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Appetite For Construction
Jan 3 2003

By Dr. John M Berardi, Ph.D.
First published at www.t-mag.com.

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To Cheat or Not to Cheat

Q: It seems that we're seeing a lot of articles in T-mag about cheat meals lately, most of them saying that a good cheat meal can actually help your fat loss diet. In your Damage Control article, you made cheat meals sound positively disastrous. Is a cheat meal once a week or so a good thing or not?

A: Although I always read the articles of fellow T-mag contributors objectively, trying to learn as much as I can from them while trying to reconcile their ideas with my own, I do sometimes end up disagreeing with the information they provide. In this specific case, I know that fellow T-mag contributors Joel Marion and Don Alessi have written articles on how cheat meals can help with fat loss. And, although I think their ideas are interesting, I don't want to say whether or not I agree. This is, in part, due to the fact that, well, I don't know!

I wish I could give you a better answer than that, but I can't. My advice is dependent on the available scientific literature as well as my "real world" experiences as a competitive athlete and as a consultant to weightlifters, bodybuilders, and elite athletes. (Obviously, the same things my colleagues use in formulating their opinions.) With respect to this topic, I don't believe the evidence is clear one way or another, but more importantly, even if the data were crystal clear, there isn't a single answer. Therefore, instead of directly answering your question, I'd like to offer a discussion of this topic so that you can make up your own mind.

First of all, while this question seems simple enough, there are many factors that must be considered before answering. When you say "cheat meal," what exactly do you mean? Do you mean a trip to the buffet or to Pizza Hut in order to binge? Do you mean a clean re-feeding meal that provides the same foods you're dieting with but increases your total calorie intake for that specific meal or day? Do you mean a clean, high carbohydrate meal designed to replenish muscle glycogen? The body certainly would process each of these meals differently, so the answer is dependent on what type of "cheat" you're planning.

It's also important to know a few things about your body. The fatter you are, the more likely you are to store those "cheat" calories as fat; the leaner you are, the more likely you are to burn those calories. This phenomenon seems to be dependent on the cellular signaling that occurs in fatness vs. leanness.

In addition, genetics play a big role. Since some people respond to overfeeding by upregulating their metabolisms dramatically (spendthrift metabolism) while others respond to overfeeding by storing that energy as fat (thrifty metabolism), it's important to know which type you are to determine whether a cheat would be beneficial.

To take this discussion one step further, after properly defining the "cheat," determining your body fat levels, and figuring out how you personally respond to overfeeding, you should also define exactly what you're hoping to accomplish with the cheat. Are you simply hoping to make the diet psychologically easier? Are you hoping to increase the intensity of your subsequent workouts so that you can burn more calories during and after the workout? Are you hoping that the meal will upregulate your sluggish dieter's metabolism and give it an appropriate kick in the pants, allowing for more fat loss? Again, all of these factors play a role in determining whether to cheat or not to cheat.

When looking at the question from this perspective, it doesn't seem so simple, does it?

Putting aside all the physiology discussion, I know many of you are just looking for a simple answer, one that addresses whether or not a cheat meal can help you lose more fat in a shorter period of time. Well, if you're looking for a simple answer, you're not going to find one. However, let me present you with a few strategies that I've seen work pretty well.

Although this info below is discussed in the context of a low carb diet, keep in mind that the rules are probably very similar for more "balanced diets" as well.

• When on a low carbohydrate diet and rapid fat loss is your number one priority, it seems like cheat meals and periodic refeeding aren't good ideas. Simply eliminate calories from your diet and/or increase your exercise activity.

• When you're trying to drop fat using a low carbohydrate diet, but maintaining performance levels is a priority, it may be beneficial to partake in a carbohydrate refeeding meal or refeeding day once every three to seven days. Rather than suggesting this meal upregulates metabolism, I'll suggest that you'll be able to train harder when the fuel supply is topped off again.

Because you'll have been training in a glycogen-depleted state, you can use this refeed to fuel up and increase exercise intensity. The ability to train harder may or may not contribute to fat loss (it all depends on your activity) but regardless, if your goal is to prevent losses in performance, a periodic carbohydrate refeed is the way to go. Not only will it allow you to train harder during the first few days post refeeding, but it'll give you a great psychological boost by releasing some "feel good" neurotransmitters and by causing you to feel less deprived.

