how to stick to the body by vi diet



what's up, guys? jeff cavaliere, athlean-x.com. today we're addressing that all too popularquestion about cheat meals. how important are cheat meals? should i have cheat meals?how often should i have cheat meals? jeff, do you ever have cheat meals? we're going to cover it all today. now, firstof all i think we should define what a cheat meal is to you. you see, if you think thingslike steak, or pasta, potatoes, pumpkin pie, oatmeal, breakfast burritos, chocolate chipmint frozen yogurt; if you think these are cheat meals then you, my friend, are on thewrong eating plan. not only are these things that we actuallyendorse in our athlean-x factor meal plan,

but these are exactly what i ate yesterday.i ate all of these foods yesterday. in fact, i eat a lot of them all the time. maybe notsteak as much, but the idea here is that i'm talking about cheat meals. things that you have to go sign a waiver forat a restaurant because they're worried about your health, or foods that start with doublestuffed, or extra-extra, or the super duper. these are going to put super-duper amountsof fat on your ass if you eat them. those are the real cheat foods. a lot of you guys have cravings for them,and that's great because it's a reality. people don’t always follow very strict eating plans,or they can't follow all the time, but i'll

tell you this: that's based on the fact thatthose eating plans are too restrictive and they're causing you to have the need for cheatmeals. with that being said i wanted to cover andask a couple questions of you to determine whether or not you feel that a cheat mealis actually something that’s going to benefit you or not. okay, the first question you've got to askyourself is whether or not you're feeling deprived with the eating plan that you'reon. do you feel that you're missing out on something? do you feel that you're on a diet?i talk about that concept all the time. the worst word is "diet" because everybodyalways says "i'm on a diet". what that really

means is that you're going to be off it atsome point. you're on it for a while, but you're off it eventually because nobody canstick to a deprivation based plan for their lifetime. at athlean-x it's about sticking to a planfor a lifetime and creating lifetime changes, not just looking to lose weight short term,not trying to come up here on a youtube video to look good for you guys every once in awhile, but to be able to live this way and look good year round. 365 days a year, everysingle video i do for you i try to practice what i preach. feeling deprived is not the way to have along term, successful diet plan. now, most

of our cheat meals are based around foodsthat are either rich in fats or carbohydrates. if you were to take yourself away from someof those foods, based on deprivation, there's not many people walking around with fat andcarbohydrate deficiencies. i can tell you that right now. eating healthierdoesn’t mean that you have to feel deprived. you can still get your carbs, you'll stillget your fats, you're just doing it a bit more responsibly and choosing a little bitwiser in terms of the foods that you eat and not overindulging. you won't ever feel deprivedanymore. you're going to feel fulfilled and at thesame time you're going to actually start realizing some of the fitness goals that you have. thatbrings me to question number two. number two:

what are your goals? i mean your goals. yourspecific goals. we all have different goals. what level of goal are you trying to aspireto? see, here, for me, not only am i the faceof my brand and practicing what i preach and leading you guys. i feel if you're going tolead you'd better lead by example and i do that. by doing that i'm restrictive with thati eat, but as you saw i eat all the things that were up on that board before. so how restrictive would you call it? i'mnot sitting here eating boiled chicken, i'll tell you that much. i'm not eating steamedbroccoli and that's it. i never do that. i never have. that would never be somethingi could follow for the lifelong, but you guys

have to say "what are your goals?" if youaren't trying to be what i'm trying to be here, or be the face of a brand, or have acertain level of leanness you can actually cheat a little more often. that would allow you to have some meals orthings you might want to have a little more frequently than i do. the idea is that youhave to define what your specific goal is and from there determine how appropriate acheat meal is to your game plan. the third question is actually one of my favorite ones.that is: "how motivated are you right now?" i mean motivated by your own physique. what is your reaction when you look in themirror right now? a lot of times it could

be repulsion. let's call it the way it is."i hate the way i look. i've got to do something about it." a lot of times you have to balancethe desire for that short term fix of whatever the cheat food is to the long term goal – likewe talked about in the last step – of how you ultimately want to look. when that short term fix is not as valuableto you as the long term goal, that's the moment that you start to defeat your urge for cheatmeals. not that it's a bad thing, it's just that you actually start to become motivatedbecause, for the first time, we have guys on athlean-x all the time that write in andtell us that for the first time ever they can see their abs. for the first time everthey're building new muscle.

