Anabolic Academy with John Livia: When to incorporate Cheat Meals

When do you incorporate cheat meals during contest prep. How do cheat meals work?

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#johnlivia  #cheatmeals #bodybuilding

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

All right. I am live. All right. What's up, guys? Okay. I was running a little late. I was at the gym. But I had taken a little bit of uh crucifix, right? Yes, which is the Lee Priest new pre-workout by Nutrafit. All right. Good news. We have a new sponsor from Nutrafit. And I'm actually glad that uh Nutrafit is sponsoring uh Sirius and selling this bodybuilding, and they'll also be sponsoring Sirius Outcast. Because uh not only did they actually they actually really do make great products. Okay, and I'm actually helping uh not that Lee needs any help, but I'm actually helping Lee because um go to Nutrifit. Lee is gonna have his own line from Nutrafit called Resurrection, and the first item is already out. Thank you, Forrest. Appreciate it. The first item is already out, the pre-work pre-workout, the crucifix. Uh let's check it out. It is actually, it tastes really good and it is uh really strong. So you might want to start off if you guys are caffeine addicts, then it doesn't matter. But if you guys aren't, uh you might want to do a half a scoop like I do, because it's really strong. But let's let's check out, let's see. Uh www. neutroph, let's check it out. All right. Here we go. And then we are gonna get on to today's topic. But here we go. Let's see. Let's see where they so here they had some great products, okay? I have used their protein, I have used their pre-workouts, and I have used uh Lee's new pre-workout called Crucifix, which is really strong. So if you can't crucifix, do uh do a half a scoop, unless you are uh uh unless you are like a real nut and you like the caffeine high, then do a full scoop. But uh this is a great product, the eye shaker, because it you could do uh cold and hot, it's it's a really good product. They just have some really, really good stuff. It's just a fantastic line, great uh clothing line. Uh oh, yeah. Here's the resurrection. Here we go. So his is there's Lee Priest. So his first item is out crucifix pre-working. He's gonna be coming out with an intro, he's gonna be coming out with a thermogenic formula, he's gonna be coming out with a uh uh a post uh workout uh compound. Uh it's it's gonna be uh a huge deal. So get your hands on it. The crucifix first of all, the crucifix tastes great, okay? And it really is a good bang for your buck because you're like you're gonna do a half a scoop, and I believe it is $50, but it's gonna last you a while. And so use code priest, P-R-I-E-S-T. It is in the description, and so uh honestly go and check it out. Here we go. Here is oh, this is actually pretty cool. There we go. This is that that's actually pretty cool. That's it, and um so that's what we got. Cool. Now, the other announcement is Jason Owens will be back next week. He is doing much better. He'll probably tell us the full story about what's happening, but he will be back on this show, Anabolic Academy, with me next week. Uh, I've been keeping in touch with him. He has been going through a tough, tough period, but he is gonna be back. He's feeling great, he's going through some some real uh medical treatment, and he is gonna be fine, but it's a tough road. But he'll be back next week, thank God. My good friend Jason Ons will be back. All right. Now to Anabolic Academy. So, like for a while, I didn't know what I was gonna do this week, and I was like, all right, I've been doing the workout ones. Last week I had Armina DB on and um Amana DB rather, and and um we talked about steroids. I'm like, okay, what are we gonna talk about? And then what happened was one of my wife's, I was at my wife's hair salon, and one of the girls was talking about having a cheat meal. And I was like, all right, let me do a show on a cheat meal because I don't think people understand the theory, the strategy behind a cheat meal and what it really means. They kind of just throw that word around. People that are pre-contest and a pre-contest diet, they understand what cheat meal is. But people tend to throw the word cheat meal around or the phrase cheat meal around when they're just kind of eating clean, maybe doing a little cardio and decide they're gonna go to the gym three days a week or do some kind of Pilates and you know they they decided I'm gonna replace my cheeseburger with some chicken and rice. And oh, but tonight I'm gonna have a cheat meal. Well, I'm here to tell you that that's not really a cheat meal. Okay, if you just decided that you're gonna eat clean and you're getting in good food, like chicken, rice, oatmeal, peanut butter, some red meat, fish, eggs, and you're making smart vegetables and you're making smart food choices, and then on a Saturday night you go out and eat something that you want, that's basically just living life. That's not a cheat meal because there's a there's a method to cheat meal, okay? So when you are dieting for a contest and you're dieting really hard, and those of us have diet dieted for a contest understand what I'm talking about. Okay, when you are on no carbs, when you are on low calories, when you are doing an hour of cardio plus two hours of training, right? And you're eating every two to three hours, but it's it's basically just protein, uh, maybe some unsaturated