Do you guys do "cheat" meals?

Blooperss

I know some are going to say they don't cheat, yadada, but seriously, anyone in here do an actual cheat where you just eat whatever you want every now and then? I used to cheat once a week and I would go HARD. I'm talking pastas, chocolate, pizza, burgers, fries, just everything. In my experience, how is it that this one day of cheating and the weight gain ALWAYS falls off within 2-3 days when I'm back to my calorie limit? If I didn't "cheat" beyond that one day, my weight loss stayed at a consistent downward trend too.

I don't do cheat days anymore, but rather, cheat meals and I try to accomodate so that they fit into my goals. I realized after many many years that this is a healthier way of thinking since it's a lifestyle change that I'm going after and not a one time fix. Having 2-3 "bad" meals each week has been more sustainable for me.

bretmartin09

I absolutely do cheat meals, if I completely remove something I enjoy, it's not worth it. I allow my self a day (Sunday) where I can enjoy a favorite food and snack. Not ALL of my favorite foods in one day, but if i want pizza , great or want to splurge on an ice cream or nachos. I let myself have 2-3 "Cheat items. However I have learned to earn the cheat so even though it is a rest day, I will still go for an hour walk, or some other physical activity so the calorie impact is not substantial. If I am over a couple of hundred calories.. no biggie.

neugebauer52

I have noticed for myself that when I felt like "cheating" my daily macros did not give my body what it needed. I made small macros adjustments and that was that. My macros requirements do change from season to season a little bit and I do take this into consideration.

Nony_Mouse

Nope. I may choose to have a maintenance day from time to time, or if I've been low on cals some days through the week use those to have a higher cal meal that I normally wouldn't be able to fit into my calorie allotment. 'Cheat meal/day' is a horrible term.

nighthawk584

No, I just incorporate foods that I like in much smaller portions and make sure I don't go over my calorie goal. As much as I may want to just go hog wild at times, I look how far I have come in this last year and it isn't worth it. I did 16 years of CHEAT MEALS and it made me obese and almost dead.

serindipte

There are some things that, if I can't eat a lot of, I'd rather not have them at all. Chicken wings are the first things that come to mind. Dipped in plenty of ranch!

Rather than cheat to have them, though, I bank calories over the week so I'm still not over my weekly calorie goal. I prefer to look at my calories as a weekly average, instead of daily. Some days I'm not as hungry, others I wasn't what I want.

sardelsa

When I'm in a deficit, on weekends I usually eat anything I want (which is typically reasonable) to use up any banked calories from the week While I don't track, I have a pretty good idea what I'm working with. To me I consider it more a refeed although I do add some extra fat vs. just carbs. This allows me to eat carefree at restaurants, functions, weddings, parties, wine tastings, family dinners, etc.

I do have a lot of calories to work with so I am able to remain flexible about it and not have to worry about wiping out my deficit.

lemurcat2

I flex cals and have higher cal days, sure. I also eat meals (or even have days) that are not nutritionally similar to my usual preferences. I don't find it useful to think of them as "cheat" days or meals, since there's no cheating about it, and I wouldn't find it helpful to decide that I just eat whatever, since that sounds like encouraging a binge. I'm more likely to decide that it's a rare special event so I'll have the menu for the day (but not overeat to the point that I feel overly stuffed, as I hate that, although I might well be over maintenance cals) -- this is, say, Thanksgiving -- or that I want to have takeout pizza for dinner (last night Super Bowl watch party) or go out for Indian or something else high cal, and then I usually work in the cals.

I don't think occasional higher cal days are going to be a problem, even without careful planning for them, but obviously the way to know is to weigh yourself consistently and see (and I don't mean the day after).

Onedaywriter

I do cheat meals but not at regular intervals. More depends on circumstances. So I try not to do them until I want or need them.
For example, yesterday was the super bowl. So I had a couple of beers and bunch extra food and most of it had no nutritional value. I was really careful earlier in the day but still ended up over.
For me, it makes this journey more manageable and keeps it fun. Today I’m back in my groove and hopefully didn’t set myself back too badly. I won’t weigh myself for a few days because I get frustrated when the scale rises (which I think it would due to salt)!

MikePfirrman

I had a cheat quarter and gained like 12 lbs. October through December. I've lost 5 of it and but it was a nice, stark reminder of how fast it can come back on if not hyper vigilant. Cheat days lead to cheat weekends, which lead to cheat weeks, IMHO. It's a slippery slope for some of us.

In periods of maintenance sanity, I might plan to have more calories, like a couple of drinks, on a weekend. But the rest of the day I'm active and don't eat a lot -- maybe a light lunch or even skipping breakfast. But the rest of the meal is somewhat sensible.

