Hello my fellow friends. I come back to you with a rather odd post, something out of my element.
Recently, I fell in love with health. I realised how I was in the worst stage possible, weighing in exactly 100kg. That was the highest I have ever experienced. I was on a consistent 75 to 80 kg but my weight just flew up this high within 2 months. In that 2 months, I realised my unhealthy relationship with food. I started eating 2-3 portions per meal, and if I do actually eat only a portion, like I'm supposed to- I end up snacking a lot. Pit a pat, pit a pat, that made me gained 20 kgs in 2 months time. I was bewildered when I saw the scale and that was went I knew, it's time to make a change.
As I had such an unhealthy diet, it was hard for me to transit from eating McDonald's Spicy Ayam with fries & coke, to grilled chicken breast with asparagus on a daily basis. I'm not going to lie, even though I managed to stick to the plan, there were times were I sneaked a biscuit or 2 in, because it was a sudden transition and my body was definitely not used to it. Because I had such an unhealthy diet back then, its hard for me to completely cut out a normal meal. After doing tons of research, I decided to do 3 cheat days a month, so that I would still keep my sanity in tact.
First week of healthy eating & exercising was most definitely tough, my whole body ached and my muscles were sore. I did not give up, because as much as I hated sweating and exercising, I hated what I saw in the mirror more than anything else. I gained so many stretch marks and my belly was bugging out, it was honestly disgusting. First week through, I decided to reward myself with a cheat day on a Sunday.
Mark my words, the side effects were awful. I am still a student currently studying at university so that meant early classes. As my body started getting used to the diet, my body was used to the energy deficit I've created, with my low carb diet. I had pan mee for lunch and pizza and coke for dinner on my cheat day. These food were no doubt high in sodium and carbs, making my insulin level increase dramatically converting the sugars in my blood to glycogen and fats. Because of my cheat day, I was depriving from energy, I felt so lethargic and tired even though I got a full 8 hours of sleep. As I wasn't so sure about the side effects of a cheat day yet, I decided to just follow my plan and started eating healthy again the next day.
Tick tock, tick tock, it was 2 weeks now. 2 weeks of consistent healthy eating and exercise, I felt great and my body got stronger. Then during the weekends, I've decided to have a cheat day, but a less guilty one. I had IKEA hotdog and tea live pearl milk tea for lunch and a typical chinese dinner at a chinese restaurant in Puchong. I even cut back on the rice during my dinner to make myself feel less guilty. Even though the cheat day was not as bad as before, I felt even worse than I did before.
My body was so not used to the food, it started causing my leg to swell up, the high sodium levels in food cause water retention and my body ached. Slowly, my head started hurting and I eventually felt so lethargic and weak after my cheat day.
In many health blogs, they do recommend that you do a cheat day. A cheat day helps regulate your metabolism, as a sudden high level of sugar enters your body, it causes our body to respond quicker and our body would be able to deal with all the addition sugar causing an increase in metabolism. This means that when doing the same exercises, you might lose more weight as you have a higher metabolism. However, I don't think its worth it. The excruciating pain and suffer after a cheat day still hunts me till today, I'll definitely say no to anymore cheat days anytime soon.
