Joel, earlier this year, you released a new program which made a claim that

some people thought was outlandish and had to be hype – you said that if you

cheat on your diet, it will actually help you lose more fat – if you “cheat” in a

certain strategic way, as compared to trying to be 100% strict on a diet and not

cheat at all.

Whenever there are big claims like this for a new diet program, there’s always a

ton of buzz on the internet and I get emails from my subscribers, customers and

readers asking me if this latest diet is a scam.

At the time, I couldn’t tell them, because I hadn’t reviewed your information, I only

knew the general gist of what you were suggesting, so I had to reply to people

and say “I don’t know, I haven’t seen the program.” But, I did tell them that I’m a

believer in including cheat or free meals as I prefer to call them, to help improve

compliance to a program and I also said that I was a supporter of cycling calories

up and down, specifically in the form of carb cycling.

I knew there were some similarities in what we were teaching, but I said I couldn’t

comment any further about your claims unless I had seen your program or asked

you directly.

Well, I finally carved out the time to read your material and I’m happy that you’ve

agreed to answer even the tough questions that will help people sort out whether

this whole “cheat on your diet to get leaner” concept has some merit. So without

further ado…

Tom: First, what’s your quick definition of cheating – I think we have to define it

to be on the same page as we discuss it.

Joel: When used in reference to dieting, the term ―cheating‖ by most everyone

refers to when someone eats foods that are not in accordance with the plan. You

can cheat on a low carb diet by eating carbs, for instance. Doesn’t mean carbs

are bad, just that carbs are not part of the plan you are currently adhering to. In

most instances, the term has a negative connotation, because you are doing

something you are not supposed to do.

What I teach is strategic cheating, which refers to periodically ―going off‖ the diet

and allowing yourself to eat foods that typically are not thought as ―diet‖ or ―diet

friendly‖ foods (pizza, ice cream, fries, etc).

It’s actually not ―cheating‖ per se because it’s part of the plan, but we stick with

that word because people identify it and they ―get it‖ immediately when they hear

something like ―cheat day‖ or ―cheat meal‖ or ―Cheat Your Way Thin‖.

Tom: I have to be honest, I don’t like the word cheating or cheat. I understand

its just semantics, but I think words matter.

You suggest that people should eat the foods they crave without feeling guilty, as

long as it’s a part of a strategic plan, but doesn’t the very word cheating imply

that you’re doing something wrong and that could make someone feel guilty?

I prefer now to call them free meals because I think it’s a more positive or at least

neutral term. What are your thoughts?

Joel: I actually with agree with you as I hinted to above, however, ―free‖ does

not have the impact that cheat does. It does not have nearly the same familiarity

in the diet world, and in a world where we use words to convey strong messages,

cheat is a much more appropriate term for ―getting the point across‖.

Ask 100 people on the street what it means to ―cheat‖ on their diet, and all 100

will have the same answer. Tell 100 people that you have a ―free meal‖ as part

of your diet plan, and you’ll probably get a lot of stares. It’s not as familiar of a

concept and not as effective at conveying the message in an immediate way to

the general public.

On a similar note, I hate the term ―dieting‖ or ―diet‖, but I use it all the time (even

if reference to my program) because people know what it means. It’s familiar,

and they ―get it‖.

One other thing – the term ―cheating‖ actually fits perfectly with my program in

another sense as well, in that you are ―cheating‖ the DIET.

Dieting sucks, as I’m sure we’ll soon discuss, and by having days in which you

more or less say ―screw you‖ to your diet and eat whatever you want, you

actually cheat ―dieting‖ out of the opportunity to destroy your metabolism, plateau

your fat loss, and all the other negative adaptations and consequences that

99.9% of all calorie restrictive nutrition programs pose.

Dieting is a no-win battle, and I’m happy quite happy to cheat the bogus

institution of ―dieting‖ out of robbing more people from the results they deserve

any day.

Tom: Cheating on your diet to lose more weight seems counterintuitive if not

utterly illogical, but depending on how you approach it, I’m in complete

agreement that there’s a strong argument for it from two different angles –

psychological and physiological.

What do you think are the psychological benefits to the dieter allowing cheat

days as opposed to being 100% strict on your diet?