fats, right? And your your carbs are real low. But then you hit a you hit a wall, you hit like a glass ceiling, and you can't lose any more weight. You're like, what is going on? I'm doing cardio, right? Doing an hour of cardio, and you might even increase it. Maybe I gotta do an hour 15 minutes, maybe you're doing 45 minutes, you bring it to an hour, and you just you hit a glass wall, and you just you can't lose any more weight. Well, what's happening is your body's kind of going into the panic mode, right? And it's not its metabolism has slowed down. When your calories are low and when your carbohydrates are low, your body slows down to production of T4, which changes to T3, which increases your metabolic rate. Okay. But when you give yourself a cheat meal and you spike your insulin levels, then all of a sudden your body decides oh, uh, I do need to produce T4 in order to produce T3 because I am getting insulin, I am getting carbohydrates, okay. And then it starts kicking in your metabolic rate again. And that's the strategy behind a cheat meal. And and and this is what people don't don't get, right? If you're just kind of eating three meals a day and you're doing you know, chicken and rice and vegetables, and you're just kind of cleaning up your diet, and you refer to something as a cheat meal, that's really just like living life. You just really like okay. See, when you're doing a pre-contest diet, there's a strategy behind a cheat meal. Now, this there's there's several ways to go about you know dieting, right? You could do the cheat meal once a week as long as your carbs and calories are low enough and you're doing that, you're doing that cardio, right? As long as you're seeing progress. But usually if you have a good coach, he's gonna tell you when to have a cheat meal, right? A lot of times, here's the thing though, if your body is still metabolizing the body fat and it's still working overtime, and it's and you're doing the cardio, you might not need a cheat meal. Your body's still working, you're losing the weight, you're getting leaner, you're getting harder. The only way you might have an actual cheat meal is, you know, before the show to like fill out. But if you're hitting a glass ceiling and you can't fucking lose any more weight and you're doing everything, right? And even mentally, mentally, you're drained, right? That's when you actually have a cheat meal. Because, like I said, then your body kicks in the T4, which transfers to T3, transforms into T3, and then your metabolism kicks in again. That's the whole thing around it. Now, for some reason, I don't know why. When you eat shit food, it works even better. I I don't know why. Maybe it's the saturated fat and the grease from like a fast food meal or pizza or something like that. Uh, because if you basically just like grill a burger on a you know, a cheeseburger, eh, it's like for some it'll still work, but for some reason the greasy food works even better. But it has to be under those circumstances, it has to be under those extreme circumstances to work. Otherwise, it you're just giving yourself food. I mean, otherwise, it's just not it's not a cheat meal to the strictest term, right? But here's another thing people tend to do they tend to overdo it. They go out and they have two cheeseburgers and they have fries and they have a ice cream, and I mean, I was guilty of this. You don't want to do that because then your body's gonna take a week to metabolize all that food, right? You don't want to do that. You want to have a cheap meal, a cheeseburger, a serving of French fries, water, no soda, no diet soda, nothing like that. If you're in a pre-contest diet, especially about a month out, right? Don't gorge yourself. And believe me, I was I was guilty of that. I've gorged myself on with a cheat meal before a contest, I gorged myself after a contest. You don't want to do that. First of all, you'll make yourself sick. Secondly, it it's it's gonna take days before you metabolize that food, but so you before your body actually breaks down all that food. So you just want that one cheat meal during a time when your body is in this fucking mode of diet, this extreme mode of diet where you're doing nothing but protein, where you're doing nothing, you're doing an hour of cardio in the morning on an empty stomach, and you're training hard, and then you hit that, you hit that this fucking you hit a ball like fuck. Why am I not losing any more weight? I'm not getting lean, I don't see the stretches, what's going on? That's when you kick in the cheat meal. Another strategy, and I've done both, and they both work. Instead of a cheat meal, uh, what you can do is you could rotate carbohydrates, right? And I've done both. So, what I mean by rotating carbohydrates is like, for example, like you would have you one day you have protein and vegetables, the next day you have protein and fats, and then then the third day you have protein and complex carbs, potatoes, rice, so on and so forth, right? That would be that would be, but sometimes even that, even having your carbs every third day or every fifth day, sometimes you still need a cheat meal. If you're rotating your carbohydrates and you have a coach, your coach should tell you when to have a cheat meal. If your diet includes a cheat meal because you're doing no carbs all week, that's something different. Okay, now I've done both, and they both worked. Um I've done I had better results with the rotating of