Cheaters Always Win

Life lesson No. 1: Cheaters always win. Ok, so maybe that's not always true. But in my case, it is. You see, I'm not talking about cheating in school, cheating in athletics, or any other forms of cheating that the average non-bro might be thinking of. No, you see, I'm talking about diet, and specifically, cutting. Whereas some people believe that, when cutting, it is absolutely imperative that you always eat exactly the amount of calories, brotein, carbs, and fat that have been BroScienced by some Brofessor somewhere on the internet, I subscribe to a slightly different bro-ology. By no means are my methods free from BroScience (they're actually riddled with it), but I use it in a way that makes more practical sense in my daily life. And you know what? I still get results. So there.

By practicality, I mean that I don't stress too much if I go 100 calories over or if I fall 30 grams of brotein short. It happens. And I don't agree that this strict guideline must be adhered to every day for years and years. For instance, I've actually done pretty well in the past week staying right around my goals, so, in my mind, I've earned a "cheat day." What this means, and what I didn't mention a week ago when I went on my cheat-a-thon, is that cheat days are actually important in the cutting process. You have to be smart about it though. 

It all starts with basic thermodynamics, which I find to be incredibly oxymoronic. Anyway, this can be applied to physiology in that if you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight. It's easier to track this over the course of, say, a week, since body weight fluctuates drastically throughout the day. 

Common knowledge, though antiquated slightly, is that a 3,500-calorie weekly deficit will equate to a pound of weight loss. That being said, there are some additional modifications that need to be made. 

1. While fat has 9 calories per gram, and one pound is ~454 grams, you would expect a pound of fat to have around 4,080 calories. But since adipocytes only contain about 85% fat, or 386 grams, that comes out to about 3,470 calories. 
2. With this logic, the 3,500-calorie deficit idea makes sense, superficially. But when losing weight, it's impossible to lose only fat. There's also going to be some muscle loss. A couple ways to reduce muscle loss while cutting include resistance training and eating a lot of brotein, hence why I go the the gym 3 times every week and strive to eat 185 grams of brotein every day.
3. Now, this may work for a while, but you can't just eat 3,500 calories fewer every week and hope to maintain the same rate of weigh loss. In a process called adaptive thermogenesis, the body actually feels as though it's starving, so it reduces the amount of energy it uses for basic biological parameters. While this can have several negative side effects, it also means that less calories are burned. This is where cheat days come in. 

The main reason people on diets tend to burn out and fall off the bandwagon is because of this last point. They could be doing everything else perfectly, but if you don't account for the body's adaptation to this new level of energy intake, weight loss will plateau. So, in BroScience theory, if you give you body more food than it's used to, it'll realize that it's actually not starving. Makes sense, right? This worked for me last year, so that's what I'm doing this year, too. My daily energy expenditure, based on basal metabolic rate and activity level, is somewhere around 2,310. Eating around 1,850 calories per day is a 3,220 weekly deficit. If I kept this up for too long, my body would adjust to this and I'd stop losing weight. So I take one day every week and eat a little bit more. 

The important thing to remember is that cheat days shouldn't be all-out pig out days. For instance, if I ate 3,220 calories more on my cheat day than I burned that day, I would have effectively negated the previous week of cutting. So cheating is eating a little bit more, but not a whole lot more. 

So let's finally get to the only part of this post that anyone will ever read. Here comes the food I ate on this cheat day.

I couldn't find my Blender Bottle this morning, so I was unable to have my breakfast brotein shake. After my shift at Mrs. E's, I had a few chicken tenders with ranch. I also decided to try a few "Italian sausages" but discovered they were really just hot dogs. I also got some grilled peppers because they looked good. 

A little later, Sidney and I made the trek to the coast. And by coast. I mean Red Lobster in Legends. It really was surprising how good the biscuits are.

They are served warm and have a wonderful garlicky and buttery taste that is impossible to resist. I should note that on cheat days it's still good to eat mostly brotein, but these were just too good.

I think I ended up eating like 4 of these things.

We also ordered some kind of lobster artichoke dip with some fancifully colored tortilla chips. I just kept wondering where in the world they found red corn. First it was red Granny Smith apples, now red corn??

Instead of a salad, I ordered a potato bacon soup. It was also really good, especially with the dunking therein of biscuits.

For my main course, I had to exercise extreme will power to not order one of the many pasta dishes on the menu. Many of them sounded quite delicious, but I was strong. I ordered the garlic grilled shrimp skewers. After another bout of willpower, broccoli was decided as my side.

It also came with wild rice, but, in my defense, I had either forgotten about this or just completely didn't notice it on the menu. Either is equally possible. But the entrée was good, and relatively carb-free. Being reasonably full, and me not wanting to eat excess carbs, neither Sidney nor I ordered any dessert.

And that was the precise moment my willpower ceased to exist. On the way home, Sidney asked if I wanted to stop by Sonic and get some ice cream. The next thing I knew was...

But, as you can see, while my remaining willpower was not nearly enough to prevent me from ordering ice cream, it was just enough to help me order the smallest size they had. At the end of the day, I'd call this cheat day a success. Until next time, DON'T CHEAT!