Is it possible to have your Paleo-forbidden bread and eat it too? This chapter may just hold the key for many people to making Paleo Vegetarianism a sustainable diet for life.
Question: What is it we don’t like about diets?
Answer: Restriction.
The minute we commit to a diet, it seems like the food around us becomes one great, big tempting world of “NO.” Having to continually walk through this world and operate in a state of denial takes a toll on our mental and emotional stores—which in turn can take a toll on our bodies. Frankly, it’s depressing not to be able to eat what we want, especially when so many people around us are doing just that. No one wants to operate in that space forever, but so many of us don’t see any other option.
What if I told you there was another way. What if instead of a world of “Nope, not now, not ever,” you lived in a world of “Not now, but yes later.”
Welcome to the concept of cheat days and 80/20 eating.
Cheat Days
The first time I heard of a cheat day was while reading The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss, author of the worldwide bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss is an admitted body hacker, constantly testing and trying out new ways to push, pump up, and improve the body with the most minimal amount of effort involved. The Slow-Carb Diet recommended in his book was actually my intro into the world of Paleo eating. The two plans are similar in that there is a strong emphasis in both on eating vegetables and nontoxin, grass-fed beef and pasture-raised meat as the base. The main differences are that, unlike Paleo, the Slow-Carb Diet forbids all fruit but encourages the consumption of beans for a “slow-carb” energy source, making the diet much more vegetarian-friendly. Ferris also encourages the weekly allowance of—drum roll please—the cheat day!
Ferriss advocates one day a week where you throw caution to the wind and eat whatever the hell you want. Pizza, beer, Snickers…unwrap it, bring it on, eat it up. No calorie counting, no restrictions. Any food in any quantity is fair game.
Why do cheat days work? Aren’t you just undoing a week’s worth of hard work and sacrifice when you sit down to a jelly doughnut and a keg of chocolate milk on Sunday? I’m not a scientist or nutritionist, nor am I body hacker like Ferriss. All I can offer is that I’ve seen the cheat day work for me, and that Ferriss and his legions of followers swear by it. Per Ferriss, this is why the cheat day works for you instead of against you:
Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn’t downregulate from extended caloric restriction.23 That’s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.
I find cheat days to be the most effective means around for controlling my food intake during the week. I have a wicked sweet tooth and will get a craving for, let’s say, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Instead of telling myself, “No, you can’t have that,” I tell myself, “You can have as many of them as you want on Saturday.” Oddly, that does the trick. Or maybe it’s not so odd. Realistically, if you tell yourself you can never have pizza (or whatever your favorite non-PV food is) again, do you believe what you’re saying? Or do you know that there’s a really good chance that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, you’re going to have a craving and the idea of “I can never eat this again” is not going to sit well with you? And so what happens? You rebel, go off on a binge, and spend the next 24 hours feeling terrible about yourself and your inability to just say no. Wouldn’t it be more productive—and make you feel better about yourself—to exert control during the week and have a plan for how to “cheat”?
Cheat days are essentially controlled binges. Do you have to participate in cheat days? Absolutely not. In fact, some people prefer to reduce the “cheat day” to a “cheat meal” where once a week they eat a non-PV-approved meal and then are back on the wagon. But if you want a full day of unhampered gluttony, it’s yours for the taking.
Here are my suggestions for a successful cheat day.
WRITE DOWN YOUR CRAVINGS. Throughout the week as you have cravings, write them down. This will help tame them. Just knowing as you write down “ice cream” or “oatmeal” that you’ll have the opportunity in five days to eat as much of that item as you want goes a long way toward alleviating the urge to cave in and eat it now.
REVIEW YOUR LIST. On your cheat day, pull out your list of foods you wrote down during the week. Now—and this is key—don’t discount any of them. If you want, you can eat your way line by line down the list. I’m serious. The only thing I ask of you is that you ask of yourself if you really want each item. Many times what was a hardcore craving in the moment turns into an “eh, I could live without that” food when you actually give yourself permission to eat it. Don’t hold back though. If you really, really want french fries, don’t try to make do with a lesser cheat like a piece of toast. It’s called a cheat day for a reason. Eat the french fries so you stop obsessing about them and move on with life.
DRINK WATER. Drinking water helps flush out the system and fills you up. Sit down to whatever cheat foods and drinks you want, but also have a big glass of water by your side throughout the day to help negate the damage.
PUMP OUT A FEW BIG MUSCLE EXERCISES. Squats, wall push-ups, lunges, or even a short walk will help you continue to burn through calories and digest the food you’re eating. Throw in ten deep squats and a few push-ups while you’re baking the chocolate-chip cookies. C’mon…what other diet on the planet encourages that?
DON’T GET ON THE SCALE RIGHT AWAY. After experiencing my first cheat day on a Saturday, I nearly passed out Sunday morning when I stepped on the scale. I was up four pounds! Stupid, stupid, stupid cheat day! How could I have been suckered into believing this would work? I’m such an idiot…!