Joel: First, it absolutely increases adherence across the board, there’s no

getting around that. It makes ―dieting‖, a concept which generally (and absurdly)

demands that people forgo their favorite foods for months and months at a time,

actually livable, and more importantly ENJOYABLE.

I was actually just talking about this with another trainer the other day. For most

people, Day 1 of a diet—when they finally buckle down and decide they need to

go on one—is the worst day of their life. It’s depressing. ―No pizza, for like, 3

months while I attempt to lose this 30 lbs.‖ Yeah right. Anyone who thinks that’s

actually going to happen is completely deluded and this is exactly why 99% of

people fail with restrictive dieting.

Two, let’s say you do ―cheat‖ (not strategically) and eat something you’re ―not

supposed to‖ while dieting. Guilt, failure, and a slew of other feelings that you

should NEVER have to feel while on a diet surface and make you feel as though

you ―just don’t have it in you‖ or that you lack willpower or that you don’t have

what it takes to stick with a program and achieve your goals.

That’s terrible.

Flat out, dieting, in the calorie restrictive, self-sacrificing manner we have learned

it, is flat out unrealistic for the vast majority of people.

If you told me I had to give up pizza for 3 months to get lean, I’d be one fat dude.

The trade off isn’t worth it, and neither are the painfully slow results that most

―diets‖ yield.

Tom: On the physiological side, there are a lot of benefits to “cheating” after a

period of restrictive dieting. There’s a lot going on in the body when you do this,

but much of it seems to revolve around one hormone, leptin. Would you explain

in as simple terms as possible for the layperson, what is leptin?

Joel: Leptin is awesome (or at least when you know how to manipulate it, it is).

Get on its ―bad side‖, however, and you’re pretty much doomed to be overweight.

In the simplest terms, leptin is a hormone that communicates your nutritional

status to the rest of your body. From there, your body then makes decisions on

what to do with things like fat burning and metabolism, based on the messages

it’s receiving from our friend leptin.

High leptin levels = heightened fat burning and metabolism

Low leptin levels = decreased fat burning and metabolism

There’s a little more to it than that, but you asked for simple terms.

Leptin has also been deemed the ―anti-starvation‖ hormone, which is essentially

is its major function in the body, to prevent, or at least dramatically slow the

negative adaptations (from a survival standpoint) when food is scarce or when

energy intake drops substantially (i.e. starvation).

Great for our hunter and gather ancestors, terrible for the dieter.

And while dieting certainly isn’t as extreme as starvation, it really is nothing more

than a lesser degree of exactly that, carry slightly lessened, but still very troubling

consequences for the dieter.

Getting into some of the research on leptin, research has shown that after only 7

days of calorie restriction, leptin drops on average 50% -- putting you at roughly

50% of your fat burning potential.

That’s after only ONE week.

And as long as you continue to fail to provide your body with the energy it’s

hoping to receive, adaptations get worse, leptin falls harder, and metabolism

takes an even greater hit.

The good news is, it only takes one day of ―overfeeding‖ or ―cheating‖ to bring

leptin levels back to baseline and restore things like plummeted thyroid

hormones, fat burning enzymes, a manageable (not insatiable) appetite, and

metabolism overall.

The problem with overfeeding, however, is that if you fail to properly set up the

rest of the diet in an extremely strategic manner around a cheat day or overfeed

day, overfeed days can backfire and lead to a one-step-forward one-step-back

phenomenon. This is something we cover heavily in Cheat Your Way Thin—the

ideal way to set up the other 6 days each week, based on a plethora of research,

to ensure that each cheat day accelerates, not detracts, from progress.

Tom: Are you saying that you can significantly manipulate leptin with nutritional

intervention, including cheat days, and that if we can scour the research and

make a punch list of things that keep leptin levels as normal as possible and

prevent leptin from dropping like it would with a linear low calorie or low carb diet,

this is going improve our results?

Joel: Absolutely, no question about it. Keeping metabolism consistently high

and avoiding the negative hormonal adaptations of dieting equates to better,

faster results; there’s no way around that.

That’s in addition to the psychological/adherence benefits, which obviously, if

you’re actually still doing the diet 6 or 8 weeks into the plan, you’re going to

experience infinitely better results than if you quit after 2 weeks every time.

