Do you allow yourself a cheat day?

yenny58

I always plan 200-250 calorie a day for some kind of treat, it keeps me on track!

Lyrica7

There's an old saying dont lose how you cant maintain. I dont have cheat days I have higher calorie days sometimes or days I plan with a certain food like pizza or chocolate. I don't wait until I crave a food so badly I binge and then get discouraged. You see so many people who lose on very restrictive diets, get to goal and then eat how they got became overoverweight in the first place and then regain. Yo yo dieting sucks. Try to find a way to lose that incorporates the foods you like but helps you learn control with them if possible, it takes work but it's worth it in the long run.

pamfin

No, I might be a bit over on somedays where I've had a special event or meal but I'm under on others. I pretty much always pre-log what I'm going to have on those occasions too. I'm a massive data nerd so I export my nutritional data into excel and track it based on averages over the week/month to make sure that, overall, I'm on track.

jbrown2339

You have to live, right? And as others said you can plan for a candy bar in your budget. Every body is different, when I was losing I plateaued a lot, and sometimes if I went wild at dinner (esp Indian food, my fav) it could break the plateau. I think it depends on how big a cheat you mean. A snickers bar, you should be ok, and you can plan for that. A big meal out once a week, again you can likely plan for as long as you aren’t going all out. A cheat day, again it depends on what that means to you, cause some people take that to mean a binge day.

Sometimes a heavy calorie day may not hurt you. Super bowl Sunday I just had what I wanted since we had a party, and the next day I expected expected to be shocked at scales. I was, I was only up half a pound which then came off that week.

Every body is different, just don’t stress and it’s a journey, you will figure out what works for you, but don’t go so rigid that you miss out on life’s pleasures!

fuzzylop72

I am personally of the opinion that if I feel I need a cheat day, I'm restricting far too much.

nexangelus

Nope, the word cheat is negative by definition. I am set to lose a pound per week (do you have a lot to lose setting your goal at 2 lbs/week?). Some days I eat lower, so I can eat way higher other days for muscle recovery and to abate hunger. I eat icecream, biscuits, chocolate and even sweets (candy in the US). They fit into my cal allowance and macros.

If you are too restrictive, you are destined to feel miserable (want to cheat and binge) and eventually fail. I live by the "rules" of flexible dieting. It works for me. Every 12 weeks I go on a diet break for 14 days. The closer to goal you get and the leaner you get then refeeds become important for diet adherence. For more information, the longer you are dieting, then see this ace thread:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

SanaAnum

I personally dont like cheat days because it just delays the weight loss process. But after 3 weeks i had one day off.

UltraVegAthlete

I eat what I’m craving. Either plain airpopped popcorn or dates. This allows me to not feel restricted and go on a binge. Cheat days make me feel awful about myself