EASY DOES IT. Yes, your weight is going to be up after a cheat day, probably for the next several days after a cheat day. It will even out and, as you follow the PV diet for the remaining six days of the week, it will go down. So don’t freak out about the scale.24
KEEP YOUR CARBS LOW. Ferriss advocates a cheat day for his Slow-Carb Diet, but remember that Slow-Carb does not allow for any starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes and turnips or any carb-laden sugars, like fruit. A Paleo Vegetarian diet does allow for these foods, so you may need to make modifications to either your weekly diet, by going lower in carbs, or to your cheat day, by not going quite as heavy on the carbs. Experiment and see what works for you.
MODERATE FOOD MANIA. Ferriss advocates all-out gluttony. And this is certainly an option. However, I’m going to advise a more moderate food mania. The first couple of times I did a cheat day, I made myself sick. Literally throwing up, lying on the couch, sick. That’s what eating crap food will do to you. While an unpleasant sensation, it may be something each of us needs to go through. Friends who also do the cheat day note they had the same initial experience. I don’t know if I got smarter or if my body adjusted, but over the course of about six weeks I stopped craving things like Little Debbie snacks and made my cheat days more about “healthier” foods in which I didn’t indulge during the week. Fruit was a big one for me. Bananas with almond butter are my favorite snack on the planet, but I avoid bananas when I’m trying to lose weight because of all the sugar in them, and I can’t keep almond butter in the house because it’s like crack to me. So a cheat day for me usually holds a toasted gluten-free bagel with a sliced banana and almond butter. It’s a cheat, but it’s not like the half a Domino’s pizza washed down with doughnut holes dipped in chocolate sauce I ate on my first cheat day. Other cheats for me may include a pasta dish, or I make an excellent Moroccan couscous dish with roasted vegetables. Indulging in couscous may not sound like a cheat to some, but if it’s a food you love and crave, it all tastes good.
But there’s a caveat: Here’s the deal. In order for cheat days to work, i.e., in order for you to be able to indulge in the crap foods, you must follow two rules, no exceptions:
A CHEAT DAY MUST BE PRECEDED BY A MINIMUM OF FIVE DAYS OF PV EATING. A once-a-week cheat day means just that. You can’t have a cheat day on Saturday and then go out with friends on Tuesday and decide you’ll make that a cheat day as well. The body needs time to reset before the next cheat day with at least five to six days of pure PV eating. And this brings us to rule number two…
NO CHEATING DURING THE WEEK. NONE. In order for cheat days to do what they’re intended to do, i.e., reset your body, you must have an unblemished record of eating throughout the week. If you’re sneaking a bite of bread here or a handful of chocolate there, your cheat day isn’t a reset at all. And instead of helping you lose fat, you’ll gain it. A perfect eating record during the week is the trade-off for your once-a-week free-for-all. Non-negotiable, folks.
The 80/20 Principle
Cheat days, as noted, come from the Slow-Carb Diet and aren’t Paleo. Paleo, in its strictest sense, doesn’t allow for cheats. Primal eating, however, and the world of Mark Sisson, advocates the use of the 80/20 principle25 which, simply put, says if you eat right 80 percent of the time, it’s okay to be a little looser with the rules the other 20 percent of the time. This isn’t counting calories, and it differs from cheat days in several ways. First, an 80/20 plan is not advocating a food free-for-all like the cheat day. Rather, it takes into account the practicalities of life and allows you to make adjustments as needed. There will be times when you’re dining out or are with friends and there simply are no perfect PV options around. If that’s the case, make the best of what’s at hand and roll with it. Example: If it will break your mom’s heart that you don’t eat a slice of her home-baked apple pie, eat a slice of the pie. As long as you’re sticking with the PV plan as a whole, a slip now and again is not going to send you into a tailspin.
Personally, I have a hard time following an 80/20 principle. That’s because I, like most of us, tend to underestimate where that 20 percent line is. We eat some sandwich bread here, a bowl of cereal there, a taste of ice cream, a handful of peanuts, a bite of birthday cake, half a cookie…it all adds up and sooner than you think. For me, it’s very easy for the 20 percent to slide into 30 percent to slide into 50 percent. Basically, I can’t allow for cheat in moderation. If I had the sort of willpower that allowed me only the occasional indulgence, I wouldn’t need to diet in the first place.
Still, especially if the PV plan you’re following includes a good amount of fruit and starchy vegetables, an 80/20 path makes more sense than an all-out cheat day. Again, this may translate to a “cheat meal” once a week or simply eating clean PV all the time until those moments when there really isn’t a good food choice available.
The idea behind both of these concepts is to recognize and allow for the fact that we’re not perfect. Instead of fighting the imperfection, why not embrace it and make it work for you? Whether it’s a cheat day or a 20 percent slip, take the time to enjoy and appreciate the food you eat—even the bad stuff. And, as a bonus, what I’ve found is that after a cheat day or cheat meal, my body craves healthy food. In fact, I am so eager to fill my body with healthy food that returning to a PV lifestyle for the next six days doesn’t feel like a limitation. It feels like a gift.
23“Downregulation” refers to your metabolism slowing over time, often due to fasting or severe caloric restriction. Ferriss is suggesting that your metabolic rate will remain high due to the one-day-a-week cheat jumpstart.
24Actually, why do you even have a scale? Didn’t I advise you to get rid of that thing. Ah-ha—caught you!
25The 80/20 principle has nothing to do with calorie counting. It’s based on a more subjective monitoring of whether or not your food intake matches a pure Paleo diet.