Healthy Andy

Recently I had a conversation with someone, a former fitness competitor, that reminded me of the importance of having a cheat day in order to keep yourself healthy and your body fat low in the long run.

Yes, my friends, you’re going to cheat.  You are.  It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. 

I mean, really… are you REALLY going to give up your favorite indulgences- chocolate, pizza, burgers, whatever- every day, day in, day out, for the rest of your life? 

Of course not.  That’s insane.  You’re not a robot or a cyborg.  And, if you’ve read my post on sugar addiction, you know that you’re fighting something as powerful as a cocaine addiction if you try to never cheat.  So forget it.  You WILL stray from your healthy whole foods diet.

Knowing this, decide right now to cheat smart.  CONTROL your cheating by QUANTIFYING it.  The worst thing you can do is say, “Oh, Healthy Andy, I’ll just let myself have an occasional treat from time to time, and that will be it.” 

WRONG!  Liar!  Because what will happen is, “occasional” will become more and more frequent… especially when you’re feeling stressed, unhappy, tired, that sort of thing.  Does this sound familiar?  “Oh, just this once.  I deserve it.”

“I deserve” is a one-way ticket to Fattown.  No, you can’t trust yourself.  Sorry, you can’t.  The insanely high obesity rates in this country proves it.  Hey, I can’t trust myself, either.  So here’s how you limit your indulgences, to keep them indulgences.

Have a cheat day.  That’s, A cheat day, as in ONE.  One day a week (most people pick Saturday or Sunday), you go hog wild on anything you want.  Pizza, burgers, ice cream, chocolate, I don’t care, stuff it all in like the world is ending.  And then… that’s it.  The other six days, it’s an all whole foods diet, no junk, no exceptions.

You see, there’s only so much you can really stuff in your body in one day.  At some point, you’re going to stop, or get sick.  That sugary awesomeness that you’ve been dreaming about, will, after you’ve overindulged, become so goddamn sweet you can’t stand another bite.  Those burgers will fill your belly till you don’t even want to hear the word “burger” spoken aloud.

In other words, you limit the amount of over-consumption of calories to one day, and you limit the crazed spiking of your insulin levels (from the carbs) to one day.  The other six days, your body will easily recover.

It’s how you have your cake, and eat it too.  After all, you may not be able to give up chocolate forever, but you can give it up for a couple of days.  Especially if you know that you’ve got your cheat day coming up, and anything goes.

Every bodybuilder, fitness model, or other fit person I know that has stayed fit in the long term, uses this approach.  Those that don’t, eventually freak out and don’t just fall off the wagon, they FLY off (and usually stay off!).

You can’t do it overnight, of course.  Most of my weight loss book is all about how to get yourself to that point.  But I don’t want you for a second to think that a healthy lifestyle means no indulgences, ever.  You just have to keep indulgences, INDULGENCES, and not the norm. 

I was the guy who was exercising like crazy and could never lose his gut, until I started using this concept.  Then, I dropped about 25-30 pounds of body fat.  And I still get to wolf down ice cream and pizza until I’m stuffed… from time to time.

You know, it’s always funny when I fall prey to one of the common pitfalls I advise people to avoid when it come to health and fitness.  Happens to the best of us, folks.  This time, it was over-training.

Specifically, taking on too much too fast.  I’ve been focusing on pushing the surge training component of my cardio exercise, and I pushed it too far too fast. 

Surge training, by the way, is basically intermittent sprinting.  It doesn’t have to be done with running- you can apply the basic principles to biking, swimming, any cardio- but the basic idea is, you sprint like crazy for about 60 seconds, then slow down for a bit, then sprint again, then slow down for a bit, and so on and so forth. 

It’s a great way to boost your growth hormone levels.  More than that, it keeps people like me, with too much ADHD for just running along forever at a regular pace, amused long enough to get me through an intense cardio workout.

HOWEVER.  As I always tell people, the down-side to intensity, is risk.  Risk of injury, to be specific.  The more intense you go, the more results you’ll get… but the more likely you are to injure yourself .  So, really, you have to ramp up to intensity, to try to avoid injury.

My ramp was a little too steep.  So, now I’m nursing a minor soleus (deep calf muscle) pull.  Oh, well.  It’s rather minor and will only translate to a week or so off from running- which will give me a good excuse to get on the rowing machine and in the pool.  Cross-training is a great way to deal with injuries.

So, take care out there, my friends!  Overall, consistency is more important than intensity, so don’t think you have to kill yourself to get ahead.