If you’ve included a fat-loss diet in your quest to get fit at last, you know sticking with it is likely to be stressful. It’s going to take plenty of will power to stick with it consistently, and you’re probably already mourning the loss of some of your favorite foods. Well this may come as a surprise to you, but cheating (on your diet) can be helpful. At least, cheating is good when you do it right.

To lose weight (or more precisely to reduce your body fat percentage), you need to eat healthier foods and consume fewer calories. That’s hard because you like your favorite foods a lot, and they’re probably not the healthiest ones. Giving them up isn’t easy on your mind. But consuming fewer calories isn’t easy on your body. Let’s talk about why.

One of the reasons that any kind of diet doesn’t work well over the long term is the way your body adapts. If you regularly consume fewer calories than you need to maintain your current weight, your body takes this as an indication that there isn’t enough food. In other words, it acts as if you are in danger of starving.

If your body is in starvation mode, it makes a number of changes to the way it works. First, it stores every calorie it can as fat, in case the “famine” lasts. Second, your metabolism slows way down to conserve energy. You become listless and cranky as your body cuts back. Even worse, your body puts less energy into internal maintenance and repairs in order to keep you alive. Your joints start to get creaky and you get hurt more often. If things go on for too long, your body will use your muscles as fuel, rather than give up those stored fat calories. The goal of your body is to survive until there’s more food.

The results are ugly. Because your body is conserving energy, you have little energy to work out. If you do manage to work out, your workout suffers. You tend to get hurt quickly, and healing takes way too long. Everything you eat seems to instantly turn into blubber around your waist. Your muscles might actually start to fade away. Starvation mode clearly isn’t conducive to working out and building a muscular body. This is where cheating helps you succeed.

Fortunately, your body doesn’t switch into starvation mode quickly. You need to be short on food for several days straight before it switches over. If you avoid going too long on low calories, your body won’t make the switch to starvation mode. You’ll get the positive aspects of your low-calorie diet, without the unpleasant side effects of starvation mode.

So, to ensure that your serious fat-loss diet remains effective, you need to cheat once in a while. At regular intervals, you need to eat significantly more than you otherwise would, to keep your body from going into starvation mode. That makes life easier, and there’s another benefit. If you eat your favorite foods on thedays when you break the diet, it is much easier to stay on your diet the other days. After all, there’s a big difference between giving up your favorite foods altogether, and still having them, say, once a week on your high-calorie days.

A simple way to cheat is to eat anything you want about once a week. However, there are more efficient ways to do this. For the best results possible, while still avoiding starvation mode, you should get expert advice on all aspects of your diet, including whether and how to go about cheating based on your specific diet, body type and so on.