• When on a low carbohydrate diet and you're trying to slowly get leaner and/or maintain a ridiculously low level of body fat (under 6% or so), a big cheat meal/day or two each week might be a great idea for compliance. I've trained models who have to stay in shape year round. With these individuals, I've simply had them eat a low carbohydrate diet Monday through Friday and eat a whole lot on the weekends (unless they had a photo shoot on the particular weekend in question). This "whole lot" usually consisted of three to four meals of good bodybuilding food and one or two meals per day of whatever foods they wanted.

As with the above scenario, glycogen stores are filled up on the weekend and gradually diminished during the week. The most intense workouts were performed early in the week while the longer duration workouts were performed later in the week. Fat loss isn't as rapid with this plan but it does occur a little less painfully than with either of the other plans. In addition, it's much easier to follow this plan since it does allow for weekly indulgences.

Finally, if you've got a lot of fat to lose, following one of the above plans to lose much of the fat and then switching to this type of plan can facilitate the maintenance of your lean condition.

So I hope these strategies are useful and clear. Keep in mind though that when planning these types of "cheat meals," different individuals handle overfeeding differently (i.e. the thrifty vs. spendthrift phenotypes). So there doesn't seem to be this big universal metabolic up-regulation that everyone talks about when suggesting a "cheat meal," however you define it. In the thrifty, the metabolism barely raises; in the spendthrift it does raise but there's a catch. While 24-hour energy expenditure is increased when overfeeding, that only seems to last during the 24 hours that you overfeed. During the next day, the metabolic rate seems to return to normal. So you're not going to get a lasting metabolic effect from "cheating."

Considering that the energy expenditure might only increase by 10% in a 24-hour cheat, that's only 300 to 400kcal for a normal person. Unless I'm mistaken, cheat meals often provide a few more calories than that! So, where are the rest of the calories going? Well, they're probably stored as glycogen, as amino acids in skeletal muscle, and in adipose tissue, or they're metabolized in such a way as to signal the body to balance out its energy status. When stored, the main location of the storage is determined by some of the factors discussed above like initial body fat and phenotype (thrifty vs. spendthrift).

Here's another interesting piece of information. Despite what many will write about increasing the metabolism during an overfeed, Duloo et al (2001) discuss the paradox of overfeeding in those who seem to get a metabolic upregulation but also a concurrent increase in fat mass. Although the sympathetic nervous system sends signals to increase metabolism (called non-specific control of thermogenesis) and dissipate energy, there's a level of adipose-specific control that's energy conserving. Often, during overfeeding, many individuals experience a high efficiency of fat recovery co-existing with an overall state of enhanced thermogenesis and hypermetabolism. This means that even though the metabolism will go up, the adipose tissues will preferentially store fat.

Before I start going far too deep into intracellular signaling and the hexosamine biosynthesis pathway, I'll wrap it up. In my opinion, cheat meals are not positively disastrous, but they should be planned with caution based on your goals, the type of diet you're following, the type of phenotype you possess, and a whole host of other factors we don't even know about yet.

Mix and Match Fats

Q: When it comes to good fats, should we mix and match? Meaning, if we're taking fish oil caps, is there any reason to also take flax? How about the blends like Udo's? As I understand it, if Udo's supplies all your daily fats, you're okay, but if you're eating in an un-Udo-esque manner, i.e., getting some omega 6's and polyunsaturates in junk food, you'll be perpetuating the imbalance.

A: I've written on this topic once before but since that discussion was only available in the print mag (spring 2001), I figured I'd address it once again here online with a few additions to this discussion.

As most T-mag readers know, the typical North American doesn't consume too much fat, per se, but he does consume the wrong fats in the wrong proportions. For starters, the typical North American consumes too much saturated fat, both in total amount and represented as a percentage of total fat. In other words, he eats too much fat, and most of his total fat comes from saturated fat. Bad news!

Interestingly, however, it's not just the fast food lovers that suffer from unhealthy fat intakes. Even the "health conscious" aren't immune to an unhealthy saturated fat to total fat ratio.

