In terms of the structure of the cheat day, there are a couple of things you can do to minimize the fat gain during that cheat day.  The first is to just make your first meal when you wake up,  one small non-binge meal.  So my default tends to be one or two whole eggs – free-range organic eggs – two whole eggs with some spinach and vegetables, like in a small bowl.  It’s not a big meal.  And that will slightly inhibit your appetite for the rest of the day.  And it’s not a bad thing.  My next meal is usually I’ll walk down the hill to my favorite bakery, and I’ll get two chocolate crescents, a big cup of coffee and grapefruit juice.  And there are reasons for this.

So the grapefruit juice, you’ll notice I’m breaking my rule but this is my day off.  If you have fructose, especially something like grapefruit juice, it flat lines your glucose response.  It can help prevent huge glucose spikes when you eat a bunch of crap.  So I will make a point of having this early in the day on my binge day.  It also solves fat loss.  But here’s the thing.  It solves fat loss, but for this particular day it will minimize fat gain.  So those are two different things, but it’s important to realize the difference.

The caffeine is also important.  You don’t have to consume caffeine, but by having coffee, and I’ll do this two or three time throughout the day, it increases the speed of gastric emptying, so the speed at which food leaves your stomach and passes through your digestive tract.  So what does that mean?    That means you’re absorbing through your calories.  So there’s a message to that madness as well.

And then throughout the day you can use various types of tricks.  In the chapter “Damage Control” one of them very simple would be just getting the juice from let’s say three to four limes or lemon wedges and consuming than before you have your meal, which when I tested – I had a medical device implanted in my sides to measure blood glucose 24/7 for about three weeks and tracked everything – it tends to lower the blood sugar response by at least 10%.  And that’s significant if you compound it over time.  Cinnamon also very helpful.  So I always put cinnamon in my coffee at the same time I have the pastries, which is usually my second crappiest meal of the day.

Lunch I might have let’s just say Thai food with some rice.  I usually don’t have rice, but I’ll have Thai food with rice because I love rice if I’m allowed to have it.  And then for dinner that’s when I’ll also go crazy, so I might have a huge full pizza, wild nettle pizza with an egg on top with some wine and then afterwards I’ll have an espresso and some ice cream.  And that’s pretty much what it looks like.

You can also use exercise very effectively during that day to minimize fat gain by understanding how you can increase insulin sensitivity.  I won’t go into all the details, but there are a lot of things you can do to prevent fat gain while binging.  So this is also very helpful for times like Christmas or Thanksgiving or New Years.

There you have it! The Structure of The Cheat Day- Interview With Tim Ferriss.

What’s your favourite things to eat on your cheat days?