Or any other diet, for that matter.
For people lucky enough to work Monday to Friday, the weekend offers respite and reward for the relentless dieting that had been taking place over the preceding days. It’s an opportunity to dangle a few carrots to accommodate the stick. And for many, it’s the one thing that makes the grind of a fat loss phase somewhat bearable.
I’ve been there. This was several years before I found carnivore, but after I’d begun low carb. Every Saturday morning I’d trot off to the local supermarket and raid them for everything I thought I could handle. A few packs of doughnuts, an entire cheesecake, one or two bars of chocolate, and a box of cereal. Then I’d sit down and do my utmost to demolish them in one sitting.
I never did. But I’d get close, and I happily paid the price for the rest of the day, and the next.
Looking back, it was a silly existence, grasping for a few minutes of dopamine-fuelled pleasure at the expense of hours of sugar-induced stupor. And I had a reason for it, it just wasn’t a great one.
Going by the hypothesis that leptin governed the metabolic rate, and that leptin fell in response to calorie deficits and carb deprivation, the cheat day was a means to jack up the metabolism and alleviate the negative adaptations to dieting.
By assaulting the body with an avalanche of sugar and calories, leptin levels would skyrocket, towing the stunted metabolism back to the surface. Then I could get back to rigorous dieting on Monday, with the simple ambition of surviving the spell of carb deprivation till next Saturday.
In a sense it works, it’s just a terrible way to go about it. It was effectively episodes of binging disguised as metabolic weaponry. If anything, I was making sure I took longer to get to the same destination.
A sustained deficit does result in metabolic perturbations that lower the metabolic rate, raise hunger, and put a dent in performance. A high-carbohydrate refeed can help attenuate those unwanted effects. But, they come at significant costs.
The Downsides Of Cheat Days
1. Disrupting the routine – By cheating on the diet, you’re ensuring that you have to then spend time wrestling back control of your eating habits.
2. Cancelling ketosis – A refeed on the level of my Saturday binge would comfortably fill the glycogen tank, and then some. This means that I would then spend a good portion of the next day in energy purgatory, burning off the remnants of glycogen until I could resume using ketones.
3. Inflammation – All those deceitfully delicious foods I was shovelling in came saddled with sugar, seed oils, and plant toxins. Each of them jacked up inflammation in their own special way. Sugar through glycation and elevated insulin levels, seed oils by their abject rancidity, and plant toxins via their disruption of the gut. The perfect recipe for hours of brain fog and depression.
4. Reward good behaviour with bad outcomes – A successful diet comes down to amassing and continuing a healthy series of habits. During the working week, it was business as usual. I wouldn’t put a foot wrong.
But then I’d reward that unerring discipline by stacking my plate with toxic foods that acted to sabotage my fat loss goals. This meant that I was teaching my brain that to expect those foods in return for the weekly grind, which ended up increasing the cravings for said foods. The week became miserable.
5. Dopamine junkie – Sugar and crack aren’t that different. Addictive substances with the capacity to wreck your life. Sugar just does it slowly, and that makes it more dangerous. Each time you eat a chocolate bar, the body responds by pumping up dopamine, which is taken from the main reservoir.
This results in a lower dopamine baseline, decreasing well-being and increasing subsequent cravings for said chocolate bar. This is the path of the dopamine junkie. More cravings for empty distractions, and less motivation to do the things that move you forward.
Well, What About Cheat Days On Carnivore?
All this is gleaned from my experiences of adding sugar-crusted doughnuts to a low carb chicken breast diet. As of now, I still haven’t got round to trying out a similar strategy with carnivore. And I’m not sure it’s going to be necessary.
The thing with carnivore, is that it sidesteps many of the metabolic perturbations of extended dieting, by providing extremely nutrient-dense foods. You simply get more bang for your caloric buck. So a 2000 calorie carnivore diet offers much more to the body than the 2000 calories I’d amassed from chicken breast and rice.
The former will continue to provide an abundance of essential macros and micros to allow the body to function at peak capacity. The latter falls short, and that signals to the body that it has to begin prioritising some functions over others and conserving the resources that are left. Which basically leads to a loss of libido and constant lethargy.
My point is, a carnivore diet going the distance will outperform your standard bodybuilding low fat diet, through the sheer force of nutrient density. Or any other diet for that matter.
