in a long time. I am gonna try this and see what happens. Ha Ha Nick

Good for you! And thank you for the kind words. I would, however, recommend that you try this for a few weeks and see if you get even better results: Try having your cheat meal after your strenous workout (about an hour after your SURGE) and then continue to refeed on simple carbs for the next several hours; the whole bonanza should last for about 8 hours. It seems that the continued refeed will further boost leptin levels and since you’ll be pretty glycogen depleted, fat gain shouldn’t be an issue. Over the next few days you’ll probably get even leaner than if you just had the cheat meal. Let me know if you decide to give it a go.