If you are currently on a diet but are struggling to lose weight, it may be because your body has gotten used to surviving on less calories, therefore has slowed down your metabolic rate in order to preserve energy reserves.
So how can you speed your metabolism back up whilst still continuing to cut back calories in order to lose weight?
Surprisingly, having a pig-out day once a week could be an extremely enjoyable way of doing this!
A "Pig-Out" Day or a "Cheat Day" as it is also known, is one day per week when you get to eat a lot more than on the other 6 "Diet Days".
By eating dramatically more calories on this day, you will confuse your body into thinking that it is not actually on a diet and jump-start its metabolic rate once more.
By using this strategy once a week you will continue to keep your body's metabolic rate raised.
However, it is still important that overall throughout the week, you continue to consume less calories than you burn, otherwise the method will not work.
For example, you are on a calorie restricted diet of 1500 calories per day, which is 10,500 calories per week. Instead of spreading them evenly throughout the 7 days you could use 2500 of them on your Pig-Out day and spread the remaining 8,000 calories over the other 6 days, giving you just over 1300 calories per day.
Please note that these figures are for illustration only and your calorie intake will vary greatly depending on your own individual circumstances such as gender, activity level, how much weight you have to lose and how quickly you want to lose it. Some Health Authorities have set a base figure as 1200 calories for women and 1800 calories for men as the absolute minimum you should consume per day.
There are many free tools on the internet for working out your calorie needs to lose/gain/sustain weight based on your own individual circumstances.
It is also important that you set some limits and monitor your Pig-Out Day by knowing how many calories you can consume on this day- it still needs to be properly worked out. There is no use putting in all the hard work and effort 6 days of the week to then completely blow it by eating 5000 calories worth of junk food on the 7th day and inadvertently gaining weight!
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