If you let loose for just one meal, you can only do so much damage. Another common mistake is indulging in no-holds-barred cheat days. If you do it a few times a week, you're going to slow down your weight loss considerably. If you moderately overeat just a few days per month, your overall results aren't going to be much affected. There are right and wrong ways to "cheat." Some people cheat too frequently. If you can do that, then there's nothing that can stop you. If you're going to successfully engineer your lifestyle to help you achieve your biggest goals and dreams, you must learn to love the process and embrace the struggle. The only way to overcome screwy dieting is to stop screwing up.
The only way to undo skipped workouts is to put your butt in the gym and do the work. This is why fitness isn't for the weak-minded and weak-willed. Many guys find they need to lose 10 to 15 percent body fat and gain 20 to 30 pounds of muscle to have the bodies they really want. Transforming your body is a rewarding process, but it's probably going to feel slow to you. I'm sorry, but you can't lose 20 pounds of fat in 20 days or reshape your butt or flatten your belly in a week. People want four-hour workweeks, six-minute abs, and 30-second meals. The best style of training for gaining muscle over time is heavy, lower-rep work. And the most effective way to do that is heavy weightlifting. Your number one goal as a weightlifter should be to increase your whole-body strength. Heavy weightlifting produces large amounts of mechanical tension in your muscles and causes greater activation of muscle fibers. The most reliable way to gain muscle is to gain strength. Make these types of errors meal after meal, day after day, and this alone can be the reason you don't lose weight. In fact, food manufacturers can under report calories by 20 percent and pass FDA inspection. If you eat a lot of prepackaged foods, it's fairly easy to accidentally overeat because the calories counts we're given for various restaurants and packaged foods are often inaccurate. If you consistently consume more calories than you burn, you'll gain weight, even if those calories come from the "healthiest" food on earth. If you consistently consume fewer calories than you burn, you'll lose weight, regardless of how much carbohydrate or sugar you eat. Every single controlled weight loss study conducted in the last 100 years has concluded that meaningful weight loss requires energy expenditure to exceed energy intake.