I bet I grabbed your attention with that title! But can you really offset a weekend of binge eating in one day? Well the answer is astoundingly yes and guess what! I do it all the time. In fact the techniques I am going to share with you have allowed me to reach my leanest state thus far.
Binge Eating / Overfeeding ain’t a bad thing
Allowing yourself to eat much more than you require is not a bad thing at all. The only bad thing about overfeeding is the guilt and disappointment that comes with it. However this can be easily overcome by adhering to a few rules.
Rule #1
Understand that short periods lasting 1-2 days of overfeeding has several benefits. After a period of overfeeding your body up-regulates its fat burning hormones and fat burning machinery. Then once you switch back to dieting (underfeeding) your body will be primed to burn fat efficiently.
In addition when you have been dieting (underfeeding) for 4-6 days and switch to high calories (overfeeding) you create an anabolic rebound. This is because during calorie restriction your body up-regulates all kinds of anabolic hormones and receptors. Thus when you switch to higher calories you can temporarily direct or partition, a lot of nutrients towards the building of active muscle tissue.
Rule #2
If you decide to use overfeeding days in your diet program I strongly recommend having them planned. This strips away nearly all the feelings of guilt you get when you fall off the wagon of your diet. If you know that thursday evening and all day friday you can eat whatever you want than you really have no reason to feel guilty. Guilt is what seems to fuel non stop eating passed the point of satisfaction.
Rule #3
Don’t call the overeating phase a cheat day or a binge day. This has a negative stigma attached to it. I like to think of these days as refuel days or free days. This puts you into a positive mindset and allows you to feel good as you enjoy your food.
First things First – Damage Control
Before I even share with you the techniques I use to burn off any any fat gained over a weekend of free eating we first need to limit the damage caused over the weekend.
The best way to do this is to EXERCISE
Engage in an intense full body workout prior to your overeating phase. This will allow you to further partition nutrients toward building muscle tissue, thus limiting fat storage.
EAT YOUR PROTEIN AND VEGGIES
If you eat some protein with each meal during your free days you should have an easier time controlling your appetite. In addition if you are having a big lunch or dinner I recommend starting with a salad or veggies.
Don’t feel guilty
Remember that your giving yourself 1-2 days to eat whatever you want, whenever you want and there is no need to feel guilty. Before I started giving myself these planned free days I would try and diet hard for as long as possible. Eventually after 3-5 days I would break and eat some french fries with dinner. The guilt would start creeping up and I would go for the cookies. After eating the cookies my cravings would be fully satisfied but I would keep eating and eating and eating. This non stop eating was fueling by guilt. By the time I stopped eating I felt like my stomach was going to explode. It was bad.
These days I am much wiser. I now give myself thursday evening and friday to eat whatever I want and whenever I want. Saturday until thursday evening I restrict my calories. By the time thursday evening comes I feel like a winner and reward myself with whatever it is I feel like. Because there are no feelings of guilt I am able to stop eating once I feel fully satisfied. In addition because I know that I can burn off any fat gained (and then some) from a couple days of bulk eating in one day I feel even better.
NOW THE FUN PART
You rewarded yourself with a couple days of whatever it is that you desired with no regards to portion control. It was awesome! You may have gone overboard and noticed that over the course of those over-feeding days your muscles started to fill up with glycogen, became full, and then you began to spill over adding a bit of fat. You have a couple options.
Option 1 – You could diet regularly for 2-3 days only to get back to square one.
Option 2 – You could stop dieting all-together, eat normally and say goodbye to your chiseled abs
Option 3 – You could offset the fat gain in one day and use the subsequent days to get leaner and leaner then ever before.
I don’t know about you but I will choose option 3 over and over again.
