A cheat meal is a meal where you are allowed to eat whatever you want. This is now becoming a feature of more and more diets because of the overall benefits to help you lose weight.

The cheat meal is important for your mindset for three important reasons:

• To satisfy your cravings for the foods you love most so you won't risk binging or cheating throughout the week and severely disrupt your fat loss plans
• To not take away your freedom in enjoying the foods you love with friends and family, which any normal, sane human being knows is an important part of most people's lives.
• To make sure that you don't lose perspective of where you were and how far you have come.

As you know, following a strict crash diet doesn't work because of how hard you have to be on your body. Most people are not able to cope with such a disruption of their lives. Unless you are a professional bodybuilder, or fitness trainer, you are very unlikely to stay on some sort of strict, calorie controlled diet for every day of your life. The cheat meal gives you an explicit meal to live out your food fantasies. It gives you a meal to look forward to, so you are not as tempted to cheat and ruin your calorie controlled nutritional intake overall.

We both know that you are trying to lose fat so you get more out of life and enjoy yourself. What's the point if you lose fat, but you feel like you're in a prison where you are not allowed to ever just eat and have a great time with your family and friends. True, food has become more of a recreation than a necessity. But, instead of resenting this, and resenting other people that use it as a recreation, plan it in your schedule, so that if you ever do want to enjoy time with your family and friends for a nice meal, you can. That way you don't have to play the 'guilt' game with yourself. Acknowledge that what you ate is fattening, but its ok cause you're on the long term road to success.

Remember its the consistent habits that matter. And if you are having a cheat meal only once in a while (at least one a week), then this is no great loss.

It becomes very easy to lose perspective of where you are and how far you have progressed if just apply the strict advice of the weight loss program you are following. By eating like you used to, or your favourite foods, it reminds you of all those feelings you used to have before you started out on the program. It reminds you why you started in the fist place, and gives you a perspective as to how much good you really are doing for your body. This will ensure that the next week, you will stick to your nutritional program with ease. Often you'll find that after you eat these foods, they don't taste that great. In fact, most of these foods that you might secretly wish to eat from time to time actually taste a lot better when you imagine them, then you actually eat the real thing. Once you realise that by actually eating it, you'll also not crave it as much in the future, which will help you stick to your program.

So give yourself a break from time to time and enjoy a cheat meal, you deserve for all the weight you lose.