the carbohydrates and then eating some shit before I go on stage to fill out. I had better results that way. When I was doing very, very low coal, no carbohydrates and low calories, and I would have a cheat meal once a week, I got really too like way too lean. Way too lean. So you got to figure out what works for you, and that's what a good coach does. A good coach keeps his eye on you and he goes, Okay, okay, okay, hold on. We got to fill out. We have some time before the contest, you're getting way too flat and way too lean, you're losing too much muscle. So we have to fill you up again, right? Or um he you're gonna tell him, Look, man, I I I'm just not losing any more weight, I don't know what it is, and then he's going to say, Well, are you doing this? You say, Yes, and are you doing this? And then he's gonna say, Well, okay, so go have a cheat meal and then let me know how it goes from there, okay. And that's what having a good coach does. He's going to keep an eye on your body because it I know I know everybody like likes to say they they uh they coach themselves. Nobody truly coaches themselves. You always got a friend or somebody that looks at you and says, Hey, you're kind of looking a little. I mean, we're we're gonna be talking about Nick Walker on muscle talk. And when he said he coached himself for the Arnold, he really had Guy Sistanino helping him. It just it wasn't a he didn't pay him, he wasn't a full-time coach, right? He still he still kept an eye on him and he still said maybe you should do this and do that and so on and so forth. He was his guiding eye. Because when you are when you are dieting, not only are you physically worn, you're mentally worn, and you're mentally stressed. So you could get into this, you can get into this mentality where no matter what, you look at yourself in the mirror and say, I'm not lean enough, I'm not lean enough, I'm not lean enough. And before you know it, you're like you're losing muscle, and you don't want to do that, right? I mean, you don't definitely don't want to do that. So then you say to yourself, okay, well, I need to have somebody look at me and somebody with some kind of experience, not fucking asshole in the gym who's gonna tell you look great no matter what, right? Not that person. You need a person that's gonna give you constructive criticism and has been in that situation before, at least, right? If you're not gonna pay a coach, at least somebody who's been in the situation before that's gonna tell you, hey man, you know, you're looking a little flat, you still got six weeks, you're really flat, you're losing too much weight. Um, maybe you should have a cheat meal, maybe you should carb up. Or I don't know what I'm I don't know what the problem is. I'm not losing any more weight. Um, I got six weeks before the contest, I got four weeks before the contest. I'm doing an hour of cardio. I'm I'm training like a beast, I'm not getting a pump. That's another big thing. Like if you can't get a pump in the gym, um, I'm I'm eating no carbohydrates. Okay, well, it's time for a cheat meal. And like, and just eat something that you enjoy, right? Don't eat a whole fucking pizza. Eat something that you enjoy. If you like sushi, go have sushi. If you want a McDonald's hamburger with french fries, go have the McDonald's hamburger with french fries, okay? It's not something that should be really that difficult. But you need a watchful eye, you need somebody that's going to help you. And a cheat meal has a strategy behind it, has a theory behind it, there's a method to the madness. If you're just gonna call going out on a Saturday night and having a cheat meal, that's just that's just living life. That's not really right, that's not really doing anything. I just I do because I don't compete anymore, right? So it's like I'll eat clean all week and then I go out with my wife on a Saturday night or we order food in and watch a movie. That's just enjoying life a little bit, right? That's just indulging a little bit. But real cheat meals on a pre-contest diet, uh, first of all, you're dying. You're actually like physically dying and have it. But that's that's basically how it works. All right. I'm gonna cut this one a little short uh this week. Remember, Jason returns next week, okay? Remember, neutrafit. Link is in the description. Go to the link, discount code priest. All right, he has the new line, his pre-workout, his crucifix. It's his first supplement from a line of supplements that's coming out. I think the next one that's coming out is the intra. I'm not sure 100% sure, but the intra. But go and look at the other, the other things on NutriFit too, because they have great creatine, they have great protein. I've tried their creatine, I've tried their protein, and I've tried some other pre-workout called uh Kroba, which I think was great. Um, the crucifix is uh great tasting, a little strong. So if you're not really much of a caffeine person, you might want to take a half a scoop. But if you're a caffeine freak, a full scoop, and uh it has tremendous ingredients and it tastes good. So really go check it out. Okay. So the guy that puts this together, he's like a mad scientist. He knows what he's doing, his products are amazing. So go and check it out. All right, guys, until later. And remember, hit that subscribe button and that like and and and put a fucking comment in the bottom and see. Let me know what you think. All right. All right, later, guys. Peace.