Does eating really well during the week make up for eating really awful on the weekend?

Making_changes7

I'm just curious as to whether or not eating awesome Monday - Friday is enough to lose weight even if I eat crappy on the weekend? Usually it's a night and a day of eating out, fast food, etc.

During the week I watch my fat, carbs, and protein and I am usually pretty bang on.

Let me know your thoughts!

PS. If anyone else has any information on 'cheat eating' and how it affects weight loss, please send me a link!

Maxematics

A bad weekend could completely wipe out your deficit if you're not careful. You should still be trying to log your "cheat" days to see how much you're undoing your deficit from the weekdays. Without a calorie deficit there is no weight loss, even if you've been spot on for five out of seven days of the week. Also, your weight could appear to go up after cheat days due to high sodium levels and water retention.

jemhh

Yes, no, maybe so.

This is impossible for us to answer with certainty because we don't know how big of a caloric deficit you eat in during the week and how big your caloric excess is during the weekend. If you eat in a 500 calorie deficit for 5 days a week that's 2500 calories going toward weight loss. It would be pretty easy to eat an extra 2500 calories above maintenance if you weren't mindful over the weekend.

Hornsby

I'm gonna go with definitely maybe.

ZeroTX

"Cheat" days are counterproductive, no matter what. I'm not saying I don't have them. We had a "cheat meal" for Valentine's day. Not a day, just one meal. Nonetheless, I gained weight, as expected. I think it depends on how serious you are and whether or not this is a lifestyle change or you're going to get to goal and go back to eating Big Macs.

emmycantbemeeko

It depends on what you mean by "awesome" and "crappy."

In terms of weight loss, what matters is your caloric deficit. It is VERY easy to wipe out your weekday deficit in two days of uncontrolled eating of high-calorie foods, so it's possible to eat right at target all week and then, through eating more on the weekends, stall or even gain weight.

If you're simply talking about nutrition- I personally don't think one or two "unhealthy" (for however a person wants to define health) meals a week are going to majorly impact health from a nutritional standpoint. But that's assuming you're eating at a caloric deficit. If you eat at a 250 calorie deficit each day from M-F, you've achieved a 1250 deficit. It is suuuuuuper easy to eat 1250 extra calories on Saturday and Sunday if you're not watching. That's not even a whole McDonald's meal- two or three fast food meals on the weekend could put you at a weekly surplus. So you can stay in a holding pattern this way forever. Fine for maintenance, but if you want to lose, you have to be aware of your intake consistently.

And while it's true you can average your calories over a few days, you really can't healthily restrict enough on weekdays to make up for totally unlimited bingeing on the weekends. It just doesn't work that way. You need to be eating a certain minimum for health every day, and there's a maximum to the amount of deficit you can realistically achieve over the course of five days. At some point, you have to weight the desire to eat large amounts every weekend against the desire to lose weight, and decide which one is more important to you.

Kamikazeflutterby

You can out eat your weekly deficit on the weekend. It depends on the math.

For example...
You need to eat 3500 calories below maintenance per week to lose a pound. MFP would set you 500 calories below maintenance per day to make that weekly deficit. If you eat MFP's deficit all week but eat maintenance on the weekend you will still lose weight, but not as much. If you eat 2500 calories over maintenance on the weekend you have just killed your weekly weight loss.

Personally I think going a little over some days is good for the soul. Those days have to be few, far between and the food had better damned well be worth it. When those days become habit you've left "good for the soul" territory and are firmly in the land of "bad for the body."

Need2Exerc1se

If you keep a deficit over all for the week then eating crappy on the weekends does not have to ruin a diet. But if you eat so much on the weekend that eat away your deficit then you won't lose any fat that week.

I eat lower calories (usually about 100-1400) during the week so I can eat more on the weekends without blowing my diet.

mkakids

No, I eat equally poorly all week. Im the first to admit that my diet is pretty poor. I stay within my calories, but I never hit my macros and eat a diet full of what most people would consider 'junk'.

EvgeniZyntx

Hornsby wrote: »

I'm gonna go with definitely maybe.

I'll raise a probably not.

laur357

I can maintain by doing that, but I rarely lose.
I also started doing what Need2Exerci1se does, and eat slightly fewer calories during the week. I save some extra + exercise calories for weekends when my days are less structured and I'm more likely to eat out/get drinks with friends or boyfriend. I still make an effort track it all and stay within my total weekly goal.

elaineamj

Depends on how "bad" your cheating is on the weekend. I just went on a weekend getaway with DH and decided I would eat what I wanted and I banked some extra calories. Had a Chinese buffet for lunch (and surprised myself when I logged it at only about 1500 calories), followed by 1 roll of grocery store sushi for dinner (we were still full). I did top it off with a small bag of cheetos so I still indulged . The next morning, I had the hotel breakfast (biscuits & gravy and a pancake!) and half a serving of Chinese food for lunch (decided to brown bag the rest). Ended up back home for dinner where I cooked a super healthy veggie curry. Had so many calories still left over for the week that I ate caramel popcorn, another small bag of cheetos, and some banana "ice cream". And still ended up 500 cals UNDER my net cals for the week. Was too full to eat anymore though. Had this same problem last weekend so I think I will cut back on the amounts I bank for the weekend - obviously I don't need as many as I think.

The only reason I ended up so much under was because I worked out a lot over the weekend. I clocked in at around an hour and a half on Fri, Sat, and Sun. I don't usually work out so much on the weekends - but at the hotel, I had access to stuff I don't have at home so was was happy to take advantage of them.

