Cheat On Your Diet
The Standard
Firstly, the proper way to indulge yourself involves doing so in a way that fits within your standard which I recommend to be one cheat day per week maximum.
Secondly, when I say “cheat day”, I really mean “cheat meal”.
I’m not too rigid on this but I don’t want you to think that just because it’s your cheat-day, that you should stuff yourself with junk the entire day. Because you shouldn’t. If you spend the whole day stuffing yourself then your performance will suffer and you’ll feel like shit.
Instead, it may simply mean that you have a meal and/or snack that isn’t high-performance. For example, going out with your buddies, getting a few beers, and eating a burger with some fries.
The 3 tiers of performance in regards to food
If you want to function like a high-performance vehicle, you need high-performance fuel.
If you want to enjoy the gift of a high-frequency and vibration body, you need to eat foods that vibrate on a high-frequency.
Therefore, I have created the 3 tiers of performance when it comes to food.
Remember: Whenever you ingest any of the following foods, you are opting for the type of performance that comes with it.
Low-Performance:
This list consists of food you intuitively/rationally know are bad for you. They include but are not limited to the following:
- Low-quality fast-food from places where the ingredients are questionably sourced
- A pint or more of ice-cream
- Frozen or fresh pizza
- Any kind of candy
- Highly-processed chips such as Doritos and other big-name brands
- Cake
- Highly-processed cookies
- Donuts
Mid-Performance:
This list consists of foods that aren’t overtly bad like junk-food but nonetheless contain ingredients that are suspect to your ability to perform at peak levels.
This is my personal list and I encourage you to try it out and/or create your own.
- High amounts of fruit in one-day
- A high-quality sandwich or high-quality burger w/ minimally processed meat and bread.
- A peanut butter and jelly sandwich with high-quality ingredients.
- High-quality chips such as organic, non-GMO.
- Popcorn
- Milk
- A milk-shake with lots of fruit and/or peanut butter
- Legumes (beans, peanuts, etc)
- High-quality pasta
- Other restaurant food cooked in unknown oils and mid-performance ingredients.
High-Performance:
The high-performance tier consists of foods that make you feel optimal mentally, physically, and spiritually.
If you are anything like me then these foods are in-line with the primal/paleo way of eating which I firmly believe is the best plan for men who want high-testosterone and energy levels.
- High-quality meats (preferably organic and grass-fed)
- High-quality vegetables (preferably organic)
- Nuts
- Grass-fed butter
- Tea/Coffee
- Sweet potatoes
- Quinoa
- Dark-chocolate (85%+)
- 1-2 fruits per day
- Smoothie w/ grass-fed whey protein
- Eggs
If you are new to the idea of primal eating and lifestyle, I recommend you check out The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson for details on how to eat like a high-performance beast.
It is a fun, well-written, and well-researched read that will set you up for success.
The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
Buy his book on Amazon here (Affiliate disclosure: I get a small commission at NO extra cost to you if you buy his book after clicking my link. Every sale supports Spartan Ownership in a small way. Thank you.)
The Golden Ratio: 3 mid-performance to 1 low-performance
Warning: The following standard is hard to maintain and 99% of the people you know will gasp at it.
But ask yourself; do you want to function at peak levels and enjoy tremendous energy, vitality, and mental clarity?
If so, then you’re willing to take Spartan Ownership and live impeccably.
The ratio
On your cheat-day, only “cheat” with mid-performance food.
Do this for 3 weeks in a row.
Then on the 4th week, allow yourself to “cheat” with low-performance food.
So in essence, the above ratio still entails one cheat day per week but you only really technically go low-performance once a month.
Make sense?
Example:
Week 1: Cheat day takes place Sunday and you cheat in a mid-performance way:
You mindfully enjoy a big chunk of watermelon while listening to Mozart. The watermelon contains lots of sugar and eating a gigantic chunk of it wouldn’t be ideal on most days as it’s highly-glycemic, etc.
