Can you really burn the excess of a huge cheat meal the following day?

My colleagues and I have heard this so many times. Some might even stop eating for a full day because they know they will eat like crazy at a given party. This is, in fact, “binge eating” and not just cheating. It’s like giving yourself a free pass to eat like a machine by believing that you can eat whatever you want, until you can explode because you’ll be able to burn it off the following day.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. But there are ways to trick your body into doing it, as long as you do it properly.

Basically, when you eat carbs, your body stores it as glycogen in the muscles and liver. The problem comes when those reserves are full. Then it is stored as fat. What you can do to at least minimize the damages is working out, yes. But not only the day after. Remember the saying: “Earn your cheat meals”? It all goes down to how you earn them.

In order to make space and open your glycogen reserves, you need to train, but cardio won’t do much. It won’t hurt, but the best way is a good old hypertrophy/strength workout. Do you want to do even better? Add some energy systems at the end of the workout. Interval training with a ratio of 1 to 1, meaning 1 minute of work for 1 minute of rest works best when paired up with hypertrophy training.

Coach Eric