RelCanonical

There are days that I eat over my calories, but the difference is that I don't treat them as "cheat" meals. I just count them and log them as overage days, and if I get to my weigh-in and I'm not losing as expected, I can look back and see how many of those days I had. I don't pick specific days to overeat for the sake of overeating - I'm a binge eater and that's a dangerous mindset for me. The days I overeat are for special occasions like birthdays.

tuckerrj

Once a month I go to the Chinese buffet. But even then, I try to focus on the lower calorie soups and sushi. I doubt that I eat more than 5-600 calories over my normal daily calorie goal. Like @MikePfirrman said, it's a slippery slope that has led me to "backslide" more than once.

Courtscan2

Once a week I eat about 500 calories above maintenance. Still allows me to remain in an overall deficit for the week, and is more of a refeed than a "cheat".

amusedmonkey

I don't. I don't see the point in my case. When I want something high in calories I just skip a meal and have it. When I want something very high in calories I just bank some calories and have it. When I can't be bothered to save calories or skip a meal, I decide I don't want it enough so I don't really mind not having it. A cheat meal has no real purpose for me other than routinely scheduled overeating. Why would I want to schedule overeating whether I need it or not when I can just eat whatever I want whenever it's worth it? No waiting for the end of the week when I really want it, no overeating when I don't really want it enough.

vggb

My cheat meals have to do with macro-nutrients instead of calories. So on those days I don't worry about salt/sugar content and fat to a lesser extent. Doctor is fine with it as long as it's once or twice a month. Weight gain is not permanent.

willboywonder

I do, after I reach milestones, either after losing a certain amount of weight or after following my plan for 30 days or so. Then I reward myself.

NovusDies

There is no cheating... not really. You are either gaining, losing, or maintaining weight. If you eat enough on day 7 to erase your calorie deficit for the week or puts you in a surplus you will have wasted your time the other 6 days or worse. Choosing not to log your calories won't keep your body from using them for energy or energy storage.

"Cheat" days should be called "kidding yourself" days.

I don't want anymore days like that. Even if I choose to eat over maintenance it will almost always be with a degree of mindfulness involved.

drmwc

I try to avoid them - it feels like a slippery slope. I do this both with specific foods and calorific/macro targets.

The longer I've eaten well, the less and less I miss rubbish foods. I hope it is like giving up cigarettes, and one day the cravings will be a thing of the past.

lemurcat2

NovusDies wrote: »

I don't want anymore days like that. Even if I choose to eat over maintenance it will almost always be with a degree of mindfulness involved.

I agree with this, although for me that may not mean logging (I go through periods where I don't log, so I don't equate not logging with not caring about cals or not being mindful). (Note: not saying you do, just clarifying.)

I always wonder if what people who use the term "cheat day" and those who do not, but have higher cal or less nutritious days are the same. For me, there is absolutely no reason one a-typical higher cal or less nutritious day should lead to a weekend of only that or a week of it or so on. Since it's planned in or accounted for or done mindfully, if anything it makes me happier knowing anything is available should I want it, so other days are felt as part of my overall enjoyable, chosen way of eating.

This weekend was kind of atypical in that I had a high cal work lunch on Friday (for some reason we always have this hot dog and brats and Italian beef meal with cake on the Friday before the Super Bowl and I like brats and wanted cake so planned to have such a meal). I also knew I'd go out to dinner on Saturday and it is restaurant week here, so there'd be a tasting menu with dessert, and that I was going to a SB watch party on Sunday where we would have pizza). Based on this, I ate with a focus on nutrition and a bit lower cal than usual the rest of the week, had a more significant workout on Sunday than usual (Saturday had already been my longer workout day), and then had a very low cal salad (largely green veg both cooked and not) on Friday evening, only a small snack for lunch on Saturday and Sunday, and accepted that my overall nutrition was not as high as usual. I also made sure to eat only a small portion of cake, not too much pizza (and that my pizza had some veg on it), and ordered fish and veg from the restaurant week menu, and kept an eye on portions.

Today everything is back to normal. If I felt like I'd overdone it, I'd likely make the next couple days a little lighter, but not go overboard.

What I worry would happen to me with a cheat approach is that it would feed into my all or nothing tendency such that I'd figure if I were off plan anyway I should take full advantage, since who knows when I would have any of these foods again, and both not be mindful at all or have trouble stopping and then feel badly afterwards.

NovusDies

lemurcat2 wrote: »

NovusDies wrote: »

I don't want anymore days like that. Even if I choose to eat over maintenance it will almost always be with a degree of mindfulness involved.

