Have any of you heard/tired cheat meal or day to confuse your body's metabolism?
I have read quite few articles on cheat meal/day as well. It wouldn't let me post links yet, so I'm cannot pin point an article.

I know someone who does high protein diet for 7 days & has 1 cheat day after every 7 days to confuse her body & she still lose weight.

When i say cheat days-i still being under 1300 calories intake that day as well, but just giving your body different variety so it doesn't get used to the same food?

Has anyone else tried it? or any comment on this?

I think you have to decide if you can handle it, if you can jump back on the next day AND deal with the hunger, bloating, gas pains, headaches, etc of adjusting again to less carbs. I did have a cheat meal (not day) for my birthday and I had horrible gas pains the next day. It took me three days to get back into normal ketosis and I gained a pound that stuck around until I was able to turn the stick purple again. However then I started losing again.

It is not something I am going to do again until my daughters birthday. I honestly don't crave anything sweet so I feel no need to cheat. I think it could be a slippery slope but I know the low carb body builders do it.

I agree it depends on if you think you can handle it. My husband lost 130 lbs doing atkins and cheating once a week for most of the time. It started out every other week and became weekly but he was still losing so he stuck with it! I am still struggling with getting through the first 2 weeks without slipping up!

I would hve to say after losing 30 lbs and my body getting use to eating healthy its very hard to have cheat days because i am so sick after i eat anything greasy like pizza or mcdonalds or whatever. Try cheating without cheating. WHatever you are craving try eating it in a healthy way. Like if your craving chocolate, drink a glass of skim milk with chocolate sauce. I dont think its bad if you eat a little bit of something your craving once in a while just dont over do it. Thats the whole point in dieting, proporitons.

Thank you all for helping.

But i wanted to know if it helps trick your metabolism?
As per cravings, I'm on day 6 (which is doneee ) and I have no craving to wake up n eat donut or go to starbucks, lol.

Elizabeth-did it increase wait loss for your husband?

if cheat days do help with metabolism, i definitely won't add junk food. I would probably add healthier variety just so the body doesn't stall and get used the food.. yay or na? lol

I guess it all depends on what you consider a "cheat meal". After about every 15 lbs lost or so, I will have a "cheat meal". However, it's not sweets and junk that got me fat in the first place. I will just have a meal with higher carbs than usual. More often than not it may include a roll or might be a wonderful piece of fruit. The longer I am on Atkins the wiser I get on my food choices. It's not that I never want something wonderfully sweet and decadent, it's just I have more will power than ever before. I have no problem jumping right back on board.

feelingthin-I don't know if it upped his metabolism but that is how i always rationalized it. I was doing calorie counting and I didn't do any official calorie cycling but I considered our cheat meal just a part of calorie cycling and I could even usually stay on the high side of my calorie goal when we cheated. I do think it helped me.
I will say that he usually did have diarrhea after the cheat meal so I would tell him 'well there went your meal' (sorry if that's TMI), but again to him it was totally worth it. If he had a craving during the week he could postpone it until his cheat meal and it gave him something to look forward to and helped so if there was a special occassion or we went out with friends he could eat 'normal' but even then he ate far less than he did before the diet. That said due to pain health issues (so not related to Atkins) he went off the diet late last year and is starting up again sometimes soon. He's gained 5-10 lbs back since he quit oh 5 or so months ago and he wasn't at his goal weight. So some may see that as a 'failure' since he did quit the diet. But he does like the diet and wants to get back on it. It's just when he was in severe pain losing weight and eating healthy became the lowest priority.

I did this and I gained. Tried rationalizing it because I really wanted that cheat day, but my metabolism just wouldnt support it. Had to switch back to a clean induction and cut out ricotta, peanuts, and kick up my exercise. That fixed the problem (stall).

Even my friend who said that they had success.. had to switch back to induction because she started gaining.

If you have a great metabolism.. it might work. If you are like me, and have a hard time losing... not such a great idea.

My thinking on this is if your body gets kicked out of ketosis, you will gain a bit of weight back only having to go back on induction and have a miserable 2 or 3 days until you get back in ketosis. I commited to Atkins for life and will not have a cheat meal as a reward or to attempt to trick my metabolism. If I stall, I will look for different varieties while staying on plan or up my exercise to push through the stall.

If you think you can do it and get back on plan easily, then try it. I know for myself, I can't do it because this is what happened to me a few years ago when I tried Atkins....We were invited to a wedding and had all sorts of food and treats that were not on plan, this lead to more 'cheating' and of course, we failed and stopped Atkins. We simply could not get back on plan at that time.

Best of luck whatever you decide

I've read some things about carb cycling and this seems to be similar to what you are referring. The theory is that a few days of higher carb will reignite metabolism and when you go back to low carb your body is in a higher metabolic mode. I would definitely read up on it if it's something you are considering, and be sure that your higher carb days are *good* carbs, not sweets and the like, which will raise your insulin and produce fat.

I'm glad you all could help Thank you!!

I'm still debating with myself if I need to do a cheat meal every so many days to trick my metabolism. I think if i do try it, i'll definitely find out if its for good or no. I will let you all know

I know it can work for some people, and yet it can throw other people off--so i still haven't decided.

I think there could be something to what you are considering. My experience has been that a slight bump in calories does lead to a loss as long as I pull right back and stay on the straight and narrow afterwards. I'm not talking an increase in carbs, instead, a nosh out on nuts (like 3-4 times what would be a normal serving - every once in a while I just can't help myself!) or other low carb fare. I think the guilt over my piggishness puts me back on track and within a day or so I generally see a nice loss. I don't know that I'm disciplined enough to actually PLAN my pig-outs so I just take things one day at a time and try to balance things out in the long run.

I just saw a post on the low carb board about "Crack the Fat Loss Code" I've never read it but it sounds like something that does carb cycling with built in cheat days. Definitely worth looking into if you are interested.

firkindness-Thats a good approach as well! thank you.

Elizabeth-Will definitely look that up, thanks