Breaking the strict diet plan once a week: With the so-called "Cheat Day", many people reward themselves for the hard discipline they have to endure six days a week. Everything is allowed on the day of the sin - at least when it comes to food.
The principle behind it is simple: If you avoid fats and carbohydrates for six days, you can really get on the seventh day. Instead of lettuce and carrots, this ends up on the table, after which it has been consumed for six days. It does not matter if it's fat buttercream cake, frozen pizza or chocolate croissants. And with a small sin it usually does not stay: Everything is allowed, what wants in the stomach and fits.
And so you can lose kilos? Who looks around in the social media, gets this impression very quickly. If you look there after the Cheat Day, countless pictures of well-trained people appear, who can be photographed in front of tables with unbelievable amounts of food. With bright faces, they claim they can eat all this on their cheat day with no regrets - sometimes 4000 or 5000 calories. That's twice as much as the body needs about a day.
Remedy for the weight loss?
"The so-called Cheat Day is not a new invention, but a well-known concept from competitive sports," explains ecotrophologist Günter Wagner from the German Institute for Sports Nutrition in Bad Nauheim. This Schlemmertag actually have positive effects on the metabolism and the psyche - but that applies only to well-trained people.
"A Schlemmertag motivates to keep up the otherwise strict nutritional rules and gets the metabolism going," explains Wagner. Because of the Cheat Day, he does not get used to too little calories or carbohydrates, which often results in a weight loss. But Wagner emphasizes: "These gourmet days also work for athletes only if you do not indulge in indiscriminate, but treat yourself here and there times something you usually do without."
Or complete nonsense?
Even the nutritionist and author Sven-David Müller from Fürstenwalde on the Spree considers the weekly excessive consumption especially for untrained people for nonsense. "It's like being heavily in debt, but once a week I'd say, I do not care, but today I'm going to go shopping." You can not lose weight that way.
Hans Hauner from the Institute of Nutritional Medicine at the Klinikum Rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich warns even before the Cheat Day. "Of course, such a Schlemmertag sounds like an attractive concept," he says. "The body can actually handle the masses of food and process them, but it puts it in unnecessary stress."
Such overloading with fats, carbohydrates, additives and sugar could cause the blood sugar level to rise sharply, says Hauner. In addition, a lot of blood must be directed to digestion in the digestive tract, which is then missing elsewhere. "That's what makes us feel dull and inefficient," says Hauner. Also it could come quickly to blockages. He especially advises obese people, diabetes patients and people with metabolic disorders from the "Fresstag".
Eating disorder instead of enjoyment
And not only physical dangers threaten, but also psychic, says Marina Lommel, a nutritionist and owner of the digital nutritional advice Foodpunk from Munich. "For people who starve during the week and strictly abstain from fats and carbohydrates, there is a risk that they on Cheat Day completely exaggerate and literally stuffed." That could also lead to a disturbed eating behavior.
To prevent that from happening, you do not have to completely delete the Cheat Day from the weekly schedule. "The only important thing is that you do not live it extremely, but considered a day that small sins are sometimes in it," says Lommel. "If you treat yourself to a piece of cake or a portion of fries, that's not bad at all." Many help such a break, actually, to get through the otherwise disciplined days better.
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Above all, nutrition expert Müller advocates not eating too much calf every day of the week. "It would be ideal to treat yourself to a bar of chocolate every day, if you simply can not do without it," he says. This prevents cravings attacks.
But Müller knows how many people find that difficult and how often the whole pack disappears in the stomach. "Those who are prone to this behavior can actually try a temperate cheat day," he says.
Even ecotrophologist Wagner pleads for not to make the self-imposed eating rules too strict. "Every change in diet is more successful, the more exemptions there are," he says. "If we forbid ourselves too much, we only want it all the more."
