What is a free meal and what is its importance in a diet? – GOOD SHAPE

Free meal is the name of the meal where, within the food planning, thought and calculated, we give the patient the possibility of eating the food that he misses the most on that day, at that moment, even if it is not necessarily a healthy food.

With the free meal we have two main objectives:

Since the control phase within a weight loss process, where there is greater weight loss, we work mostly on healthy foods, we reduce the consumption of alcohol and especially of ultra-processed foods. However, we know that eventually people slip up and end up leaving the planning.

When we program, once or twice a week, a meal where the patient will be free to choose any type of food he is in the mood for, it will favor adherence to the treatment so that the patient stays longer within the planning.

The weight loss process requires the nutritionist to calculate a caloric deficit individually for the patient, that is, the patient will eat a little less than his total caloric need in order to lose weight. This process is quite effective, however our DNA and our metabolic programming will always seek to save energy.

As the patient evolves and loses weight, there will be changes in the metabolism that may negatively influence it, since our body, for survival, will seek to adjust caloric expenditure with caloric intake, with the amount of energy that the patient is ingesting. Here the free meal helps a lot, but in a planned and organized way we offer a caloric amount above what the patient’s metabolism is used to, preventing the metabolism from reducing due to lack of available energy.

But it’s worth remembering, the meal needs to be punctual, dinner or lunch every 7 or 10 days, for example. If the patient transforms the free meal into a garbage day, when in all meals that day the patient eats outside the plan, it will not work.