Q: I'm so ready to be ripped. I got your X-treme Lean e-book and am on the diet, despite the holidays being in full effect. Already dropped five pounds of fat in two weeks just by cleaning up and using your tips. My question is about the cheat day every week that you say is mandatory. Can I eat junk food on my cheat day, or do I just increase my calories with good carbs? I crave pancakes, so is that okay? I want to see my abs as quickly as possible.

A: Mmm, pancakes! Before we answer your question about junk food and how to cheat to get ripped, let us explain our reasons for a mandatory cheat day every week...

A little cheating is not only good for fat loss from a psychological standpoint by satisfying cravings, but it’s also good physically from a metabolic standpoint because of a hormone called leptin...

Leptin is known as the anti-starvation hormone. If you have enough, your body doesn't panic and your metabolism keeps cruising along. But if you stay strict all the time, your body produces less and less leptin. The body soon thinks it's starving and slows your metabolism to a crawl. Fat burning stops almost completely. Plus, your appetite soars off the charts. That's when most people bail on their diets, regain the fat they lost, and may pack on even more...

But studies show that increasing calories, primarily with carbs, only ONE day a week during a diet can maintain high leptin levels, keeping the starvation mechanism in check and speeding the fat-burning process. (Steve's story about how he miscalculated and almost sabotaged his diet by NOT upping his carbs one day a week is in X-treme Lean.)

So the question becomes, do you allow yourself to splurge on junk food during that one cheat day a week, or do you simply increase slower-digesting carbs—like with some fruits and vegetables? The answer can depend on your individual insulin response. For example, Steve has a faster metabolism than Jonathan, so he can tolerate more fast-absorbing carbs than Jonathan. In other words, Steve is more of an ectomorph, as you can see in this comparison photo (Steve is on the left)...

That means Steve can handle more junk food than Jonathan on cheat days; however, he usually chooses to only junk it up at breakfast—pancakes with syrup and/or toast with jam and/or a doughnut (Mmm, doughnuts). The rest of the day he increases carbs somewhat, but only with slow-burning ones. Jonathan does the same, usually limiting his junk meal to breakfast (but not including his breakfast-for-dinner approach most nights)...

A good rule is to always have whole eggs if you're junking at breakfast, as the fat can slow the sugar absorption and insulin output. Extra fiber can do that too—whole-wheat pancakes or whole-wheat toast, for example.

Another good rule is to include cardio on your cheat day, maybe an hour or so after breakfast, to burn away some of the excess glucose in your bloodstream.

If you push your junk meal to dinner and have, say, pizza, you may get a bit more fat storage because you don't burn off as much energy at night. But as long as you limit yourself to two slices, you should be fine (don't go berserk and eat an entire large pizza). Get right back on your X-treme Lean diet the next day. As we say in that e-book, “Cheat day is not a license to clean out your local Baskin-Robbins or eat an entire wedding cake.”

Do your diet right, and your abs will come into sight etched and tight!

Note: X-treme Lean, the fat-loss diet, nutrition, and workout e-book, is available for only $9.99. 

Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.

—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com

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