they couldn't build. they were hard gainers.they couldn't do it before. for the first time ever they're getting compliments eitherfrom their spouse or their friends who are noticing that they're training and they'vebeen training for the last five years and nobody noticed. that right there gives youthe extra motivation to want to hold onto those compliments and hold onto those complimentsthat you're actually seeing for the first time. you have to figure out where you are rightnow in that motivation scale to determine whether or not you're looking for those shortterm fixes, or placing more value on those long term goals. that brings me to my finalquestion. that is: how mentally tough are

you? when it comes to deciding whether ornot cheat meals should be part of your plan you have to ask yourself how mentally toughyou are. going back to the foods i showed you in thebeginning, it doesn't take a lot of mental toughness to be able to stick to an eatingplan that has that many good tasting food options available to you. that's just a fractionof what we make available. however, when we talk about cheat meals are you the type ofperson that could have a cheat meal? there's difference between cheat meals andcheat days. i'm not an advocate of cheat days because cheat days turn into cheat weeks andcheat weeks turn to cheat months and before you know it you're cheating all year roundon your diet. you ask me "jeff, is it okay

for me to have a health meal every once ina while?" if you're at that point you've got some serious issues. so what we want to dois ask yourself if you indulge in that cheat meal, is that going to turn into a cheat weekand a cheat month? do you have the mental toughness to say "i'mgoing to have this because i want to have it, but then i'm going to get right back onmy healthier eating plan and stay right back focused on my goals again"? you've got toask yourself that question because that's going to vary from individual to individual. now, i want to give you a couple strategies.if after this self-assessment you say to yourself "i can handle it. i've got my goals in check.i know where i'm heading, but i still want

to have some cheat meals", then i'll giveyou two big tips on what you might want to do and stay conscious of when you're makingdecisions on when to have that meal. the first big tip i can pass on to you ifyou decide you're going to have a cheat meal every once in a while is: try to prepare yourcheat meals at home. you be the person in control of what you're eating. you see, ifyou go out to a restaurant you don’t know what you're eating. a lot of times you don’t.you don’t know how bad what you're eating is and you don’t know how much that canactually overload you and pull you away from your goals. you do it at home and you're in control. youknow what you're putting in. i would recommend,

if you're going to do it, at all costs dothat. i do realize that sometimes part of the cheat is getting out of the house andletting someone else do the work for you. that's great, i just want you to be awareof the fact that doing it at home is likely going to save you in the long run. tip number two here is actually very helpful.that is, if possible, you want to schedule your cheat meal wisely. you see, not all thetime do you have the luxury of scheduling. you find yourself out and a bout, the momenthits and you have your cheat meal. that's the way it happens. however, if you can schedulewhen you're going to have your cheat meal – which a lot of us do have that control– you might want to think about when you're

less likely to allow that meal to turn intoa day, to a week, to a month. that might be having that cheat meal on asunday night for dinner because you know that the structure of your work week, the structureof getting back to business on monday – sometimes getting back to the gym – that allows youto get back on track again. meanwhile, let's say if you did it on a friday night that couldeasily turn into a weekend long bender of cheat meals. so you want to find, for you, where you'reless likely to allow this thing to cascade and where you can actually keep the reignson it and control it. lastly, i want to leave you here with a lesson. the old saying goes"you can't have your cake and eat it too."

i would say you can't have your cake and havegreat abs, too. as one of my athletes actually put it so eloquentlyone time "you can't have your cake and not be a fucking lard ass". he said it, not me.the idea here is that he's right. you can have it in moderation. even i have my favoritecarrot cake twice a year. that's it, but i don’t indulge all the time because to me,what's important, is looking a certain way, feeling a certain way, and being able to standup here and practice what i preach, as i've said to you before. it isn't easy, but it doesn't have to be complicated.if it was easy everyone would walk around looking the way everyone wants to look. it'snot, but it doesn't have to be complicated.

guys, that's the whole thing that i preachhere. i will take you by the hand and show you exactly how to do it. i'll show you exactlyhow i eat, i'll give you the workouts – exactly what i do. i have it as part of our athlean-xtraining system. that's what we talk about and preach all the time. it's step by step, meal by meal, and workoutby workout. it's not complicated. i show you exactly what to do, but you've got to havethat certain level of dedication. you've got to do this little self-assessment to determinewhere you fall in terms of your desire for cheat meals. maybe you're not ready to getin shape yet. that's not a bad thing. it happens to all of us. i do know that this is the timeof year when most of us will start to assess

our health, assess how we look, and want tostart making changes. i can help you make those changes, i guaranteeit. but we've got to start somewhere. head to athleanx.com and in the meantime if you'vefound this video helpful, if you've found

how to stick to the body by vi diet,it to be honest and truthful, let me knowbelow and i promise i'll make more videos that you guys want to see. just let me know what kind of videos you wantto see and i'll do that. all right, i'll be back here again guys injust a few days. i'll talk to you soon. later.