Week 2: Cheat day takes place Sunday and you cheat in a mid-performance way:
You make a big smoothie with raw-milk, peanut butter, and chocolate protein. Then you eat a bowl of organic nachos with salsa. You do so while relaxing and truly savoring the experience.
Week 3: Cheat day takes place Friday and you cheat in a mid-performance way:
You go out with your buddies and drink 2x beers and eat 12 wings. The wings are of questionable sourcing and mixed with questionable sauce. Also, the beers aren’t that great for you (gluten, estrogen, bloating, etc).
Week 4: Cheat day takes place Saturday and you cheat in a low-performance way:
For dinner, you eat an entire pizza with extra cheese and a coke. Then to end the night, you put on a nice movie and you sit down with a pint of Ben and Jerries. Relax.
The mind has built a powerful series of associations to junk-food
If you’re like me, then your mind has built up this big emotional association to eating junk-food as if junk-food is this gateway to happiness and bliss.
This phenomenon has most likely been caused by a mix of factors notably the conditioning that TV shows and other clever sources of marketing have done to your subconscious.
These ads have effectively associated junk-food with happiness. Think of Coke’s motto “Open happiness.”
Look at the compelling labeling on all of the junk-food you see. Bright colors and promises of bliss. They’re all just clever marketing hacks displayed on a piece of plastic. But you react like a moth to a flame. What happens to the moth? It gets burned.
Junk-food (like women) will never satisfy you completely
All junk-food really does is provide a few fleeting moments of superficial enjoyment which if savored and done right is fine. But it will not provide lasting or deep fulfillment.
A man’s deepest purpose is his priority which cannot be reduced to any particular relationship or food(s).
If you’re like me, true fulfillment comes from your degree of impeccability, living life on your own terms, having awesome relationships, doing work that matters, and the enlightened realization of your divine nature.
Cheat mindfully and savor the experience
Cheating mindfully and savoring the experience is better than cheating unconsciously and rushing through the experience.
Remember, the reason you’re cheating is that you want to indulge yourself and enjoy something that isn’t in line with your main source of fuel.
Therefore, you want to truly savor and enjoy the experience, not just rush through it all. That’s the whole point.
So I encourage you to eat your low-performance and mid-performance food very mindfully and savor the experience.
Don’t distract yourself and watch TV while you do it. Don’t compulsively and quickly burn through it.
Cherish each bite.
In fact, I encourage you to do this with most of your meals too in order to avoid emotional eating which is weak and feminine.
For me, my cheat meals used to be my most unconscious moments of the day/week.
I would usually impulsively/emotionally stuff the junk-food down my throat while watching stupid shit on Youtube.
In essence, I would go unconscious…numb.
Then all the junk would be gone and I would be sitting there wondering where all of it had gone.
I would then crave more because I wanted to prolong the feeling.
Sometimes, I would get more and the same cycle would repeat itself.
The reason for all of this unconscious behavior is that on some level I still believed that junk-food would provide me with happiness and bliss. Those conditioned associations were still alive in me and I was reacting to them on an unconscious level.
I would then snap myself out of the delusional state I was in and remind myself that no matter how much junk food I ate, I would never reach a point of deep fulfillment.
The only thing I could hope for was a degree of satiety and that’s it. More often than not, I would go past the point of satiety resulting in bloating, gas, guilt, and poor mental function.
The ultimate bliss for a man comes from living a life that is disciplined and in line with his deepest purpose. A superior man finds bliss in the present moment by realizing his connection to the divine. No amount of money, relationship, and/or material possession(s), fleeting emotion(s) can compare to this truth.
Best,
Maximillian Giamarco
P.s. Would like to make progress on your journey to self-mastery? Check out the Spartan Ownership shop here for badass tools, gadgets, and training courses that will accelerate your growth. Also, if you would like more personalized help with setting your objectives, book a coaching/strategy session with me here.
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