Cheat Days and Alcohol While Working Out

Cheat days are a must.  Yes you read that right. Cheat days are a must. But Why?

Cheat Days Give you a Break

A cheat day is important because it gives you a break. After all, a workout routine and diet plan is hard work. Remember my post about dieting? It takes discipline and willpower. You can only eat healthy and workout consistently for so long before it starts to take a toll on you. So what can you do when you’re sick of eating greens and totally craving an entire large pizza?

Pick Your Own Cheat Day

Do you love to go out on Friday nights? Maybe you love waking up to a big breakfast on Saturday mornings as you watch the Barclay’s Premier League. Or maybe you’re football guy and you need your fix of wings and beer on Sundays. What am I getting to here? You need to pick a weekly cheat day that works around you. Don’t put your cheat day on Sunday if every Saturday you’re going out to watch hockey and drink beer. One cheat day is enough. It won’t hurt your progress and it will allow you to keep your sanity. Any more than one day will hurt your progress.

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Cheat Days for the Calorie Conscious

Are you being very calorie conscious? I have a stricter way of going about your cheat day. Let’s say you’re being realistic about weight management and looking to lose one pound per week. One pound equals 3,500 calories. Divide this amount by seven days (one week) and that’s 500 calories per day. To lose one pound per week, you need to have a deficit of 500 calories per day. If you want to put a cheat day in the mix (say Sunday), add an extra 100 calories to your daily deficit. Now when Sunday rolls around, you have an extra 600 calories to consume without hurting your weekly goal.

What About Alcohol?

As much as I enjoy Dom Mazzetti and his BroScience YouTubepage, alcohol and working out don’t mix. Now, are a few beers going to ruin a week’s work of progress? Of course not. But, binge drinking five or more beers in one night will 100 per cent impact your progress. So what’s the solution?

No Binge Drinking

I know I know, it’s easier said than done. But if you want results, you can’t binge drink. If you absolutely must, here is a good way to minimize the impact on your gains. Throughout the week leading up to the night of binge drinking, eat extremely healthy. On the day of, do not consume any carbs and do not worry about working out and make sure you are very hydrated. After all, you’re going to be consuming a lot of carbs (liquor and beer is full of them). Before you go to bed, drink another two litres of water, take an Advil, and eat something small, but filling (a grill cheese would work). Trust me, you’ll feel much better in the morning and your body will cope with the hangover better.

If you have any questions about alcohol and cheat days that I didn’t cover, please leave a comment in the section below and I’d be happy to answer it!

Exercise of the Week: 

Here is the exercise of the week! Enjoy and let me know how it goes!