HERE WE GO – WHAT YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR
Intermittent Fasting
Option 3 ain’t that hard either! After a couple days of overfeeding you shouldn’t really be hungry. Chances are if you are hungry, that hunger is false hunger and the overfeeding gave you a taste of sweetness and now you want more. Well we gotta stop that process right now by using one of the oldest tricks in the book. Intermittent fasting! By engaging in a 20-24 hour fast following your 1-2 days of free eating you can rid yourself of the desire to eat for pleasure, eat for boredom or eat just cause. You get yourself back in touch with your body. As a result you will be able to diet effectively for the following days. I have always found it hard to get back on a diet following over-feeding, until I started using fasts. In fact the only time I really use 20-24 hour fasts is after high calorie days to get back in touch with my body. In addition fasting allows you to create a pretty massive calorie deficit that in combination with the other tricks will allow you to offset any fat gain.
Metabolism Boosting Supplements and Intervals
Next we want to get your metabolism revved up and the fat burning process going full tilt. We do this by taking a special supplement and engaging in high intensity exercise. The supplement you are going to take is a combination of 300mg of green tea extract and 200mg of caffeine. This combination has been proven to elevate your resting metabolism and reduce hunger. I use Prograde Metabolsim which has caffeine and green tea extract as well as many other ingredients which amplify the fat burning and appetite suppressing effects. The morning workout is very important. This morning workout will further increase your metabolism throughout the day. The best option for the morning workout is to perform high intensity interval training. This can be sprinting for one minute alternated with walking for 1 minute for a total of 20 minutes. For a more indepth look at interval training options check out the article below
–> Ultimate Fat Burning Workout
Branched Chain Amino Acids to Avoid Muscle Breakdown
We are also going to use another very effective supplement, BCAA. By taking 5-10 grams following the morning workout and another 5-10 grams before the afternoon workout we can ensure there is no muscle loss. I get my BCAA from Prograde also.
Afternoon Weights and Steady State
We are then going to take caffeine and green tea extract or ideally Prograde Metabolsim 30-60 minutes prior to the second workout. As well as 5-10 grams of BCAA before training. For the second workout you are going to perform 30-40 minutes of strength training and then 20-30 minutes of steady state cardio. Since we have fasted all day our growth hormone levels will be through the roof and our free fatty acids will be released into the blood stream. Therefore you don’t need to perform intervals for a second time. You can instead perform steady state cardio at 65-70% of your heart rate. I like to perform the steady state cardio by walking on the treadmill with an incline.
The Dinner
1-2 hours after your second workout you want to have your dinner. For the dinner you want to keep your calories between 600-1000 while getting in as much protein as possible. As well as some healthy fats (omega 3’s) and plenty of green veggies. The best way to do this is by having 8-12 ounces of lean protein like grilled chicken breast, 2-3 cups of broccoli or spinach, some salsa for flavor, 6 fish oil caps (ideally krill oil) and ideally a multi vitamin/mineral. The fish oil is very important for fat loss. This is because your body needs to get dietary fat in order to burn body fat. If you don’t get in some healthy fat with your dinner your body will be reluctant to burn body fat and will burn body fat and muscle.
Here’s how it looks
MORNING
Prograde Metabolism x 3 pills
Prograde BCAA x 5-10 grams
Interval Training: 1 minute sprint / 1 minute walk x 20 minutes
AFTERNOON
Prograde Metabolism x 3 caps (30-60 minutes before training)
BCAA x 5-10 grams (prior to training)
Weight Training x 30-40 minutes
Incline Walking on a Treadmill at 3.5-4 mph with a 6-12 degree incline x 20-30 minutes
Dinner
Chicken Breast x 8-12 ounces
Broccoli/Kale/Spinach x 2-3 cups
Krill Oil x 6 caps
Multi Vitamin/Mineral
Conclusions
If you follow the advice you will be able to create a massive 2500-3000 calorie deficit. This is a little bit short of an entire pound of fat. Even if you let yourself go for 2 whole days prior to you still should be able to completely offset the fat gain. Especially considering many of the excess calories from overfeeding should have been partitioned to rebuilding muscle tissue. Every time I use these tricks after 1-2 days of high calories I end up leaner than before.
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