But there is a big caveat to this. By virtue of its top tier nutrient density, it’s quite easy to end up undereating on carnivore. It’s just extremely satiating, and while that’s one of its best assets, it can be abused by people used to cutting calories by restricting portion sizes and stopping short of feeling full. Turn those tried and trusted strategies on the carnivore menu, and calories can go down drastically.
Put it into an OMAD (One Meal A Day) format, and they’ll drop even further. This may result in greater initial weight loss, but it’ll cost you when nutrient deficiencies begin to flare up further down the line.
The biggest mistake everyone makes when it comes to the carnivore diet, is undereating. But it’s easily avoidable. As long as you recognise the danger by taking your pick from fatty meats, eating to fullness, and splitting your foods over at least three meals a day. Don’t chase the scale. Give the body the tools it needs to achieve peak health, and let fat loss come along as a happy side effect.
As long as you’re not undereating, the need for any weekend fix will be minimal. The metabolism should be absolutely fine.
Regardless, cheat days aren’t compatible with any diet, let alone one as strict as carnivore. It’s an act of self-sabotage. You’re ending a sustained period of abstinence and healing with a disastrous episode of bingeing.
Some of the hard-earned adaptations get reversed, and you set yourself up for a gruelling start to the next week of dieting. Psychologically, it’s a disaster. As for the matter of leptin resuscitating a scuttled metabolism, it’s open for debate.
But there is sense in rewarding good behaviour, pulling the body back into a high energy state, and accounting for any periods of undereating. I’m just suggesting that you can do it without veering off the ancestral trail.
And no, it’s not raw honey. A big dump of ketosis-cancelling fructose isn’t going to help the situation.
The Alternative – A Carnivore Refeed
Instead of bringing in a cheat day, you can simply implement a carnivore refeed, which means bringing the calories back up the maintenance, or a little higher, over 1-2 days. It’s a way to spice things up by bringing in a variety of foods that you don’t normally dabble in, and pump up the metabolism through an infusion of extra fat.
For example, you can add more butter, cheese, bacon, pork belly, whatever fat-filled animal foods catch your fancy. The portion sizes go up. You eat till you’re full, and then some. This isn’t going to result in fat gain. You’ll be signalling to the body that it’s in an energy-abundant state, and that it doesn’t need to hold onto its fat stores.
And what if you’re not looking for weight loss? Assuming that muscle gain is the goal, then the refeed acts as a break from the usual pattern of beef on beef, while also helping you rack up a higher calorie count.
Check Out My Collection Of Delicious Carnivore Recipes To Spice Things Up
The Carnivore-Style Alternative
There are situations where a straight refeed won’t be enough to soothe the metabolic woes of extended dieting. If you’re struggling to recover between bouts of heavy lifting, then there’s a good chance you need some extra firepower to get you up and running again.
This is where I risk it all by making a case for carbs. An infusion of glucose can aid glycogen repletion, which keeps your performance at its explosive best. But that can be easily achieved with a few pinches of carbs. Something in the region of 150-200 grams, split over two days.
For instance, you could just add a pouch of microwavable white rice alongside your evening slab of steak. A low toxicity starch to pump in some glucose that can go directly towards glycogen repletion without adding a boatload of toxins. It’s not going to wreck you the next day, or keep you out of ketosis for more than a few hours.
Carb cycling isn’t exactly necessary to keep the carnivore train chugging along, especially if you’re not dabbling in intensive exercise. But it’s worth putting the dogma aside and respecting the fact that it can have its use.
As a caveat, I wouldn’t throw carbs in over the first couple of months of carnivore, since they can delay fat adaption and interrupt the ongoing gut reset. Once you’re in the clear, carb cycling becomes a valuable addition to your metabolic weaponry. You’re getting their performance enhancing capabilities without the extra baggage of blood sugar swings and gut dysfunction.
Wrapping Up – Cheat Days vs Refeeds
In short, refeeds are a great compromise to let you get some food freedom without jeopardising all that hard-earned progress. And by ensuring you’re not undereating, they’ll actually enhance fat loss over time.
Cheat Days
- Disrupt the routine
- Delay the healing process
- Lower wellbeing
- Cancel ketosis
Refeeds
- Keeps the routine intact, with some extra spice
- Continue the carnivore adaptations
- Keep you highly motivated
- And ketogenic
Great article
Thank you for taking the time to read it!