Tom: Are you claiming that these techniques will actually increase fat loss, or

simply prevent the bad stuff that happens with restrictive dieting, like the adaptive

decrease in metabolism and the increase in appetite which could then lead to

plateaus? I think this is an important distinction.

Joel: Preventing the bad stuff = increasing the good stuff (i.e. fat burning). If

your metabolism slows, that means you are burning fewer calories, right? So for

instance, let’s say your BMR was 2000 cals/day when you first started dieting,

and then through restrictive dieting over a period of a month or two (and the

subsequent decrease in leptin and metabolism), you’re now only burning 1500

cals/per day.

If you had kept leptin ―happy‖ through strategic cheating and metabolism did

NOT drop off, you’d still be burning an extra 500 calories a day. Do you think

that burning an extra 500 calories a day is valuable in terms of faster fat loss?

Without question.

Essentially, by ―preventing‖ the bad things from occurring, you automatically and

absolutely increase fat loss beyond what would be possible without taking

measures to manipulate leptin and keep metabolism at its height, week to week.

Simply put, use strategic cheating in the proper way, and by the end of each

week you’ll have lost more fat than if you simply chose to remain ―strict‖ 7 days a

week. That equates to increased fat loss any way you look at it.

Tom: I’ve been looking at some research that says some folks have plenty of

leptin but they also have leptin resistance. I haven’t seen many people really

address this leptin resistance issue aside from saying it exists. Do you think this

is a common problem and does your program offer any insights into the causes

as well as solutions?

Joel: Okay, the other thing I didn’t mention while trying to give you the ―simple‖

definition earlier was that leptin levels aren’t just mediated by calorie intake

alone—they’re also affected by the amount of body fat you are carrying.

High levels of body fat = high levels of leptin

Low levels of body fat = low levels of leptin

Now, from everything I said earlier, that makes it sound like fat people with high

levels of body fat should actually be the leanest people around if leptin actually

made a difference (and lean people should be gaining weight like nobody’s

business, because of extremely low leptin levels).

This is where leptin resistance and leptin sensitivity come in.

Similar to insulin resistance, if leptin receptors are constantly being bombarded

by high levels of leptin, they start to become less sensitive to the hormone.

This is what happens with insulin in Type II diabetics. People eat crap food and

loads of highly processed carbohydrates for years, flood their bloodstream with

insulin every hour of the day, and gradually over time insulin receptors become

so desensitized to the hormone to the point that insulin no longer ―works‖.

Same with leptin. Overweight people, who have been overweight for years,

become resistant to the hormone because of massive amounts of leptin (caused

by high body fat levels and high calorie intakes) slamming receptors for extended

periods of time.

On the other hand, lean people can get by with lower levels of leptin, relatively

speaking, because their receptors are extremely sensitive to the hormone. It’s

important to note, however, that this is relative to the person and their individual

―baseline‖ levels of leptin when food intake is normal.

For example, let’s say, and I’m just pulling out a totally arbitrary number for

simplicity’s sake, a particular person with a low level of body fat has a baseline

level of leptin is ―10‖ (I’m leaving out the µg/L units of measure left and all that

jazz for simplicity as well). ―10‖ is all this person needs for normal metabolic

functioning to occur because they are highly sensitive to leptin. On the other

hand, ―10‖ wouldn’t be nearly enough to maintain normal metabolism for a much

larger, and subsequently less leptin sensitive individual.

So, you can see what I mean that it’s all relative.

Another important thing to note is that calorie restriction lowers leptin

independent of body fat. So, let’s say this same person from above went on a

diet. And they’re leptin levels went down to ―5‖. Sure, they’re very sensitive to

leptin, but ―5‖ aint going to get the job done even for them.

When leptin levels fall below baseline levels, whatever baseline levels are

relative to the person, negative metabolic adaptations occur.

Getting back to leptin resistance, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The

good news is that it’s totally reversible, but the bad news is that someone who

has been overweight for years (and is thus probably leptin resistant) can’t just

jump right into a full-out strategic cheating and carb-cycling program and have it

be effective—simply put, in this case, the dietary strategies we use to manipulate

leptin wouldn’t really be of use to them because they’re resistant to the hormone

and it’s not going to matter if we’re doing all these different things to manipulate

leptin—they already have plenty of leptin running around.

