Yes, I’m telling you that you should be cheating on your diet, not just for your own sanity, but to get better fat loss results.
Cheating on your diet will actually help you burn more fat…
IF (big if) you’re eating low carb during the week.
Another big IF – is Intermittent Fasting.
There are a lot of protocol’s out there that can help you eat more crappy foods, and burn more fat. But we’ll keep it simple and follow this one very simple rule:
After you cheat on your diet, fast the following day.
Why?
So we’ve gone low carb the whole week, then we cheated with a very high carb day. This spiked our leptin levels. So now our leptin is high, which means we’re going to be using more fat as fuel.
If we don’t give our bodies any other source of fuel – i.e. by fasting and not eating anything the following day – we’re going to burn a ton more fat.
Now, let’s break down leptin a bit. Then you can choose your cheat day, and your fast day. If I’m doing this, I like having a cheat day on a day where I might drink a pint or two, then a fast day on a day where I might be a bit lazier – i.e. Sunday, when all I do is write and watch football. So a cheat day is Saturday for me, and a fast is on Sunday (if I’m doing this routine).
Leptin and Fat Loss
Leptin is a hormone that helps us burn fat. We’ll keep things simple and leave it at that.
The funny this is that leptin levels rise as we take in more carbs. It’s our bodies way of keeping fat levels low when we’re eating crappy foods. There is, however, a limit to what this hormone can accomplish. When we eat too much carbs, it’s rendered useless and we store them as fat anyways.
But when we cycle our carbs, we can spike leptin levels and help our bodies burn more fat.
That’s where a cheat day and a fast come in handy.
We spike leptin, but then give our bodies no other fuel source. As such, the raised levels of this hormone, combined with our bodies added need for fuel (because we’re not giving it anything in the way of calories), helps us burn much more fat.
When you have a fast day, also go on a long walk.
This will keep your HR relatively low, even though you’re forcing your body to burn more calories. So you’ll tap into fat stores before muscle. By long walk, I man go for an hour long walk. Pop your headphones in and just enjoy.
So that’s our lesson on Leptin and Fat Loss.