I was quite impressed that I managed to control my splurgy weekend. Really working on teaching myself that if I like something, it's OK to just eat a small amount of it and savour it. I don't have to eat an entire gigantic plateful just because I like it.

esnider211

I keep a larger deficit Sun-Thur to give myself leeway for drinks and going out Friday nights and eat at maintenance on Saturday. I just make sure for the week I am at my needed deficit.

Hornsby

If you want to be a baller, don't call them "cheat" days...just call them "refeed" days

no_day_but_2day

haha NOPE. ANd I can contest to that. Did that for almost 8 months. I worked out almost every day during the week and ate 1300 calories and then went out on the weekends, drank, and ate whatever. I barely lost 5 lbs.

provencal73

ZeroTX wrote: »

"Cheat" days are counterproductive, no matter what. I'm not saying I don't have them. We had a "cheat meal" for Valentine's day. Not a day, just one meal. Nonetheless, I gained weight, as expected. I think it depends on how serious you are and whether or not this is a lifestyle change or you're going to get to goal and go back to eating Big Macs.

This for me too.

rsclause

As I looked at my weight daily (logging scale) I realized that the weekend was undoing 65% of what I was achieving during the week. When I went hard core and behaved on the weekends I quickly reached my goal of over fifty pounds lost. Since I put twenty back on I should probably get back to it. Craft beer is my downfall.

Shrinking_Erin

Doesn't work for me. In Feb we had 2 cheat meals planned. They turned into cheat weekends and it took my until yesterday to finally start seeing loss again. So... I'm not doing cheat anything now. Just having what I want and staying at or slightly under my cal goal.

Squirrel698

I had a crazy day yesterday eating whatever I wanted including a cupcake and lemon bread from Starbucks. It's all there in my diary if you want to look. Somehow I didn't gain a pound. I checked myself on two separate scales to make sure.

Although I am a vegetarian. I would have to be near death from starvation to even consider anything from McDonalds. I still ate relatively healthy, I suppose, just a lot more than usual.

I like my cheat day, in fact, it's what gets me through the week. It's possible that I eat at such a large defect for the rest of the six days that I don't go over my weekly allotment with my cheat day. Although I've been eating 1600 calories on a typical day so I don't know if that's it.

Cirque95

I still tend to lose weight despite eating bad on weekends. Theoretically, if you seriously overeat on the weekend then you could undo your hard work from during the week and not lose weight. But our bodies are not exact mathematical equations and it is difficult to predict how our body is going to react. If I have been really good during the week and maybe not eaten back all of my exercise calories then I'll still get a decent loss, but sometimes I might not get a loss or have a very small loss which is probably due to eating bad on weekends. I'm trying to stop doing it because it's not really a healthy mindset to have in the long term - it's when the weekends turn into weeks that I start putting weight back on. I'm personally trying to find the balance between allowing myself a treat on the weekends and not undoing all my hardwork by overeating.

xKoalaBearx

Worked for me. BUT... I maintained a weekly deficit of 3500 cal or more. (Ate in surplus on Saturday, but Sun-Fri ate in deficit for a combined 3500+ cal deficit.) Lost 60 lbs.

The key for me was I still logged everything... high or low calorie days.

I disagree that cheat days are counterproductive as a general statement. They aren't counterproductive for everyone.

Hornsby

EvgeniZyntx wrote: »

Hornsby wrote: »

I'm gonna go with definitely maybe.

I'll raise a probably not.

So in your estimation, there is less than a 50% chance that this is 100% the issue?

DWBalboa

Well there are variables to this discussion not disclosed so it’s hard to assess the situation. However, I will say it’s better than eating like crap all the time.
I do the same thing heck, I even drink a few. However, I am far more active in general during the weekend so it tends to offset what I eat. Nevertheless, depending on your needs you may need to do a better job of being footloose and fancy free with your intake on the weekend.

EvgeniZyntx

Hornsby wrote: »

EvgeniZyntx wrote: »

Hornsby wrote: »

I'm gonna go with definitely maybe.

I'll raise a probably not.

So in your estimation, there is less than a 50% chance that this is 100% the issue?

Quite the opposite, I'd guess it is 100% chance that this is 50% of the issue.

extra_medium

You lose weight with an overall deficit over a given amount of time. A lot of people track their deficit week by week rather than day by day. If you accurately log how awful your weekend was, you can definitely make up for it during the week.

chilisadie

for me one bad meal on the weekend usually leads to more "junk" food. So no, doesn't work for me.

ManiacalLaugh

I will occasionally up my weekend intake, but not enough to completely derail me, just enough to allow me to be sociable and eat out with family. It usually ends up being 200-300 calories though, which I can make up during the following week easily in small increments (or just accept I've been slowed down a tiny bit).

My roommate, however, does full-on cheat weekends. Whole boxes of donuts, poptarts, pizza, and 800-1000 containers of frozen custard from the local shop. I can't imagine he isn't completely wiping out his deficit. I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up gaining weight.

The point is (as others have already said), be careful. A "cheat" day by a few hundred calories isn't going to completely derail you, but it can get out of hand very quickly if you allow it to.

bethanyka

If you want to maintain, it could probably work. If you want to lose, it never worked- for me anyway. I'd try, and by Thursday I'd be back to the weight I was, only to start the weekend "fun" again. I got no where at all.

tabletmfp

I cheat every sat night and I eat loads. However I do 3 mini fasts of 650 calories every week. This works because I'm in maintenance. When I was in loosing mode I don't think cheating would have worked for me.

Francl27

It really depends on your deficit during the week and how much you eat on week ends. It's just math.

ASKyle

It's all in the numbers.

For me, this is a great way to maintain. Can't lose doing it, though.