A current reality show trainer is making himself known for what he calls “amazing transformations.” In a recent appearance on a morning show, he credited a man’s huge weight loss to “lacing cheat meals throughout the week.” Not developing health-supporting eating habits, not daily exercise. Cheat meals were pitched as the real key to that particular person’s weight loss success.
Most people do not know the origins of the “cheat meal.” It comes from the bodybuilding world where athletes put themselves through brutal training regimens with highly restrictive diets to match. Bodybuilders fight adaptation harder than just about any other athletes. The cheat meal is actually an essential tool to disrupt the body’s adaptation to carefully controlled carb intake and extremely regimented diets.
For other people, though, the cheat meal is just that, a break from a regimen of compliance. I see two major issues with the concept of the “cheat meal” for those of us who are working to take control of a lifelong weight problem. The most obvious is the sustainability of a diet. If you feel you need to “cheat,” then you may be attempting to follow a diet that is not sustainable in the first place. As you transition to a whole foods diet, you should begin to feel its benefits and come to appreciate them. These benefits include a re-alignment of your body’s tolerance for high fat and high sugar foods. If you keep trying to sneak those junk foods into your diet, however, your tastes and tolerances will not become re-set.
But I am more concerned about another message that perpetuates a demeaning stereotype. Have you ever known anyone to express shock that a vegetarian would happily survive without having bacon now and then? Do we suspect that vegans are secretly longing for a thick, juicy steak? Are those who have made the commitment to an all-organic diet denying their humanity by refusing to indulge a junk food binge from time to time? We don’t question the choices and commitments of those groups. Yet we always assume that fat people who adopt a diet aimed at weight loss can’t possibly maintain compliance without “cheating” now and then. We act like it’s not only expected, but necessary.
I believe this viewpoint originates from two roots. First, the history of weight loss diets as being unsustainable. The overwhelming majority of people approach weight loss with the expectation that they are “on” a diet for a specific duration and then they’ll go “off” the diet. The entire weight loss diet is itself a kind of “cheat” they hope to use temporarily to get a few pounds off without having to make compromises or sacrifices. Few people really could maintain some of the more ludicrous weight loss regimens without straying anyway.
I also believe that the assumed “need” for a cheat meal is perpetuated by the widely-held bias that fat people are emotionally weak and that they are victims whose lives are controlled by food. It is assumed that fat people got that way because of their own poor judgment which is expected to continue to sabotage them unless they “give in” to their uncontrollable urges.
We know we can roundly reject these false projections when we find our power and introduce effective strategies for change into our lives. The cheat meal is more evidence that the existing weight loss and dieting paradigm is riddled with flaws that don’t just fail us, they underestimate and insult us.
Transitioning to a whole foods diet and manipulating your tastes and tolerances means that over time your favorite foods will change. As your connections to your former life break down piece by piece, one of the things that will happen is that you’ll develop new treat foods and celebration foods.
Are you ready to begin introducing steps of transition into your life? Transition that will lead to lasting transformation? What changes would you like to make permanent in your life?
