Cheat Days

katwen_

Would a few of you be able to give your opinion on cheat days? What you do, how much leeway to give yourself, if "cheat days" should even be a thing, etc.

deannalfisher

Personally I don't do - I plan fun stuff into my daily calories - I have 1 day where I have higher carbs/fat than other days

Unknown

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ibboykin

For me, my primary focus isn't weight loss. My weight is fine. Toning up, different story. I have changed my lifestyle of eating in order to get my cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose under control which I have done. So having a cheat meal as it is often describe would be just harming myself.
So no, I don't do them but to each his own. Whatever makes one happy.

kq1981

Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »

I wrote this on another thread, i feel very strongly against cheat meals or cheat days.. so i figured i would just post it here since my opinion is still very much the same lol

I call cheat meals or cheat days negative associations with food. There are a few kinds of negative associations and i am going to list them here.

1) The Lists we create in our minds of good and bad foods.
2) The Foods and Meals we place into the category of Cheat Day or Cheat Meal
3) Corrective Behavior

Sometimes we do one of these or sometimes they can all snowball together into one big issue.
We see people do these things all the time and sometimes we do them ourselves, sometimes its intentional and other times we do them and don't realize that what we are doing is actually a negative behavior.

Listing foods into categories of good and bad may seem like a great idea.. Lots of people jump into a diet this way.. They get really motivated and hyped up and go "Alright, time to lose weight! No chocolate, chips, cookies, cake, candy, fast food, fried food...." the list goes on. They have labeled these foods bad. These foods are the reason they are over weight and must be avoided at all costs. They go out to the store and buy nothing but fresh veggies and fruit, lean meats and get it home. Motivation still high as the sky this actually carries them through for a period where they feel like they aren't missing anything, not craving anything, this is going to be super easy!

So some time passes and theyre feeling good, confident, some weight has come off and they say to themselves it's time for a cheat meal or cheat day.

Cheating is all in all just a negative. There is absolutely nothing in life that starts with cheating or ends in cheating that is good. No one ever thinks someone cheating on them is good or congratulates someone for cheating on a test. No one is ever happy some *kitten* hat cheated them out of their money.

Very few people in life can actually have a cheat day or cheat meal and process it properly from a mental perspective. And in my personal opinion though if you still need points in your life where you need to gorge on a huge amount of food then maybe it's time to understand why that is. Calorie density overages are one thing but if you need a one day a week or one day every two weeks where you need to sit down and eat half a large pizza to yourself.. its time to do some soul searching.

More often then not though, people using cheat meals often find themselves feeling shameful, guilty, or just plain depressed. They ate, they log it and at the end they look at the food log and they see a big fat red number. Several hundred calories in the red.

These feelings often trigger corrective behavior.
Corrective behavior is not a positive but people on MFP who are also new on their journey often support people doing it. I won't.
Example of Corrective behaviors are posting statuses that tell people how awful they feel about what they did and immediately follow it by saying they are either going to eat less over a period of time depending on how many calories they were over, They are going to workout extra long and extra hard the next few days to burn it off, or they are never going to eat those foods again and avoid feeling that way.

The difference between a person putting in extra effort at the gym because they feel happy and healthy and a person putting in extra effort at the gym because they feel shameful for eating is huge. One of those things is a positive and the other is a punishment. Eating less over a period of time only says one thing, you can't handle your cheat meal. You are not ready to mentally process negative calories and all you are doing is further labeling foods as bad. Avoiding these foods is just walking in a straight line into stress and frustration and falling off a cliff.

There is going to be Birthdays. Holidays. Parties. Work Functions. Weddings. Baby Showers. Anniversaries. Family Visiting from Out of Town. Vacations. Are you just going to avoid every social function? Or Show up and spend the entire day/night doing nothing but avoiding the foods and feeling like thats all you spent your time doing rather then having a good time? Eventually something is going to come up where the foods you are avoiding because you have labeled them as bad are going to be there and the longer you avoid them because you have listed them as a negative or you had a bad reaction to your cheat day and are using negative correcting behavior the more likely you are to binge when the stress and frustration become the more dominate feelings. That Happy, Motivated person who started off doing great is struggling more then they ever imagined.

The binge is the worst. The loss of control and the calories consumed and the feelings swirling in your head are so great.. its hard to find something to grab on to, structure, you want to go back to that happy positive motivated person who was eating so good! However thats the whole reason you ended up in this *kitten* hole in the first place.

