Cheat day..yes or no?

MatthewHeaddenCoaching

I am not anti cheat day but it can play really bad games with your head, which it seems like it already may be. Take a look at flexible dieting, which I have found works extremely well regardless of your goal. All that is required is figuring out your macros, and please not what the USA recommends, and as long as your foods fit your macros and caloric intake for the day go for.
For example if you are at 7pm and have eaten your last meal of the day and have 10 grams of fat and 30 carbs left go eat a daggum donut.
This is much more sustainable and eliminates the need for the cheat day all together.

AnnPT77

Cheat who? Cheat what?

Not a useful concept, IMO. During weight loss, I sometimes ate over my deficit-calorie goal . . . sometimes way over - I'm talking a 5,000-calorie day, perhaps more.

I always logged it (even if I had to use memory, and estimate from the MFP database), and I pretty much knew and accepted how many days' deficits I was eating up, and therefore what kind of delay it meant in accomplishing my long-term goals. As long as I didn't do it very often, I was still going to lose weight at a reasonable overall rate.

For me, weight loss was partly about training myself for a permanent healthier eating pattern. Therefore, I didn't do anything during weight loss that I'm not willing to do permanently (other than the obvious moderate calorie deficit, of course).

There is no way I intend to go through my whole life without a little bit of celebratory or indulgent eating from time to time. Therefore, I needed to practice that, too.

So: Big eating day on my birthday, holidays, family reunion, when out-of-town friends come to visit and we go out to dinner, or something like that? You betcha. Big eating day every Saturday, no matter what else is going on in my life? Nah - that's silly.

kbarrett0701

I'd say no. In the 18 months it took me to lose 148 pounds, I had one cheat meal during that time. Since I've hit my goal weight I allow myself every night to have 2 ounces of halo top ice cream(it's yummy).

grannynot

LOL! Who or what are you "cheating" on? Calories are calories - they don't magically disappear because you decide it's a Cheat Day. If you are craving some junk food - then go ahead and eat it after you calculate how many miles you'll have to add on the treadmill to burn those extra calories. Is a cookie worth an extra mile-and-a-half? If the answer is yes, than savor that thing!! Otherwise, you are simply going backwards and pretending it's OK.

A good friend of mine gave me a saying: "Make it a priority; or stop complaining and live with your failures". Yeah - it's harsh; but it's pretty much the truth.

RainaProske

@Yourkindagirl Your photo up there! Love it! You GO, lady!

RainaProske

grannynot wrote: »

Make it a priority; or stop complaining and live with your failures.

YES!

WinoGelato

J72FIT wrote: »

wmeyerbill455 wrote: »

BIG, BIG, BIG NO! In order to lose weight and maintain the loss you have to eat consistently fewer calories. If you are looking for a 20% reduction you need to find out how many calories you can consume each day to maintain your current weight then reduce it by 20% and that is your new calorie max, every day, no cheat days.

Or, you could figure out your calories per day TDEE and multiply by 7 to get your weekly calorie goal. Then, you can eat a little less say monday through friday (100 calories per day less then TDEE for example for a 500 calorie "bank"), then eat to maintenance on saturday and sunday you cash in on your "banked" calories and enjoy...

So take myself as a example. At the moment I eat 2500 calories per day. Monday thru Friday I eat 2400 calories. Saturday I eat 2500 calories. Sunday I eat 3000 calories. Does not always work out exactly but who cares. You get the idea...

xmichaelyx

My cheat day starts on Friday night and lasts until Monday morning. The rest of my week is structured to allow this.

jennismagic

I've found that working small treats into my daily plans for a few days out of the week works best.

BarbieAS

I think it depends on how, why, and how often.

The ideal goal of MFP is to set you up for a way of eating that will be conducive to maintaining your goal weight for the rest of your life. So consider your lifestyle, what changes you can sustain forever, what you're not willing to give up entirely. Do you frequently do very well during the week but tend to splurge on weekends? Structure your calorie goals so that you eat a little less during the week and have some more flexibility on Fri-Sat or Sat-Sun. Is there a sort of special occasion, meal out with friends, company picnic, etc coming up, the type of stuff that comes up fairly often, where you know you're going to have a bigger than usual meal? Make reasonable choices at the meal, and then eat a little less and/or exercise a little more in the days surrounding the event so that over the course of the week you just about even out. Is there a big, relatively infrequent holiday/celebration coming up where you know you're going to exceed your typical calorie goal by a good amount (Christmas, your birthday, your annual 4th of July BBQ extravaganza)? Go for it. You still need to live your life. Did you just have a bad day and unexpectedly exceed your calorie goal by more than an insignificant amount? Try to make it up over the course of the next several days. Or, in all of the above cases, accept that you're just going to have a reduced deficit or a surplus for the day/week, and understand how that's going to impact your goals, and understand what that would mean if you were generally eating at maintenance.

