Cheat Days, We are Human

So whenever I go to my girlfriend's college house I always find myself cheating. Not with another woman. With food. There is inevitably some chocolate lying around, some chips, some cookies, some junk that either she or her housemates have. Last night it was jelly beans and chocolate eggs. I hounded a good amount of them, and gosh darnit, they were tasty! What did I do after I ate 'em, I felt guilty. I felt really guilty. I went to the mirror and looked at my stomach, judging myself. I thought about weighing myself, I thought about working extra hard the next couple days to simply punish myself for eating handfuls of jelly beans! OH JESUS I AM GOING TO HELL.

Then I realized today...so what? Is a cheat here and there going to ruin my well-being physically? No. Is a handful of jelly beans going to ruin a transformation process? No. In fact, in newsletters, books, and blogs I have read that a healthy lifestyle usually incorporates cheating every now and then. It is okay to have a day where you have some junky, fattening and/or sugary food. I really don't recommend doing it all the time, but once every 2 weeks or so, it is ok. The reason why it is okay is that if you are constantly practicing a caloric deficit of 300 or so calories (i.e. eating 300 less than what your body really needs, in order to lose weight slowly) your body will want a reminder every now and then that massive amounts of calories are available in case of an emergency. If you give it a lot of junk high in calories it will be like, "Ok, that was nice, now I feel okay with letting this fat on my body go!" But it is important that after a cheat day, you hop right back on the wagon and eat healthy and smart.

A general tip...if u are in good shape, and are happy with your look and feel, you've got that 8% body fat, and those lean cut abs, then 90% of the time eat healthy, and 10% of the time eat some junk! for real it is ok! If you are going through a diet plan like in P90x, Turbofire, Insanity etc. you want to really steer clear of the junk for the transformation to really take place, but hey reward yourself when you are done.

We eat bad food, we drink a couple beers, it is not the end of the world. Learn from it though. Be mindful when you have a cheat meal. Enjoy it, and maybe ask yourself why did I eat this? Am I not getting enough calories? Is it stress eating? Next time you will have more insight. Maybe have "healthy junk food" like dark chocolate, or all natural peanut butter cookies. Be creative! I will put some recipes up eventually :)

We are human beings, not machines.

"Do your best, and forget the rest" - Tony Horton

As always, email me @ tim.bell02@gmail.com if you wanna talk about this stuff or if you are interested in a coach FOR FREE! Check out my facebook pages (links above on the right) and follow me on twitter (@CoachZoso). Thanks guys!

Timo, out