Who doesn’t love a good cheat meal?
A cheat meal is when you stick to your diet for a while and then “reward” yourself with a meal where anything goes.
It’s a concept as popular in the fitness world as protein shakes. In fitness social media, it’s often represented by pictures of ridiculously fit people downing a pizza the size of a manhole cover.
Proponents of cheat meals claim that they “boost your metabolism” and give you a much-needed mental break.
But what does the research say? Are cheat meals a hack to keep your body burning fat or just an edible illusion? Or even a fast track to an unhealthy relationship with food?
A recent review published in the Nutrition Reviews journal takes a good, hard look at this mouthwatering topic.1
Let’s see what it has to say.
What Are Cheat Meals?
First off, let’s get our terms straight.
A “cheat meal” is not the same as a “diet break” or a “refeed.”
- A diet break is a longer pause, four days to several weeks, where you bring your calories back up to maintenance level and try to hit your macros and nutrient goals.
- A refeed is a shorter (1–3 days) period where you also increase your calories to maintenance (or slightly above), again, with specific targets.
- A cheat meal (or cheat day) is the wild card: a short period like a single meal or a full day of ad libitum (fancy speak for eating whatever you want) food intake with no specific calorie or macronutrient goals.
Study Results
Here’s what the review found when looking at the available research, starting with what you want to hear: the good news.
The Good News
The review found that a cheat meal or even a cheat day can indeed be a part of your cut.
They don’t necessarily sabotage your diet as much as some might fear. Why? Because, despite pounding the calories over an hour or day, most people still end up eating fewer calories than they burn throughout the week.
Plus, cheat meals can have very nice psychological benefits, like reducing hunger and increasing feelings of satisfaction. Knowing you have a burger and fries waiting for you on Saturday can make it easier to stick to your steamed fish and broccoli during the week.
They can make the whole dieting process feel less like a prison sentence. One study noted a much lower dropout rate in the cheat meal group (15.7%) compared to the group that stuck to their diets without breaks (36.8%).
Don’t Believe the Hype
The big hype with cheat meals is that they stoke your metabolism furnace.
When you cut your calories, your resting metabolic rate (RMR) slows down, a pesky survival mechanism called metabolic adaptation. The theory is that a calorie spike, like from a cheat meal, can reverse that.
However, the evidence is mixed. One study found no significant difference, while another suggested a small benefit. A single cheat day might be too short to create the lasting hormonal changes you need to raise your RMR to the point where it actually matters. And you can’t make your cheat day a cheat week, or you will have really cheated yourself out of your diet.
Another popular idea, especially among lifters, is that a heavy cheat meal will help preserve your hard-earned muscle mass during a cut.
But the science doesn’t really back it up. In bodybuilders, the amount of lean mass lost wasn’t different from what you’d expect in weight-loss studies, cheat meals or no cheat meals.
Also, and perhaps surprisingly to many, a cheat-meal carb load doesn’t sem to improve performance the gym, unless perhaps if you do fasted high-volume training sessions.
It did seem to reduce muscle soreness in a group on a severe calorie restriction, so there might be a small benefit if you’re deep in a diet.
The Bad News: The Dark Side of Cheating
Cheat meals are not just pancakes and a great pump.
The review also suggests a link between cheat meals and disordered eating behaviors.
When you scroll through #cheatmeal on social media, you’re not seeing someone enjoying one bowl of ice cream. You’re seeing mountains of calorie-rich junk food, with meals sometimes clocking in at over 9,000 calories.
The researchers point out that normalizing this kind of extreme overfeeding, like a “reward” for restrictive dieting and a ton of exercise, can look a lot like a binge-and-purge cycle, making cheat days about more than food and performance. Instead, they might send some dieters into a cycle of guilt, body dissatisfaction, and other negative mental health effects.
So, What’s a Dieter to Do?
Plan them, enjoy them, but don’t overdo them.
A cheat meal shouldn’t leave you feeling guilty. It should leave you full and satisfied, but also ready to get back on track.
- As a planned strategic part of your diet, cheat meals can help your cut and is not very likely to cause psychological issues.
- But an unplanned binge that triggers guilt and feelings of failure might lead into a cycle of overeating and restriction.
Claims about boosting metabolism, preserving muscle, and boosting performance are not well-supported by scientific evidence.
But, if sensible cheating helps you stick to your diet without losing your mind, it can be a valuable tool for reaching your fitness goals. Just be sure you’re the one in control, not the pizza with extra toppings.
