Are cheat days on a diet beneficial?

Some weight loss plans have cheat days built into the program. But this isn’t a good idea because it can severely affect your results. Once you go off of a diet plan, it’s really hard to get back on it.

That said, sometimes it can be encouraging to go off keto just to see how much better you feel when you’re on keto and doing it correctly. The goal is to create enough health and discipline that you can go off of the keto plan very temporarily and then go right back on. The best way to tell if someone is cheating on keto or staying healthy is to look at their A1C. An A1C test measures how much glucose is stuck to the protein in your blood.

The more sugar in your body, the higher percentage of your hemoglobin is affected by glucose. You would want your A1C percentage to be below 5.7. The best way to know that the keto program is working and you’re in ketosis is a loss of appetite. But, all it takes is a very small amount of carbohydrates to take you out of ketosis for a couple of days—even half a glass of wine will have this effect.

This means a cheat day will knock you out of the program for a good amount of time. If someone is cheating every other day or every third day, they're not going to make very good progress.

How to support healthy blood sugar:

1. Consume nutrient-dense foods on keto (Healthy Keto®)

2. Consume apple cider vinegar in water

3. Consume berberine