It’s the morning of day (16) on the Ultra Lite program and I’m now down 9.5 lbs – 165 lbs, my marriage weight of June 2003. I would be down more but tried a 24hr experiment that failed miserably.
So, I wanted to see how my body would respond to a cheat day, as I know somewhere along the program a patient may have cheat day. It might be a wedding or birthday and they will not want to follow the program on that day. I wanted to see what that would do to me having already been on the program for almost two weeks and having a pretty good diet beforehand.
Friday night I had a friend over and we had some wine (3 glasses of Carol Shelton’s Maple Zin). My breakfast, lunch and dinner Friday was per the program. The only cheat, Friday, was the wine.
Saturday morning I woke-up and weighed in at 163.5, 1.5 lbs down from the day before. A ketogenic diet can cause a lot of water loss. So that combined with the alcohol, I became quite dehydrated. I drank 44oz of water between 7am-12pm before I ever went to the bathroom. For breakfast Saturday I had a Ultra Lite sanctioned meal.
Now the ultra-cheat. For lunch the family went to Oggi’s for a pepperoni pizza and beer. I had three pieces of pizza and a 16 ounce Torrey Pines IPA, yummy. For dinner we went out with some friends to the Lazy Dog Cafe in Orange. I had a 22 ounce Stone IPA, braised lamb shank with mashed potatoes and vegetables. For desert, a little vanilla ice cream.
The let down. Sunday morning I weighed in at 167.5 lbs., a net gain of 2 lbs (I’m not counting water weight lost the day before). I went from 163.5 to 167.5 in one day. That’s 1.5lb of water lost between Friday night and Saturday morning, back, and 2 lbs of water and food from Saturday lunch and dinner.
By Tuesday I was back on track and lost an additional .5 lb to 165 lbs.
The moral of the story is this: it doesn’t pay to cheat when you are trying to lose weight. I came back quickly, but I am also starting from a body fat and weight point that most others won’t be at. A cheat day for them may take a full week to get back into ketosis and back to losing weight. It’s not worth it and I learned to not try that again.