Day Off

Well after about 2 weeks I am finally taking an off day to recover, have a big cheat meal, and restart my body. Today would normally only be GPP work anyways, its not a main lifting day so once every 2 weeks I will just take it off.

I got a Big Meat Pizza from a local pizza shop. First real cheat meal I have had in two weeks. Ate damn near half a large. Best tasting pizza I have ever had.

This really serves two purposes. One it keeps me rational and sane. I used to have all out cheat meals to the point it became cheat weekends and then just my normal diet for about 3 months haha. Now though I am going to keep real cheat meals down to once or twice in a 2 week period. If I eat out more than that then I will do my best to make it as healthy as possible (like last weekend I made my own pizza's and I used a thin whole wheat crust and I used turkey peperoni and mushrooms. Not completely ideal but a lot better option if I am going to eat pizza).

The second purpose it serves is to throw your body in flux. After following a diet for some time your body will adapt to that diet and progress will slow, by having an all out cheat meal it throws your body into shock and kick starts everything. Just keep it two one or two meals a week at most if you are trying to drop weight (although to be honest I have lost weight even with entire cheat weekends) and obviously if you are trying to bulk up add in a few extra cheat meals. Some have went as far to say the yo yo effect releases growth hormones. Who knows if this is true, I just know that I feel a lot better 2 or 3 days after a cheat meal compared to if I don't have one in a two week period.

That's it for me though for two weeks. Over the next two weeks though I want to reduce the amount of protein shakes and protein bars I am consuming and replace them with more lean meats. Also I think I am going to start carb cycling now rather than later. Try it out for two weeks now and make sure my strength stays the same. If I start missing lifts then I will hold off till after this training cycle (which I hope to compete at the end of it).