Cheat days (calling all successful people) lol

Cortneyrenee04

No cheat days here, either. I eat what I want every single day. When I used to have those days, I was miserable every day just waiting for the glorious day I could eat my heart out. I couldn't focus on anything else. It was a little ridiculous. I feel like food has less power since I took away its day!

(Love the post about how calories count wether we log them or not!)

As far as going over on calories: I go over mine a lot but only if I'm legitimately hungry. Never just because I can.

ki4eld

I call them cheat days, but really, there's no cheating. Calories count whether or not you count them.

For me, yesterday was a cheat day. I had bread, jelly, Starbucks, 2 cookies, wine, and baked ziti. It was my birthday celebration day, because my actual birthday is mid-week. My carbs were just ridiculously high and my calories were way high for me (I'm on a special diet from my doctor). However, I exercised quite a bit yesterday, which helped with the additional calories. I don't like the numbers I saw yesterday, so it's back to real eating.

Log the cheat days. Log them hard! Log your buffets and eating out, even if you have to take a piece of paper and a pencil and guesstimate every single item in your stirfry. Do it every time and you'll soon get to the point that you can guesstimate the meal, instead of the items, when you eat out. But log it all.

Logging the cheat days can show you how amazing you're doing the rest of the time. Those cheat day logs can also show you what you shouldn't be doing.

jaqcan

Planned and logged overages. Much more accountability than having a free for all! Part of this journey is holding my self responsible for the food choices I'm making. Un logged cheat days have only set me up for failure in the past.

arditarose

I agree with logging your "high days" which is what I call them. I doubt people who have been fit or maintaining weight their whole lives call a day of wonderful food a "cheat day", so why should I? The reason they maintain a healthy weight is because they understand how to eat to do so, which includes having cake or eating at a restaurant. Me, I'm still learning and the more data I have the more I can hold myself accountable and understand what is going on with my body.

karyabc

I don't do cheat days, it would not work for me, cause a) usually my "cheat days" is the days that I seat in the table and just eat my mom's regular food, and that could happen once in a week or in a month, who knows, or maybe like yesterday when I was extra hungry and ate more than usual, or because b) it would give food anxiety , just looking forward to that dirty meal

so I just eat what I want to eat by making the space in my calorie allowance , the "cheat days" are just days that I unexpected eat above my daily calories and I don't even log it.

but yes there is def. a lot of people that go with the whole cheat meal/day and works for them perfectly

good luck.

macgurlnet

I look at my calories over the course of the week so I can eat more on days I'm hungry or days when there's celebrations, which of course means more (and different) food than usual.

That means some days I'll eat 1500, others I'm at 2300, but over the course of the week I'm looking to average 1500 net calories.

I log it all. I don't ever just go all out and skip logging entirely. I want the data more than anything else, since going over could mean I'll be hanging on to some water weight and see an increase on the scale.

And like many people above have mentioned - you can't necessarily avoid foods forever. There may be some you choose not to incorporate much, if at all anymore, but odds are you will have occasion to eat cake and go out for dinner, etc etc, and now is a great time to figure out how to enjoy it.

Also - if you go to a local place, you could ask if they have nutrition information available and then you could add it to the database. Or, find a similar item in the database and overestimate (that is, maybe log as 1.2 servings), and call it good enough.

I haven't been to a buffet in years because I simply can't eat enough food in one sitting for it to be even kind of worth the money. Many buffets around here are $10+, and the food isn't always good enough and my money and calories are better spent elsewhere.

~Lyssa

JoRocka

BrittaniDirks wrote: »

Thanks ladies. Also what do you do if a place is not in the database? I love a local Mexican place it us authentic and not a chain, I thought about comparing / just putting in the same item from a diff restraunt. Do u do buffets at all? My husband loves the Chinese buffets, not saying that as an excuse I know I could just eat salad, but it's tough. Ok I'm thinking no more cheat days then I will try my darnedest to count everyday of the week.

Mexican is tricky- lots of extras- not so straight forward usually. I actually took my food scale with me once- and weighed it all out. Why- because science and numbers and we eat there A LOT. so I weighed out what I normally eat- and now I just use a generic 1000 calorie entry from Chili's it *about* covers it since I know what I normally eat there.

I typically eat at 2x a week- sometimes quiet indulgently. I've been fluxing around the same 20 pounds for the last 5 years. I've never been truly over weight- so my flux has been a recomp then purposeful bulk and cut.

galprincess

My diary is open, everyday is a cheat day I fit in treats and yes i occasionally go over but I look at my weekly calories rather than daily

KrisiAnnH

32lb loss and still going I dont have 'cheat' days but I do have one day a week where I'll eat to maintenance calories, usually to allow myself a 'treat' meal such as takeaway or a meal out. As I'm on 1280 I find one day of maintenance calories helps me stick to goals for the rest of the week. I still log everything though as not counting at all is just setting yourself up for disaster in my opinion.

