This weekend I had a planned cheat day — that first Saturday of the month! — and boy did I have plans. Brunch at Tupelo Honey. A toddler birthday party. Then, for dinner, as much beef chuck roast as I wanted. With mashed potatoes. And homemade peanut butter pie.

What actually happened was not quite what I planned, but it definitely served my purpose.

Cheating on Purpose

After getting up on Saturday morning, I skipped, breakfast, and then worked out, and fasted until lunch. And then, began my epic cheat.

Basically, I ate almost 5000 calories between 1:00 pm and 10:30 pm.

It was all quality stuff, but quality didn’t stop it from hurting.

Stop #1: Tupelo Honey

The highlight of the day was my first meal: brunch at Tupelo Honey in downtown Asheville. I had an orange juice mimosa, a homemade biscuit with butter and jam, and then, a ridiculously large sweet potato pancake with butter, pecans, and pancake syrup, two eggs, three slices of bacon, and a chocolate mint with the check. The meal was excellent throughout, and it was a beautiful day for it. We had a lovely meal, eaten al fresco their sidewalk dining porch, Yael and Lena and I, on a gorgeous day. Life felt pretty good.

The food was delicious, yet sickening. I literally felt pain in my gut for hours afterward. What I can’t figure out is why people would ever consider such a meal anything other than an extreme exception to a normal diet. What ever made people think that a pancake drenched in sugary syrup is an appropriate breakfast food? This kind of meal makes no sense except as a celebration of gluttony. The combination of orange juice, champagne, wheat flour, and pancake syrup produced a powerful and overwhelming sugar rush (or insulin spike) that I could feel in my body. It felt like a hot flash combined with dizziness. And it was not particularly pleasant. Later, my stomach felt bloated and stretched, and my gut suffered for hours afterwards.

Stop #2: Making a Peanut Butter Pie

Back at home, I whipped up a homemade peanut butter cream pie, intending to eat some of it as the grand finale for my day. A peanut butter cream pie is truly the ultimate Paleo-Zone cheat food, combining a number of “forbidden” ingredients in one tasty package: sugar, graham crackers, butter, cream cheese, peanut butter, whipped cream, chocolate, chocolate liqueur. I used only premium ingredients, and made it with love. Since I had trouble not testing the ingredients as I made the pie, I probably consumed a few hundred unnecessary calories in the process of creating this dish.

I was already feeling sickened from my brunch, and this intensified matters. So I wasn’t feeling to good as I left for the next step, a toddler birthday party. I determined that, in spite of my plans to have cake if I wanted it, or whatever they were serving, I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I started to think to myself that maybe planned cheats should be limited to single meals. But I’m not one to change a plan once it’s underway… especially if its so incredibly BAD.

Stop #3: Toddler Birthday Party

At the toddler birthday party, the kids had fun, my wife and I had fun, and I only drank water for at least two hours before I felt like sampling anything. I had a little spinach salad. A tiny piece of a sausage pizza. I found the crust to be boring, and the pizza itself to be uninspired. Yet everyone there was very excited about it! For some reason. Maybe I am just “over” Pizza now? It can’t be true. I love pizza! Maybe I just need to eat Pizza only in New York or something. Anyway, it didn’t draw me in. I also tried about one teaspoon worth of a brownie. Seriously. A little tiny piece. That brownie seemed to me to be an elegant use of chocolate, sugar, fat and flour, worthy of my respect, but not worth hurting myself more for. I couldn’t eat anything else. Certainly not one of those yummy looking cupcakes. Nor did I sample the chocolate chip cookies that were there on the tray. But I did have a small glass of wine, and tasted some fine beer.

Stop #4: Dinner and Dessert at Home

Back at home, after putting my daughter to bed, my wife and I ate a little dinner and had dessert. I skipped my plan to make mashed potatoes. I just couldn’t handle the idea of all that starch. But I did eat about 8 oz. of slow braised local grass fed chuck roast. I had planned ahead, and set this lovely dish to cooking well before lunch; it’s not a cheat, but it’s real fuel, and I knew I needed something real today. And I also ate two cups of some lovely and plain steamed veggies. So, basically, I had a protein heavy Paleo meal for dinner. Then, after a while, when, with the help of a shot of whiskey, all this had settled, I hit the peanut butter cream pie.

I had two pieces of that sucker. It was truly delicious forbidden fruit. Such a pie is really mostly about the fat. It’s excessive, in a fabulous way. Nevertheless, it hurt to eat so much. The first one fit in. But I couldn’t just let that be. I had to have another. Each piece had… I really have no idea how many calories! or what amount of fat and sugar! I just know they were insanely filling.

The Purpose of Cheating

All told, I damaged myself quite well during this planned cheat. And the cheat served its purpose well. It reminded me of why I eat the way I eat.

I was truly amazed by how HORRIBLE it felt to eat all that starch and sugar. I am increasingly convinced that refined sugar, in all its forms, but especially when combined with refined flours, is a physiological toxin which human beings ought to avoid. These days, I cannot get over how much of the American Diet is built around these refined products. It simply makes no sense to me.

Low in micronutrients, fiber, and vitamins, but high in carbohydrates and unhealthy fats, the typical American diet includes lots of breads, sugars, cheeses and creams, and leaves people feeling (and looking) bloated, inflamed, and uncomfortable. It is unbelievable to me that Americans put up with a diet that is so obviously hurtful to the body.

Well, to be fair, it is only “obviously” harmful to anyone who has begun to eat in a saner way. Any eater who has established a baseline of “clean” or “paleo” eating — i.e. a way of eating that emphasizes natural ingredients, unprocessed and whole foods, lower-glycemic carbs, anti-inflammatory foods, adequate protein, fiber, and micronutrients — immediately notices when they go astray. Processed foods hurt the unprepared stomach and digestive tract, and a carb-heavy food day leaves one feeling sluggish and mushy in body, mind, and gut.

What I love about planned cheat days is that, while I get to “enjoy” these forbidden foods during a temporary window, with minimal long term damage to my body, I also get a vivid and physical reminder of how truly awful they are for us. It helps me stay straight the other days of the month.