Idk

Why are you watching these people and how exactly are they helping you?

What is the purpose of your cheat meal? What damage are you controlling? What does your training have to do with your eating and what does either have to do with restricting during a cheat. In addition to my general disagreement with the word cheat... how would restricting your cheat make it more or less of a cheat?

Ouch. My head. Hurts!

If you lower your calories the day before a meal you have created a caloric deficit. If you don't eat anything before your meal, you've effectively passed all the calories you've not spent during the day to that one meal. Thus, depending on how you look at it, you've created an extra deficit, or assigned extra calories to the meal.

So far, what you've done is a, generally not recommended, form of calorie banking.

Why not generally recommended? Because going into a large meal extra hungry increases the chances that you're going to over-eat. And increases the probability that you might end up in a restrict/binge cycle.

The fasted workout bit is "interesting".

Obviously if you haven't eaten... and you're going to exercise you will have no choice but to exercise fasted.

Not sure what that's going to accomplish. Some people like exercising fasted. So that's great for them. Anecdotally I've heard many people who have not eaten enough complain that their exercise sucked the next day and a lot of lean people who mention that a well fueled exercise session was awesome!

AFAIK the literature says that there doesn't exist an advantage for exercising fasted, so at this point of time, a person claiming that there is an advantage to exercising fasted would have to carry the burden of proof for me.

Fasted will utilize glycogen. You will drop those carbs and the associated water. Then you're going to have your big meal and rebuild the glycogen stores and store the water again... so not sure what, if anything, will be mitigated or changed.

TL/dr. I don't know why these guys are doing what they're doing. Seems random to me. Other than the fact that they're banking some calories before the meal thus reducing the caloric overage the meal might create.

Instead of banking the calories immediately before the meal, a better plan might include banking them over a longer time period. Assuming banking is even needed or wanted.

I personally would not want to model my eating habits after people who perform mukbang for the camera in order to obtain social media clicks that translate into money for them.

They are the last people on the face of this planet who have any concern for (A) abstaining from disordered eating practices, (B) ever acknowledging how what they are doing impacts their health offline until 5-10-15 years from now when that video is/are posted, or, (C), you as the viewer. They will tell you whatever it takes in order to get from you what they want, in this instance viewership.

Engaging in a cycle of fasting and/or excessive levels of exercise every day just to binge is disordered, straight up. There is no "minimizing damage" as the damage is done once you engage in the behavior.

Maintenance is all about balancing the number of calories you take in vs the number your body burns. In a normal eating pattern, you'll usually be slightly over some days, slightly under other days. If you want to go signifcantly over maintenance on a regular basis, you'll need a way to balance it out. The way this lady is suggesting is *a* way, but I agree with the others that it's not a particularly good one.

Severe restriction and then severe overeating sounds like textbook binge/restrict cycle of eating which is not usually a healthy way to do it, mentally or physically.

I've been known to like a big meal during my journey, but I find that even eating everything you want, it's pretty hard to go much above 2-3000 calories without really working hard at it, and at that point it's not even enjoyable. So there's no reason in a maintenance calorie cycle, you couldn't work a good big meal in your schedule with some regularity, and balance it in a more measured way such as banking some calories by creating a moderate deficit a couple of days leading up to the meal, or exercising a bit more, etc. It doesn't have to be boom or bust.

The problem with YouTube fitness is that preaching sensible, moderate approaches doesn't exactly earn a whole lot of views. So people are incenrivized to publish outlandish things, even if they are not beneficial for them or you.