To give you an example, recently I got the opportunity to look at a few hundred diet records from a sample of Canadian undergraduate students. While these students were mostly kinesiology and nutrition students and did tend to have lower fat diets than average, their average saturated fat intake was well over 50% of their total fat intake. This means that for every 100g of fat they took in, about 50g came from saturated fats and 50g from polyunsaturated fats.

This flies in the face of what's appropriate for good health — a diet that contains less than 30% of the fat coming from saturates (less than 30g of saturates per 100g fat) and 70% coming from polyunsaturates. Some of my colleagues even suggest that 10% of the fat coming from saturates (10g of saturates per 100g of fat) and 90% of the fat coming from polyunsaturates may be even better for optimal health.

What this information tells us is that whether you're eating a typical "fast food" diet or whether you're trying to be health conscious, it's easy to eat either too much total saturated fat or simply get an unhealthy ratio of saturated fat to total fat. I emphasize this here because people who consume diets containing high amounts of animal protein should be sure they pay particular attention to their saturated fat to total fat ratio.

In addition to an inappropriate ratio of saturated fat to total fat, the ratio of specific polyunsaturates is usually also out of whack. For the typical high fat eater, the omega 6 to omega 3 ratio needs some work. Many health experts believe that the incidence of heart disease and "Syndrome X" is on the rise in part due to the fact that the pre-industrial ratios of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids were closer to 2:1 as opposed to our modern ratios of 10:1 or 20:1. Omega 6 fatty acids are very pro-inflammatory, not only aggravating existing injuries, but also aggravating blood vessel linings, creating a higher likelihood of cardiovascular damage. Therefore, increasing the 6's while reducing the anti-inflammatory 3's isn't such a good thing.

Again, however, the health conscious aren't immune to this shift in fat intake. While the health conscious students listed above were certainly a bit high in their ratios of omega 6 to omega 3, their absolute intakes of these two polyunsaturates were far too low. Therefore, even though their omega 6 to omega 3 ratio was about 7:1, they were taking in so little polyunsaturated fatty acids, especially 3's and 6's, that I'd wager a guess and say they were probably deficient in both fatty acids and, by extension, all essential fatty acids.

So, as you can see, there are two major concerns with respect to fat intake. First, you should be getting less than 30% of your total fat from saturates. Second, you should be getting greater than 70% of your fats from polyunsaturates and of these polyunsaturates, you should strive for a 1:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids.

So, how do you accomplish this? Well, it all depends on your current dietary intake.

• Are you eating a diet that contains very little total fat from food sources? If so, you're probably consuming too few essential fatty acids (both 6's and 3's) and the balance of 6's to 3's is probably a bit off. In this case, you should supplement with a product like Udo's; one that provides a balanced ratio of omega 6 : omega 3 : omega 9 (1:2:1).

Now, lest you think Udo "greases my palm" for product plugs, alternatively you could simply supplement with olive oil and flaxseed oil while adding a variety of nuts to your diet. This should also provide a good amount of essential fatty acids in the right proportions. Regardless of which option you choose, the addition of fish oil is always a good idea since the EPA and DHA content of fish oil offers a unique set of health benefits that probably aren't obtained from the fat of other oils. So either consume some Udo's and some fish oil or some additional flax, olive, fish and some nuts.

• Are you eating a diet that contains a large amount of animal fat (beef, eggs, dairy, chicken, turkey, etc)? If so, you're probably consuming a lot of saturated fat relative to your unsaturated fat intake. To remedy this you should supplement with polyunsaturated fats.

In choosing which types of polyunsaturates to consume, you must realize that most grain fed (supermarket) animal products are rich in omega 6 fatty acids and have a high ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids — about 20:1 in some extreme cases, but at least 4:1 or 5:1. If these are the types of animal products you consume, you'll need to supplement with oils that contain mostly omega 3's. This brings us back to flaxseed oil and fish oil. On the other hand, most grass fed animal products have a better balance of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids — about 3:1. If your diet contains mostly grass fed animals, you can use the strategies listed above.

In the end, it's wise to use a variety of fat sources in your diet while ensuring a good ratio of saturates and polyunsaturates. Check out this table below for a listing of foods and their omega 6 and omega 3 content. The fatty acid numbers represent the amount of fatty acid per 100g of the oil or food.

*Represent g of fatty acid per 100g