For this person, the focus would then be on reversing the leptin resistance and

restoring leptin sensitivity, and that is done one way: clean eating + exercise,

and yes, with a moderate calorie restriction. Pretty much all the same dietary

measures one would take to increase insulin sensitivity (clean eating, low-carbs,

low-glycemic carbs, etc).

Carbohydrate intake also affects leptin levels, so someone is this position would

certainly want to avoid highly processed carbs or anything that is going to give

leptin a significant spike.

I generally recommend 2-3 weeks of lower-carb dieting (with strategic cheating

interspersed) before beginning with the full blown program, and that’s actually the

purpose of the ―priming phase‖ of the Cheat Your Way Thin program. For the

Cheat Your Way Thin Holiday Edition, we also included some other leptin

resistance reversing strategies as well (still allowing for plenty of holiday

cheating).

Another question people might have is ―I am doomed to experience poor results

and limited weight loss during the first 2-3 weeks because of leptin resistance?‖

And the answer is no.

For people who are significantly overweight, there are other factors that come

into play that allow for weight loss to occur with a sound diet and exercise

program, in spite of the leptin issue. If you’ve got a lot to lose, those first 5 – 10

lbs are going to come off quickly simply with corrected habits and exercise,

regardless.

Tom: I’ve found a lot of evidence to suggest that an overweight person and an

already lean person have some significant physiological differences that can

influence how they respond to a particular diet.

Do you suggest a different approach for the overweight person and the already

lean dieter who is trying to get even leaner (for example a bodybuilder or figure

competitor)?

Joel: In addition to what I’ve mentioned above, I’ll say this. The leaner you get,

the more leptin becomes a limiting factor and the more you have to do to

manipulate it. Because of this, we often increase the frequency of cheat days to

once every 5 days for very lean individuals, or even every 4 days in some

extreme instances like with bodybuilders or figure competitors prepping for a

show. Some advanced diet and exercise strategies are also needed to make

that type of frequent approach work.

Similarly, for the very overweight person, when we first transition them to using

strategic cheat days, we may start with a cheat day once every 9 or 10 days, as

opposed to once a week.

For the vast majority falling in between these two extremes, however, the once

per week approach works best (and is great for consistency as cheat days

always fall on the same day each week allowing people to plan their cheat day

around whatever day is generally their most social day of the week).

Tom: I’m a firm believer in cycling calories up and down and doing that by

manipulating carb intake which I call carb cycling, for many of the same reasons

that you have a cheat day. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of different ways to

carb cycle, like 5 days keto and 2 days of high carb, the rotation of high, low and

medium days, and various mixtures of high and low carb days.

What is your basic methodology for introducing the higher calorie cheat days and

why do you prefer your method over some of the other ways that people do carb

cycling?

Joel: As for methodology, it’s based on the research I shared earlier that leptin

falls off by about 50% after only one week, while only taking one day of

―overfeeding‖ or ―cheating‖ to ramp levels back up to baseline. So this is the

basis of the weekly cheat day.

That said, we actually do use carb cycling in addition to Cheat Days to make the

program even more effective, but carb cycling alone, unless you are doing very

high calorie ―refeed‖ days, while somewhat effective, not as effective as

combining both or using all-out cheat days.

I’ll explain the reason and necessity for the weekly carb cycling in a bit.

Tom: Your method seems complicated with high glycemic index/glycemic load

days, low carb days and cheat days and all kinds of phases. If your goal is to

increase adherence by allowing cheat meals, then wouldn’t creating a complex

system of high, low, cheat, and various GI level days just create the opposite

effect and lower adherence?

Joel: People have reported, a thousand times over, that it’s actually the easiest

diet they’ve ever done, and not only because of the cheat days, but because of

the wide variety of foods that you’re allowed to eat even on ―diet days‖.

We go low-carb after a cheat day and then pretty much every day we add foods

to the ―allowed‖ list. This isn’t hard to do, there is no calorie counting, and with

every day you just get to eat more than you did yesterday. That’s a pretty easy

diet to stick to. And oh yeah, once a week you get to eat whatever you want. I

don’t think it gets easier.

