Oh, I love the flex day! It’s been called the re-feed day and even the cheat day. I like flex because it connotes what we’re going after in Lean4LIFE. The flex day in our program is this: On one day per week, any day you choose, you have the option of eating anything you want, as much as you like, at any time of day. No rules. The beauty of the flex day is twofold. It enhances sustainability and provides a “reverse dieting” effect. We shall discuss both.
The key to making any nutritional program sustainable is not making it feel too restrictive or confining. That just doesn’t work over the long term for all but the most strictly disciplined people. By having a “bail-out” day in which there are no rules, it takes the pressure off. Folks know the flex day exists, so they can plug it in whenever they want. If they are traveling or visiting and don’t have their usual foods available…then can “flex” it. Or, if they just like falling off the wagon from time to time, they can do it with no guilt because it’s part of the system. From a psychological point of view, this makes sticking with the program easy for most folks.
Let’s say you eat 3 meals per day. On a flex day you decide that dinner is going to be pizza and beer. That means you are still eating EBD on 20 out of 21 feedings. That’s 95.2% consistency and that’s an “A” grade in any academic institution. And even if you throw down on 3 meals out of 21, that’s still 86% EBD and it’s a passing grade everywhere.
Story time. I had a gentleman I worked with a few years ago. The goal was pretty straightforward. Lose weight (fat) and get back in shape. He started working with me at a bodyweight of 460 pounds. Two years later he was 215 and hiking the mountains. Great outcome. We set up a program that used the EBD, a lot of low impact exercise, and a close coaching relationship. We checked in frequently and adjusted the program as needed. He lost nearly 100 pounds in the first 7 months. Up to that point I hadn’t asked if he was using the flex days or what he was doing if he did. I finally thought to ask how all that was going at 7 months. I said “What do you eat for breakfast on your flex day?” He said “6 ice cream sandwiches.” What about lunch? 6 ice cream sandwiches. Dinner? 6 ice cream sandwiches! The message here is that it worked.
But that story unfolds even further. As we went along, this client made changes to his flex day. Over time, he recognized that he didn’t feel that great after pounding 18 ice cream sandwiches. He started to naturally gravitate toward making healthier choices because he realized that feeling great was actually better than the short term pleasure he got from the ice cream sandwiches. While this is an extreme example, I’ve seen the phenomenon happen with lots of folks. You know you can flex if you really need to, but you gradually don’t want to. Incredible.
The other beautiful aspect of the flex day is that it safeguards against metabolic slowdown in folks dieting and undergoing prolonged caloric restriction. By getting a bump in calories every week or so, they get a MetRev from a dietary standpoint. The system recognizes this abundance signaling and avoids going into metabolic slowdown and trying to hold onto fat. Plus, the flex day usually tops off glycogen stores to their max.
On the surface, you’d think the flex day was just a treat or dangling carrot (Yasss!) to keep us on the program. It is that, but it’s also a cool trick to prevent metabolic slowdown. Flex on!