Cheat meals

[rmtt]

My definition of a cheat day is when I don't give a shit what the food I'm eating is "doing for me." I'm eating because I want to and it tastes good and I work too damn hard to stress about exactly how every morsel of food is affecting my physique. What you are describing I would call a "refeed" or just a super high carb day. Of course that will be more beneficial generally than an all out cheat day but again it comes down to whether or not you're dieting or trying to grow or maintain or what have you. For me what works best when dieting is a moderate to high carb day with a cheat meal as my last meal. I also go pretty low on calories the rest of the week so my body uses those days. Not dieting I either do two cheat meals per week or one day, sometimes its more or less depending on life and/or if I want to eat lol. I have no idea what you look like so I'm not directing this at you but some people that really don't have much muscle worry far too much about "overeating" or not eating anything "bad for you" when in reality thats really not making a very big difference in the grand scheme of things with all the work you put in.

As an aside I used to have the mentality that everything needs to be perfect all the time, can barely have a cheat meal, have to keep everything clean even when growing. Then I trained with a good pro and he came into the gym with a mcdonalds frappe and said "what do you want to train today?" I was astounded that he didn't have a plan or a giant cooler with him with 10 meals in it. Instead that was his pre workout and we went to the diner as a post workout meal. Really opened my eyes to stop focusing on nonsense like being perfect 100% of the time because it really doesn't matter lol

Again DIETING is a different story, I'm talking about "offseason" or whatever you want to call it.

My old training partner of years would tell me.......dude.....if you want to gain some size you are going to have to eat "dirty" sometimes. Stop with the extra chicken breasts and go eat you a pizza or a couple of Big macs every once in awhile.

He was a beast. Honestly if I would have listened to him all those years ago instead of being caught up in trying to grow while keeping lean...I would probably be 30lbs heavier than what I currently am.

It's just such a mind fu@k to see your abs start to disappear, and basically all I have done is "spin my wheels" for the last few years.

But that time is wasted now. At my age...I can't afford to get too heavy as I don't want the health issues that could come along with it now that I'm older.

 

[Bobby Light]

My old training partner of years would tell me.......dude.....if you want to gain some size you are going to have to eat "dirty" sometimes. Stop with the extra chicken breasts and go eat you a pizza or a couple of Big macs every once in awhile.

He was a beast. Honestly if I would have listened to him all those years ago instead of being caught up in trying to grow while keeping lean...I would probably be 30lbs heavier than what I currently am.

It's just such a mind fu@k to see your abs start to disappear, and basically all I have done is "spin my wheels" for the last few years.

But that time is wasted now. At my age...I can't afford to get too heavy as I don't want the health issues that could come along with it now that I'm older.

I'll try not to tell my whole life story here but I've gotten too fat multiple times before..since then I've worked pretty hard to stay relatively lean while trying to grow because honestly I just don't want to be fat again lol.

However this is strictly personal, but I've looked better and had an easier time dieting coming from being (bodybuilder) fat, then from being FAR leaner before starting a real diet. I can't explain why, maybe the motivation to change coming from being fat had me working even harder? So this last time I dieted I started pretty lean and didn't make any huge changes, they were very slow and gradual, which isn't a bad thing, but comparing pictures I then thought to myself damn maybe I wasted a little bit of time trying to stay lean rather than packing on some extra size because I know I can diet it off as I did before

Anyway to your point I can also understand where you are coming from. If you have no plans to compete, I can absolutely see not wanting to get fat and just maintaining a pretty lean look all the time. For me now with a child coming and needing to get another degree competing is not high on my list so I'm not sure when I will do it again, but I still want to gain as much as I can until that time comes because thats why i do this, competition or not I want to improve. What I will do then is what I've been doing the last couple years..4-6 week mini diets (depending on how much I need to drop) in between growth phases to regulate things and not let it get too crazy. It would maybe come out to a 4 week diet every 12-16 weeks. I think thats an approach for some to look into to allow them to push harder while growing. I think its easier to be okay with adding a little weight or losing your abs if you know you will diet the fat off at a certain point. This can be summed up in one word..PHASES lol, I like phases, competing or not I think they make things a lot easier.

 

[Alex30]

My old training partner of years would tell me.......dude.....if you want to gain some size you are going to have to eat "dirty" sometimes. Stop with the extra chicken breasts and go eat you a pizza or a couple of Big macs every once in awhile.

He was a beast. Honestly if I would have listened to him all those years ago instead of being caught up in trying to grow while keeping lean...I would probably be 30lbs heavier than what I currently am.

It's just such a mind fu@k to see your abs start to disappear, and basically all I have done is "spin my wheels" for the last few years.

But that time is wasted now. At my age...I can't afford to get too heavy as I don't want the health issues that could come along with it now that I'm older.

This is.
I love Cheat meals in easter's day

 

[rmtt]

I'll try not to tell my whole life story here but I've gotten too fat multiple times before..since then I've worked pretty hard to stay relatively lean while trying to grow because honestly I just don't want to be fat again lol.

However this is strictly personal, but I've looked better and had an easier time dieting coming from being (bodybuilder) fat, then from being FAR leaner before starting a real diet. I can't explain why, maybe the motivation to change coming from being fat had me working even harder? So this last time I dieted I started pretty lean and didn't make any huge changes, they were very slow and gradual, which isn't a bad thing, but comparing pictures I then thought to myself damn maybe I wasted a little bit of time trying to stay lean rather than packing on some extra size because I know I can diet it off as I did before

Anyway to your point I can also understand where you are coming from. If you have no plans to compete, I can absolutely see not wanting to get fat and just maintaining a pretty lean look all the time. For me now with a child coming and needing to get another degree competing is not high on my list so I'm not sure when I will do it again, but I still want to gain as much as I can until that time comes because thats why i do this, competition or not I want to improve. What I will do then is what I've been doing the last couple years..4-6 week mini diets (depending on how much I need to drop) in between growth phases to regulate things and not let it get too crazy. It would maybe come out to a 4 week diet every 12-16 weeks. I think thats an approach for some to look into to allow them to push harder while growing. I think its easier to be okay with adding a little weight or losing your abs if you know you will diet the fat off at a certain point. This can be summed up in one word..PHASES lol, I like phases, competing or not I think they make things a lot easier.

I agree completely! This last time I pushed up to where I was getting close to 205lbs in the evenings after eating all day. Then started feeling "pudgy".

So for the last 5 weeks...I cut back to maintenance calories, added in Synthetine, and I'm down almost 8lbs.

Funny thing is that as my bodyweight dropped, I would get comments about how it looked like I was gaining weight.

I started up MK last week again....and the hunger I get from that is just crazy. So here I am thinking....I've spent 5 weeks semi-dieting...and maybe I'm ready to start going back up again.

The appetite is there....and I'm sure the reduction in food has helped regained some insulin sensitivity.

So lets see where it goes by slowly adding calories back in while still using the Synthetine.

Two steps forward...one step back. Phases just like you said. I know I can easily lose the weight....unless something goes haywire with my metabolism.

But it's still running at a pretty high level.

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[nihilixm]

if im bulking ill just eat maint low carb mod fat high protein

then instead of a normal meal post workout 3x a week ill have a big meal. Donuts, pizza, icecream etc 1-2kcal with some chromium as a GDA

if im cutting i just dip or chew gum tbh.

 

[Bobby Light]

if im bulking ill just eat maint low carb mod fat high protein

then instead of a normal meal post workout 3x a week ill have a big meal. Donuts, pizza, icecream etc 1-2kcal with some chromium as a GDA

if im cutting i just dip or chew gum tbh.

I go through gum like crazy dieting or not lol