how many cals should you eat on your cheat day?

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  • irelandpringles
    irelandpringles Posts: 9 Member
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    savvyfantastic wrote: »
    This question is basically entirely impossible to answer because it depends entirely on your concept of a cheat day and how it fits in with your goals. Psychological break from eating a boring menu, is it a carbohydrate refeed when carb cycling, is it just that it's the weekend and you like to be social and go out for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

    The only thing I would suggest though (and agree with some posters above) is be careful about cheat day not becoming binge day. The last thing you want is one day of the week that you look forward to, put on a pedestal, and then on the day have a GIANTSENSEOFURGENCYANDNEEDTOEATALLTHETHINGSBECAUSEITISYOURONEDAY, and then afterwards feel guilty. Nobody needs to feel that way.

    Hahaha you've got it right on the head i recon thanks a mil for the response :)
  • irelandpringles
    irelandpringles Posts: 9 Member
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    lawlifehanna wrote: »
    savvyfantastic wrote: »
    This question is basically entirely impossible to answer because it depends entirely on your concept of a cheat day and how it fits in with your goals. Psychological break from eating a boring menu, is it a carbohydrate refeed when carb cycling, is it just that it's the weekend and you like to be social and go out for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

    The only thing I would suggest though (and agree with some posters above) is be careful about cheat day not becoming binge day. The last thing you want is one day of the week that you look forward to, put on a pedestal, and then on the day have a GIANTSENSEOFURGENCYANDNEEDTOEATALLTHETHINGSBECAUSEITISYOURONEDAY, and then afterwards feel guilty. Nobody needs to feel that way.

    THIS. There are good reasons for a "cheat" day, which I wouldn't even call it when it's just about going to a restaurant and being social with others. You probably aren't going to stay home eating your weight loss food (whatever it may be) for the rest of your life, so you might as well start learning sensible food-related socializing right now.

    I also agree with posters talking about weekly calories instead of daily. There will be fluctuations, because life. It's the weekly amount that matters. Of course, fasting and being miserable all week just so you can have a huge binge isn't healthy. I mean the posters that say they eat maybe 100cals/day less during the week, so they have the 500 extra calories to work with during the weekend if they go out etc.

    Related to the issue of weekly vs. daily calories, I used to previously use a calorie tracking site that automatically divided all exercise calories by 7, for every day of that week. I think it was a smart system and I would still use it if there weren't other, really annoying parts to it (like not being able to add foods if something wasn't in the database).

    Yeah very true, have to be realistic you cant stay within your daily limit all of the time! Thanks for the response:)
  • Susieq_1994
    Susieq_1994 Posts: 5,361 Member
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    While I won't get into the pros and cons of cheat days... If you don't want to lose ANY of your progress throughout the week, whatever your deficit may be, eat at maintenance on your "cheat day" and no higher.

    If you've "banked" an extra couple hundred of calories by saving 100 calories a day from your calorie goal (which is already at a deficit, so deficit calories minus 100), you can go over maintenance by the amount of calories you have "banked" without reversing any of the progress that your original deficit was set to give you.

    If you have a very large deficit... You can probably still go whole-hog without completely reversing your progress for the week, but I don't recommend that, as that's more like a binge day than a cheat day!

    And as for my personal opinion... I would prefer a "cheat meal" or a treat meal, as I call it, over an entire day... Because it gives me less room to go really calorie-crazy, which I can be bad about ;) I usually try to work everything into my calorie goal without ever going over, and reserve those "treat meals" without caring about calories for really special occasions (my birthday, my husband's birthday, our yearly anniversary. The End.)

    In the end... Do what works for you! All the best. :)

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