In the manual, I list it out in the easiest way to understand possible, and after a

week or two on the diet the entire system become second nature in which people

don’t have to even think about it whatsoever.

On low carb days you eat steak, fish, eggs, and plenty of veggies, on low GI days

you fill up on things fruit and legumes, and for higher GI days you’re allowed to

have pasta, bread, potatoes, rice, etc. Of course there are a lot more options

than just those foods, but that’s the gist of it…you just climb the GI scale

throughout the week.

It’s not complicated at all once people read through the program, and even less

complicated when they actually start doing it.

Tom: I’ve been following the research on glycemic index/glycemic load and

weight loss with great interest. It seems, at least if you go by what the peer-

reviewed research says, that GI is a useful tool for blood sugar management,

which is what it was originally intended for, but when calories are matched

evenly, there’s little or no impact of GI on weight loss. Are you familiar with these

studies, and if so then why do you emphasize GI and GL so much in your

program?

Joel: Yes, I’m familiar, but here are a couple things to consider. One, these

weight loss studies are performed with people adhering to the same typical

calorie restrictive, 7-days a week of dieting approach that I adamantly preach

against, because it’s ineffective. There is no calorie cycling, carb cycling, or

strategic cheating involved. Needless to say, simply manipulating GI in this

instance isn’t going to make a big difference.

Beyond that, let’s say that GI really didn’t matter even when adding a weekly

cheat day. That would be valid data if you were consuming the same basic diet

the other 6 days of the week, but that’s not what we do with Cheat Your Way

Thin.

Allow me to make an analogy. Let’s say my employer pays me one of two ways

– my pay for a full week once a week on Friday, or my pay for one day, every

day. At the end of the week I make the same amount of money with either

approach. But is there a difference in the impact of each payment method?

Absolutely.

With the once a week approach, my pay day is a much bigger event, I have

enough money to make a larger purchase, or go out for a higher-end dinner.

With the every day approach, not so much. I make the same amount of money

each week, but it never quite ―feels‖ like a have a lot of money in my hands.

Well, we treat our use of the GI system the same way. If I just prescribed the

same diet every day, it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference, but that’s

not how I use GI and GL.

Instead, we line up carb intake strategically to create little ―paydays‖—spikes and

jumps and high points in insulin throughout the week, and that strategic use

makes an impact.

Now, you’re probably thinking, ―Why would we want to spike insulin throughout

the week?‖, and that’s a good question.

The reason is, I’ve read through quite a few VERY intriguing papers that show

the number one influencer of leptin is insulin, and the supercedes the actual

calorie content being consumed. There was actually one study, and you’re eyes

are really going to be opened with this one, that monitored leptin levels of fasting

individuals. Naturally, leptin crashed pretty hard, but then they did something

else. They gave each subject an IV drip of insulin to maintain normal blood

insulin levels, and even though they were consuming ZERO calories, leptin levels

were maintained.

That’s the power of insulin in this scenario, and exactly why we cycle

carbohydrates in the fashion we do. We start off the week low-carb when leptin

is high after the cheat day along with strategically time exercise to accelerate

progress. Then, mid-week, when leptin starts to fall off from the low cals and

carbs, we reintroduce low GI carbs for an insulin boost. Then, later in the week,

as leptin begins to fall again, we add starchier, higher GI carbs for an even

greater boost.

Every single day is set up in a strategic way to manipulate leptin and maximize

the benefits of the Cheat Day.

Tom: Is there any reason that the cheat day has to be “junk” food? Call me

crazy, but I don’t like eating a lot of junk. Give me two cheat meals a month and

I’m completely satisfied, I swear, I just want the option to eat what I want

occasionally. In fact, I usually feel like crap after I have a huge junk meal, let

alone an entire junk food day. Would a guy like me get the same effect, from a

physiological point of view by carbing up / refeeding on potatoes, yams, rice, oats

and maybe some pasta? Is there any reason eating more clean food won’t have

the same effect as junk food?

Joel: A clean ―carb refeed‖ does not have the same benefits and is not as

effective; we actually tried it many, many times with clients, comparing results

with the ―all-out‖ approach, and strictly from fat loss standpoint the all-out

approach produces better results every time.