When people change something... The end result should be that there is some slight differences but it should still be the same. Like painting a table from blue to red and adding an accessory, Its still the same old table you had but its changed and looks better. You don't light the table on fire and then go out and buy a new one. Nothing was wrong with the old table, it still worked fine it just wasn't functioning the right way for your life now.

Just the same as you shouldn't go from who you were before your diet to a 360 degree change. Being a picture perfect model of health and eating nothing but fruits and veggies and lean meats is a nice fantasy but honestly, its not reality. Some people can do it.. but for most of us, we like chocolate, we like cake and we like pizza. You are no different that that table. You need to stay you but you just need to customize yourself.

There is 7 days in a week with a lot of opportunities. There is no reason why pizza can't be worked in, in a reasonable serving. You put those foods in and then you plan around them.. Healthy salads, wraps, great snacks, lots of veggies, lean meats, Etc and suddenly you've got a great week planned and have something to look forward to each day. And funny things start to happen.. The more you start just having these things on a regular basis the less they happen to be heavy on your mind, Why do you need a cheat meal? You can have pizza any time you want. Youve made it work and fit it into your calorie goals. The more things you start fitting into your calorie goals the less times you end up seeing red. Now you can go to a party and if they are serving pizza, you have 1 or 2 slices and are good to go, cause hey, you worked in pizza lots over the last few weeks, its not something youve been avoiding so the need to shovel it in your mouth is gone now.

You get home from the party and you log that pizza but you've barely gone into the red because you had calories already set aside for dinner and the amount of pizza you ate was reasonable, you've had so many days in the green now that you know that if you continue with your well thought out meal plans that include the things you love that the few calories you were over will be erased simply by waking up the next days and carrying on with your new lifestyle change.

Weight keeps coming off. And suddenly all those bad labeled foods that you kicked out of your life the first time have kept you more on track then any cheat meal could have and now they are doing nothing wrong, they are actually helping, not only from a weight loss perspective but from a mental one. Your relationship with food has become better then ever. Because food is just food. A good healthy balance of nutrition and what we love makes the months that pass during our weight loss journeys feel a lot more enjoyable rather then long and hard.

I will always promote and encourage Healthy food relationships.

I LOVE this post. This was my mentality. "Fatty foods will make u fat". It's still hard to change my mind set but I'm doing it. I found it hard to be "truthful" with logging in my first week, seeing this numbers of calories grow was "shameful", because of the way I viewed food. I'm more relaxed now. I ate KFC, I logged it, and I still lost weight at the end of the week. I'm learning so much and changing little things at a time and my children will be better off too.
Thanks for posting this.

missmagnoliablossom

I personally don't do cheat days. The only person I'd be cheating on is me - and my success.

LewisAMartinez

One thing weight watchers has (or at least had when I was on it) is weekly points, on top of the daily allowance. This allows a cushion for things like birthday parties and office lunches out, while still giving a reality check against binging. I'm trying something like that here, by trying to come in about 100 calories under my allowance most days, and then allowing myself a couple days a week where I can go over but not totally pigging out.

Chadxx

The whole cheating mentality needs to go. The idea is budget. You can have anything you want if you fit it into your budget. Today, I had a caramel brownie with vanilla ice cream and it was awesome. I did not "cheat" nor did I exceed my calories.

alid8333

I don't necessarily have a "cheat day" but I do have 1 day a week or 1 day every other week where I will go out to eat and have a heavier meal. BUT i budget all or most of that meal within my calorie allowance for the day. I only allow myself to go over at the most 200 hundred calories, but usually don't. Typically my heavy meal is a 8oz sirloin, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli and a raspberry lemonade. It's roughly around 800 calories. So on that day I eat my normal breakfast and have a light lunch. Usually I still have about 130 to 150 calories left (which is either all or half of my exercise calories).

But the crazy thing is every time I do this I wake up the next day at least 0.5 to 1 pound lighter then I was.

I had a procedure on my heart on Feb 7th (an EP study) and was down for about a week. I weighed myself the morning of the procedure and was down almost 2 pounds. I started working out again on Feb 16th. I weigh myself every morning and wasn't losing any weight. I hit that 2 week mark of not losing any weight so I contacted the trainer my heart doc referred me to. First thing she asked is if I had a refeed day in the past 2 weeks, I said no because I wasn't working out. I made sure while I was down to stay within my calorie allowance. She advised me to eat a couple hundred calories over my allowance and she said I bet you wake up in the morning and you will have dropped the weight. Something about having a refeed day helps your body release extra water it's holding onto. So I did and when I woke up the next morning I was like 1.6 pounds lighter. Then this morning another 0.6.