I still have treats the rest of the week but I make them work within my daily goals, and as a general rule I work to my weekly calorie goal so I can eat more/less one day or another and fit it to how hungry I am

wonna13

Soo, what I have learned from this is no cheat day. Log everything no matter what. Got it. Thanks for posting.

allaboutthefood

I have lost 52 lbs so far and still going. I do not have "cheat" days I just fit it into my calories and if I know I will be over I will go for another walk or do some sort of exercise. If I want something I will have it.

NotGnarly

I've lost about 50 lbs from my highest weight ever. I don't consider any day a cheat day because I eat treats almost everyday. I do have high calorie days on Friday and Saturday where I eat at maintenance just to boost my metabolism back up since I reduce my cals during the week. Plus by Friday I'm hungry from eating at a deficit and this sort of refeed helps me get my leptin levels restored and the boost I need for another five days of deficit eating. We rarely eat out at restaurants because our homemade food taste way better. I also log on my high cal/maintenance days.

IMO it's not a free for all or a binge. My deficit during the week is only 500, so it's totally manageable.

arb037

Cheat day = fail. Not giving a shhh and eating whatever whenever is what got us fat and overweight in the first place.

If you need to cheat do a single meal and continue logging!!! Always.
Personally its once ever 4-6 weeks

cwolfman13

I have days that I go over...they aren't scheduled or anything like that...I don't call them "cheat" days...they're just days when I over eat a little...like last night I went out for my anniversary and had a 14ounce ribeye and all kinds of other stuff...it was a nice night out and considering that it was an occasion, it's pretty much irrelevant to the whole.

AspenDan

I've lost 45lbs in about 3 or 4 months, just watching calories. But if I do wanna have something amazing (like the picture linked) I'll usually fill up on low cal foods like a ton of veggies and water through out the day, to bank up enough cals, so I dont go over TOO much :]

rockmama72

Sometimes I will eat up to my total calories burned (according to my Fitbit) but I have discovered that not logging is a mistake for me. I used to think, "Hey, six days a week logging is pretty good, right?" Then my weight just kept staying the same. Now it's dropping regularly!

SLLRunner

BrittaniDirks wrote: »

For those who have list 30 pounds or more. I'd like to know how often do you cheat/go over calories/have a day that you don't count? What rules do you stick to. This us my second time around the first time I list 18 in three months . I'm currently a list one week down again. Anyhoo I have always had one day a week where I don't count. What do you think?

I don't do cheat days because to do so would imply I'm doing something wrong.

I do go over calories sometimes, but I log everything except when I am away on vacation.I will also sometimes plan for a day when I know I will go over by eating less calories on other days.

You have to do what works best for you, but I personally would not skip a day of logging, especially a "cheat day" because I want to know how much I'm eating regardless of whether I ago over or under calories.

namelesshere

I don't have cheat days. I have days that I choose to eat above my calorie goal. I do try to log everything. If I go out and the place is not on the list, I look for a similar item and usually will take a midrange caloric count. I also will save half my meal for a later time. Instead of weekly trips to the Chinese Buffet, we go maybe once a month although last time it lost its allure for me so we will probably go less often. This is not a diet with forbidden foods but a lifestyle change that you will want to make permanent. Celebrations happen and you will want to enjoy. However, you will find as you become more calorie knowledgeable you will be satisfied with much less than you needed before. Ex. Order the small fries instead of large at the fast food restaurant. Preplan your meal to fit your calorie goals. Realize you can have anything and everything, just not all the same day and in the quantities you have had before. The good news is you do not have to eat until you are so stuffed you waddle away from the table.

BrittaniDirks

Thanks everyone!

MelodyandBarbells

What is a cheat to you, OP? Eating certain foods, or going over calories? Because they're not necessarily or always the same thing

Eating certain foods? Well that ship sailed a long time ago. I'll eat anything. I'm just not going to deceive myself that I can eat a huge peach cobbler everyday (and still eat enough so I'm not hungry the rest of the day) and not gain weight

Going over calories? Pretty much same. MFP app has a really useful tool of displaying weekly net calories and letting you know if you're over or under. You can also play with the settings to specify a start day for the week, if you don't simply want to analyze the last seven days

You don't have to log every single thing 100% accurately if you're going over. But. Then again, if in three months you're not losing weight, or not losing at the rate you expect, then you might have preferred to do things differently, as the data was yours to create for possible review down the line all along. Are those two blowout meals poofing your entire deficit for the week or month? The data can easily be averaged to answer that

Restaurants - some prefer to dine in places that publish their nutritional info online for this reason. Once you learn a bit both from logging of home cooked food and logging of restaurant meals, it can help you better estimate food that is not listed in the database or the restaurant doesn't publish.

Either way, it's all a preference! If you're not getting the results you expect in, say, eight weeks, it may be time to do something different, maybe tweak your approach a little