I wouldn't cheat just to cheat, though. Saying to myself "ok, tomorrow I'm just going to eat whatever the heck I want, calories be darned" seems mentally and emotionally counter-productive. If there's a particular food that I'm craving that normally doesn't fit well into my goals so I generally don't eat it, but I just HAVE to have it, I just do my best to work it in. If I decide on a cheat day because I'm emotionally not in a good space, that's a great opportunity to address emotional eating and find healthy behaviors to replace it. If I'm simply feeling burnt out on dieting and exercising and like I need a break, maybe it's time to re-evaluate if my deficit is too big, or to find a new activity to try for exercise, or to adjust my macros a little, even temporarily (for me, I find that allowing myself to go nuts on carbs within my calorie goal and not try so hard to hit my protein goals for a couple of days relieves a lot of mental stress). And everything needs to get logged, even if the entire day was a dumpster fire - I think it's important both to be honest about it and really get a handle on the totals, both as a mental reality check and a data point to understand what would need to be done to balance it out.

I'm not suggesting anyone should freak out and fast for 2 days because they're going out for their anniversary dinner this weekend and know they're going to have a couple glasses of wine and split a giant piece of cheesecake. It's just about balance and making small tweaks so that you still generally meet your goals over time. When you're at maintenance, if there are days where you exceed your typical maintenance range you either have to make that up through eating less/moving more to balance it out, or accept that you're going to gain a small amount of weight back. Too many of those days and that re-gained weight is no longer a small amount. I think it's good to start healthy maintenance behaviors now.

100df

I don't call it cheating but there are meals that I eat over my calorie allowance. Usually planned but sometimes not. I can't do that all day though because it wipes out my deficit.

I like to save calories the day before and day after. It's hard though because that usually means I am hungry.

I am picky too. I am not going to go over my deficit for something that isn't great. That helps me a lot. Sometimes I will plan to go over and whatever I end up eating isn't that good so I don't eat much.

I am at the point that I can get right back to it without it being a big deal in my mind. It used to be very difficult to get in the deficit mindset after eating more than usual. I guess I am used to it now.

Yourkindagirl

RainaProske wrote: »

@Yourkindagirl Your photo up there! Love it! You GO, lady!

Thank you.

MKEgal

Don't diet.
If you're "on a diet", you're doing something temporary, not making a permanent change to your
life & health & eating & exercise. Once you go "off your diet" you're going back to whatever made
you fat & unhealthy in the first place.

Don't "cheat".
You're giving food power, making it a moral choice, making yourself "bad" if you're not perfect.

Eat heathfully, include things that you like (chocolate, peanut butter, pizza), just make it fit into
your overall calorie intake / output. You have to be happy & not hate what you're doing in order
to make a permanent healthy change in your life.

tiffanyfoundit

I try to always leave some space for some sort of treat.
But I've also adjusted what is treats are. A lot of my deserts are bananas (or apples) and peanut butter and some dark chocolate chips
Even if its ice cream its a little serving instead of a giant bowl.
Its all about balance ! Find what works for you!
For me personally, if I couldn't have some sort of treat I would be really unhappy. So I've made it so I can have treats

JDixon852019

Just eat at maintenance if you want a "cheat" day.

morcadioa

I have a 'treat' meal not a cheat day, it's maybe once a week or once fortnight. I find it helps me stay on track. I've read other members say about including a little treat everyday whilst staying in their calorie goal, whether chocolate or juices, pizza etc. I can't do this, if I have one bit of chocolate I want more etc. That's why I do once cheat meal, when I've eaten it that's it, it's done and I move on. You just have to find something that works for you. We are all different

greytarzan

If you dont have the willpower, have a cheat MEAL. Not "Day".

RainaProske

After all my bluster here about no cheat days, I am tired. If I were still trying to lose weight, it would be different, but I'm feeling resistant to my nutritionist wanting me to gain a little weight, so I'm tired. Tired of the constant keeping account. The junk food I've been eating lately is probably what is making me feel as I do. But I'm taking a little break until I can get myself more together. What a "brak" means, I don't know. Mainly, I'm just not going to be so hard on myself.

gothchiq

No because that would nullify my deficit and I would stay fat.