Now, that is not to say that you need to eat ―junk‖ food, but rather that you just

need to understand why ―junk‖ food works so well for our purposes, and then

replicate those reasons with cleaner items.

French fries, pizza, ice cream, pastries, etc, all combine two things very well—

very high glycemic carbohydrates and fats. That is the winning combo.

Carbohydate + fat produce a synergistic insulin response beyond what is

possible when just using carbs.

And you need to go HIGH GI—yams and oats are OK as part of the day’s menu,

but you really need to go higher GI than this. Throw in some bread, the rice and

pasta are good, maybe some crackers, Gatorade, etc.

Bottom line, high GI carbs + fat wins out. Whether you want that to be pizza or

whole wheat toast with all natural peanut butter is up to you. I’d certainly take the

pizza on a ―cheat‖ day, but hey, to each his own ;)

Tom: To what degree is your varied carb approach simply a way to manipulate

calories?

With so much focus on carbs and glycemic index, do you see a danger that

people are going to start to fear carbs or consider carbs fattening, when its really

just a caloric deficit we’re trying to achieve, isn’t it?

Joel: The calorie stuff is actually just a side-effect, after-effect, or added ―bonus‖

of what we do with carbs, not the main or intended effect we are trying to

achieve, which again are the insulin spikes throughout the week.

Yes, the calorie cycling does help a bit indirectly, but I even mention in the

manual that this is not the main reason for the staggered carb set up.

Tom: I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, but I have to ask. Do you see any

potential downside of allowing an entire “eat whatever you want” cheat day, as

opposed to doling out individual cheat meals? In particular aren’t you concerned

about people overeating, losing track of calories and setting themselves

backwards?

If you give permission to your clients to go wild and eat whatever they want on

cheat day, I know some dudes that would make an all you can eat buffet go out

of business.

Joel: Yup, and I’m one of those dudes. Fact is, it works the way it is. I haven’t

met anyone who can really ―overeat‖ the cheat day to the point that it sets back

progress if they strategically follow the way I set up the rest of the program. It

just doesn’t happen. And this is coming from a guy who orders a 48 oz steak

when I go out to a steak house, along with appetizers, salad, soup, ―family‖ size

sides, and dessert.

The only ―stipulation‖ I put on the cheat day is that you do not eat to the point of

discomfort. Eat until you are full, but that’s it. Then wait until you are hungry

again until you eat. If you are leaving the table saying ―I ate too much‖ or if

you’re feeling sick, or if you have to lay down because you over-did it, that’s

where you know you’ve gone overboard, and that’s really the only way people

are going to overdo the calories.

As for the recommendation of doling things out to individual cheat meals, that

does NOT work to bring about the physiological changes (increasing leptin, etc),

which is the number one reason we use cheat days. The psychological stuff is a

nice added benefit, but it’s a side-effect of the physiological benefits we are

aiming to gain from each cheat day.

Cheat meals are great as a psychological vent, but that’s about it. Research has

very clearly shown that prolonged overfeeding over the course of a day (and not

a single meal) is necessary to restore leptin levels to baseline.

Tom: On a related note, would you agree that there are some people that

shouldn’t use the cheating method at all, like people who have a history of binge

eating?

Joel: Yes, if you have a history binge eating, eating disorders, etc, this program

is not for you. But, that’s the vast minority of people. 99% of people who use the

program are ready and motivated to hit the diet hard after a cheat day, and I give

some super easy strategies to implement to make sure the cheating ―stops‖ on

the cheat day and doesn’t trickle into the diet week.

Tom: Thanks, Joel. This has been on extremely informative interview. I know a

lot of people are going to be chomping at the bit (no pun intedended ;) for the

release of the Cheat Your Way Holiday Edition next week. Heck, it works better

with pizza! [laughs]

Joel: Yeah, it’s pretty cool, and losing weight during the holidays while still

enjoying all your favorite foods and without having to give up a single holiday

meal, party, or dessert is going to make the holidays a lot more fun for people

this year!

Stay tuned for the release of the Cheat Your Way Thin Holiday Edition this

upcoming Tuesday November 16th!