The seductive lure of the cheat day
In the Parrillo philosophy the ‘cheat day’ concept is discouraged. This runs counter to current orthodox thinking that decrees a cheat day is not only
Kabobs
allowed but a necessary component of any cutting-edge bodybuilding nutritional strategy. Cheat day rational goes as follows, “One day a week purposefully break your strict eating regimen in order to ‘fool’ the metabolism.” Once a week purposefully ingest all the foods forbidden during the week: sweets, saturated fat, refined carbohydrates, whatever you like; stuff your face with as much as you want, the sky is the limit…pie, ice cream, beer, cheese, pork chops, you name it and you can eat it on cheat day – it’s all okay.
The idea of a once-a-week trash food festival makes for an easy sell; who wouldn’t like to be told that eating all the stuff we love is not only allowed but somehow beneficial? This philosophy is easy to buy into. The caveat to cheat day is after 24-hours of binge eating you snap back into a regimented diet and all is right with the world. The rationale is that by drenching your system with strange nutrients for 24- hours you theoretically prevent your body from neutralizing current dietary efforts. The infusion of all that bad stuff is beneficial because it keeps the metabolism from becoming ‘complacent’ and prevents the body from developing antidotes to disciplined eating. Sounds good on paper but in reality this is an invitation to disaster. Using a diet that requires six days of strict eating followed by one day of binge eating is fraught with peril for the inexperienced bodybuilder.
The obvious danger is if the individual is not 100% disciplined, each binge day provides a terrible temptation to keep on binging. How many countless ‘cheat day’ advocates have binged and let 24-hours stretch to 36, 48 or 72 hours? How many cheat day advocates have never come back from an extended cheat day? One of the hardest elements to come to grips with for young bodybuilders is overcoming the addiction to the tasty foods that we love but are downright detrimental to our efforts. The cheat day approach is akin to telling an alcoholic that once a week it is okay to drink all the booze they want – just as long as they get back on the wagon the next day. This approach is very dangerous for new bodybuilders trying to overcome food addictions. This is just one problem with the cheat day strategy; the theory doesn’t float for a myriad of reasons and the question is often asked; just how did this strange philosophy come about? How did the cheat day approach work its way into the accepted practice of so many bodybuilders?
The cheat day is an example of how a good idea was twisted into a bad one: its genesis was born when competitive bodybuilders discovered that after months of strict and regulated eating when they suddenly added starchy carbohydrates back into their diet for 24-48 hours immediately prior to a competition, the body, conditioned to eating only lean protein and fibrous carbohydrates would swell up like a dry sponge immersed into a pail of water. If the pre-competition carb-load procedure is handled correctly and not allowed to ‘spill over’ (by carbing-up for too long) the athlete gains 5-10% in body weight and still maintain the same degree of condition, with striations and delineation exhibited prior to the carb-up. Introducing the carbohydrates, glycogen, back into the body after months of precise eating and after cutting starchy carbs back drastically in order to eliminate the final vestiges of subcutaneous fat, caused muscles to become dramatically larger and in a matter of hours. A successful carb-up makes muscles appear to be bursting through the skin.
This pre-competition carb-load tactic has become a regular part of contest preparation for competitive bodybuilders and John Parrillo raised the precontest carb load to an art form. For those interested in his exact procedures check out the Parrillo Nutrition Program for an hour by hour procedural checklist. A bodybuilder who ‘carbs up’ right before a show takes advantage of a peculiar physiological phenomena and typically adds 5-15 pounds of muscle. Glycogen-starved muscles stuffed to the max with carbohydrate stretch against paper-thin skin and the net effect is quite astounding to behold. Binge day proponents took the pre-contest carbload and twisted it like a pretzel, “Hey, why don’t we apply the precontest philosophy to our weekly dietary efforts? Why not use this procedure all the time? Instead of six weeks of disciplined eating followed by a day or two of carb loading, why not starve the muscle of glycogen for six days then reintroduce forbidden foods on the seventh day? Then revert back to the tight diet schedule on day eight to start the procedure all over.” Sounds good on paper doesn’t it? Like so many things in life that sound too good to be true, this approach is too good to be true.
It is a hell-of-a-lot different supercharging your system with glycogen after 6-12 weeks of super-strict eating than it is binging on all manner of junk after only six days. After months of extended competitionstyle eating, the human body literally loses its ability to convert nasty foods into body fat. It takes the human body a few days to readjust and relearn how to convert excess calories into body fat. If the bodybuilder continues the consumption of forbidden foods for too long the body quickly re-learns how to re-supply depleted fat storage sites. As soon as muscles become full of glycogen and can absorb no more, the body either excretes excess calories or stores them as fat for future use. The problem with the cheat day is after only six days of denial, the body does not have time to ‘forget’ how to deal with excess calories.
It is wishful thinking to assume that after a mere six days the body forgets what to do with excess calories. Do you have any idea how much damage you can do to yourself in 24-hours of binge eating? Do you have any idea how many calories you can consume in a single day? It is quite easy to undo the entire exercise effort of the previous week with one really bad day of eating – and this doesn’t take into account the psychological danger of binging and not being able to return to strict eating after rediscovering the seductive taste sensations of foods we have taught ourselves to forgo. If you train hard and use the sixdays- on/one-day-binge approach, you run the risk of going backwards! In the worst of both worlds, the bodybuilder yo-yos between starving themselves during the week and binging on the weekend. Drastic calorie reduction combined with hard exercise results in muscle catabolism and those who restrict calories for six straight days can cause the body to strip muscle tissue from the cells to use as fuel.
This is like running out of heating oil in your home in February in Minnesota and breaking apart furniture to throw into the fireplace to burn in order to stay warm. If creating a catabolic metabolic environment weren’t bad enough, the damage is compounded when on day seven the catabolic bodybuilder suddenly overwhelms his system with fat and sugar and refined carbohydrates and whatever else tickles their fancy. After muscle glycogen has been replaced – likely at the first high-calorie meal of the binge day – all the additional calories consumed during the remainder of the binge day are effortlessly shuttled into body fat storage sites. Holy revolting development! After a week of catabolism wherein muscle tissue is cannibalized to cover a lack of calories, on day seven so many calories are consumed that the bodybuilder actually adds additional body fat! At Parrillo Performance we advise bodybuilders to jettison the cheat day.
Parrillo Muffin and Cake Mix
In our experience, acquired by preparing thousands of bodybuilders for competition, the best results are achieved by those who follow the classical Parrillo approach: eat strict, eat plenty of clean calories and stay the course for the long term. Use the Parrillo carb-up procedure immediately prior to a competition and stay strictly on your Parrillo Performance eating regimen the rest of the time. This tried and proven way to maximize genetic potential works every single time if it’s used properly. Those who use the cheat day philosophy march in place or go backwards. Take a hint and recognize the fact that the reason the cheat day philosophy sounds too good to be true is simple: it is too good to be true!
Parrillo Performance
(800) 344-3404
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