For every professional athlete the fundamental part of physical training is eating the right food to fuel their body. Educated pro sportsmen know that no matter what they do inside the gym, if they don’t eat healthy, they just won’t achieve the physical and healthful results they want.
However, they are just human beings who, like each one of us, from time to time, indulge in comfort food pleasures… and that is called – a cheat meal. The concept of a cheat meal is simple: eating clean and healthy for the better part of your week, stay active and then rewarding yourself with a meal that is not a part of a strict regime.
It’s a chance to eat something sugary, creamy, and fried or whatever it is that it “shouldn’t” be a part of your healthy dieting plan.
The main idea is that you, like professional athletes, pay attention to:
- Eat clean and healthy for the 90% of the time and then enjoy your favorite meals in the rest 10% of the time.
- Don’t forget that it should be just a cheat meal, not a cheat day or week!
- Enjoy in your favorite meal, like pasta or pizza but don’t overeat. You should still listen to your body and know when it’s time to stop. There is really no need for you to feel sick or even to have a food hangover after your cheat meal.
Although we believe that our ambassadors, especially Nikola Karabatic and Vid Kavticnik, who are still active professional athletes, eat very clean and pay a lot of attention to their nutritional plan, we still asked them about their cheat meals – if they do it, when and how …
NIKOLA KARABATIC, PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN HANDBALL
“I try to eat healthy and clean most of the times, but I am no exaptation when it comes to cheat meals. My day “off” would be mostly on Sundays - if I had a match the day before; I would enjoy in Sunday’s brunch.
The other cheat meals would include pizza or burgers.“
VID KAVTICNIK, MONTPELLIER HANDBALL
“We, as a family, we really try to stick to a healthy eating. If we have a cheat meal it would usually be home made pizza that we prepare together with kids. Once every second month I would have McDonald but as I said, I try to avoid fast food.”
IVANO BALIC, RETIRED PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE
“All sportsmen have a cheat meal from time to time and my favorite one is pizza. I usually eat pizza two or three times per month.”