I'm not suggesting anyone do that, but I think over time you get to know your body and what works and don't work. Everyone is different.

luangie16

Agree. In the past, I would view the heavy meal day as a cheat meal and for some reason it derailed all of my efforts. Turned into another cheat day and so on. Had to change how I viewed that half cheeseburger and few fries or 2 slice pizza meal. If I work it into my meal plan then be at peace with it!!

alid8333

luangie16 wrote: »

Agree. In the past, I would view the heavy meal day as a cheat meal and for some reason it derailed all of my efforts. Turned into another cheat day and so on. Had to change how I viewed that half cheeseburger and few fries or 2 slice pizza meal. If I work it into my meal plan then be at peace with it!!

Yep if I know I'm going to be going out to dinner with my husband I plan my day so I can fit my heavy meal into my calorie allowance. I refuse to do spur of the moment out to eat lunch/dinners. It has to be planned. Lol. But even if I did go over a couple hundred calories I don't stress it. As It all still usually averages out at the end of the week.

For instance we went out to eat a few weeks back and I had 3 glasses of wine. I know I was a good 500 calories over, but I didn't even log the wine and enjoyed myself and I still lost 2 pounds that week.

I typically on average lose 1.5 to 2 pounds a week and I have my settings set to sedentary at losing 1 pound a week and have a calorie allowance of 1360 a day. I workout 4 to 5 days a week for 30 to 40 min and I usually only eat back 50% of my exercise calories. Some days I may eat 75%.

I started my diet on January 3rd and weighed 196 I'm down to 178 and still have 38 pounds to lose until I hit my goal.

kpkitten

My sister asked me Friday if I could have a cheat day so we could get pizza. I said I didn't need a cheat day, I ate a smaller lunch and had plenty of calories left in my budget for a 777cal pizza and then half a tub of ben and Jerry's on top.

The only time I would eat whatever without logging as accurately as possible is a wedding or large party where I can't get an idea on advance of what I might eat. Any other time I'll leave calories that day or earlier that week to cover whatever I'm planning to treat myself to.

anfgirl22

I think the problem with cheat days/meals is that they usually occur (with that negative mindset, not in the "I'm going to indulge and enjoy this and not worry about it" positive mindset) because you're not eating enough. Society tells you you need to cut calories to lose weight but it's more about what's in your food than how many calories you're eating. Women need at least around 2000 calories a day (I say around because everyone is different) and we're constantly told we need to be on these 1300-1500 calorie diets to lose weight and that's to compensate for the high fat diets we're eating (though they seem "healthy"). I started eating more on a plant-based diet and am NOT gaining a bunch of weight at all, finally starting to have a healthy relationship with food and my metabolism is learning to trust me that I'll eat enough. When you're getting enough food and not worried about calories, eating something fatty is more insignificant in your day compared to everything good you're eating to fuel your body, and it's not as big of a deal when your metabolism is faster. Just some food for thought.

size102b

After spending 29 years trying to keep my weight healthy you simply can't have cheat days this tells your subconcious I'm depriving myself so I need to cheat to be happy
Just have a careful day off plan once a month and be really careful it's easy to gain several lbs in a day manly by water retention then it can take ages to get those lbs off

Once at goal arrange your maintence plan around days off by then you should be able to be more strict around what you eat

comeonnow142857

I don't do cheat days. But I do plan on eating chocolate, alcohol, and leaving room for flexibility at the weekend, and v. high nutrient density, low calorie meals surrounding a meal I won't be able to count. I just stay under maintenance.

size102b

LewisAMartinez wrote: »

One thing weight watchers has (or at least had when I was on it) is weekly points, on top of the daily allowance. This allows a cushion for things like birthday parties and office lunches out, while still giving a reality check against binging. I'm trying something like that here, by trying to come in about 100 calories under my allowance most days, and then allowing myself a couple days a week where I can go over but not totally pigging out.

You do know ww is very low in calories without your weekly points they simply divided points into daily and weekly so people don't feel they're cheating
Having free fruit on ww to me is not good as there's no portion control think about a banana 120 calories and you can have as many as you like unmm ??
But a jacket potatoe is high in points as sugar fruit is high in sugar ww was great in the 1990s when it was calorie based now is ice tail to SW