I agree with this, although for me that may not mean logging (I go through periods where I don't log, so I don't equate not logging with not caring about cals or not being mindful). (Note: not saying you do, just clarifying.)

I always wonder if what people who use the term "cheat day" and those who do not, but have higher cal or less nutritious days are the same. For me, there is absolutely no reason one a-typical higher cal or less nutritious day should lead to a weekend of only that or a week of it or so on. Since it's planned in or accounted for or done mindfully, if anything it makes me happier knowing anything is available should I want it, so other days are felt as part of my overall enjoyable, chosen way of eating.

This weekend was kind of atypical in that I had a high cal work lunch on Friday (for some reason we always have this hot dog and brats and Italian beef meal with cake on the Friday before the Super Bowl and I like brats and wanted cake so planned to have such a meal). I also knew I'd go out to dinner on Saturday and it is restaurant week here, so there'd be a tasting menu with dessert, and that I was going to a SB watch party on Sunday where we would have pizza). Based on this, I ate with a focus on nutrition and a bit lower cal than usual the rest of the week, had a more significant workout on Sunday than usual (Saturday had already been my longer workout day), and then had a very low cal salad (largely green veg both cooked and not) on Friday evening, only a small snack for lunch on Saturday and Sunday, and accepted that my overall nutrition was not as high as usual. I also made sure to eat only a small portion of cake, not too much pizza (and that my pizza had some veg on it), and ordered fish and veg from the restaurant week menu, and kept an eye on portions.

Today everything is back to normal. If I felt like I'd overdone it, I'd likely make the next couple days a little lighter, but not go overboard.

What I worry would happen to me with a cheat approach is that it would feed into my all or nothing tendency such that I'd figure if I were off plan anyway I should take full advantage, since who knows when I would have any of these foods again, and both not be mindful at all or have trouble stopping and then feel badly afterwards.

My definition of mindful is making decisions for which I have awareness. Right now that includes logging all meals even if guesses. I am not sure what will happen when I am comfortably in maintenance for awhile.

I am okay with occasionally eating more than I need as long as I know it is happening. I gained weight by being ignorant, probably intentionally ignorant, to the calories I consumed.

What concerns me most are my routine days. I don't care if I have an oddball day of getting most of my nutrition from a drive thru. I do care if my normal days do not meet my criteria of balanced and multi-sourced. I will be the first to admit that my criteria may or may not be actually necessary for health it seems like common sense and I don't eat anything I dislike.

pancakerunner

Yes and no. I try to allow myself one day a week (usually Sundays) to wake up with no alarm, take it slow getting up and out of bed, do a light workout and then eat at a slower pace, being mindful of what I'm eating but eating foods that are more "fun" and "flexible." Not punishing myself if I eat over my calorie limit... These are TREAT days not CHEAT days.

AnnPT77

I don't believe in cheat days in the same sense that, as an adult, I don't believe in Santa Claus. They're a charming myth. My body counts everything.

That said, I do have days where I eat well over my maintenance calories, sometimes even 2 to 3 times my maintenanc calories. It's just a choice about food, not "a cheat". Who or what would I be cheating?

And I do have days where I don't hit all my nutritional goals, because I decided I wanted some delicious, indulgent thing that would not help me reach those goals. (These are rarely the way-over-calories days, BTW, at least with respect to getting reasonable macronutrients. I'd have to work really hard, as a 5'5" 135-pound woman, to avoid hitting my body-size-appropriate protein and fat minimums on a day where I eat 4000-6000 calories! ).

Sometimes I track those days, sometimes the actual things I ate are so confounding to log that I don't bother. (While losing weight, I logged daily without fail, even if I had to estimate; I wanted that data in order to estimate my personal TDEE. Now, in maintenance, I don't always log . . . though I still do, most days.)

Either type of day - over goal, or under nutrition - can lead to a big immediate scale jump that's almost entirely water weight and digestive system contents in transit, so essentially meaningless. My larger over-maintenance-calorie days can potentially add a pound of fat in theory, but in practice (based on long experience) I believe the rare really-high day doesn't have the full caloric impact the numbers would suggest, because - among other things - non-exercise activity (NEAT) goes up afterward, and wipes out some of those excess calories (not all, of course).

This has been working fine for me, in practice, for nearly 5 years now. I eat a little under calorie goal most days ("calorie bank") in order to indulge sometimes. It's even been working in the last 3-4 months, where I'm striving to lose a few more pounds really slowly (< 1 pound/month). My weight trend, as planned, is a gradual down-slope, over a time period that includes the holidays and my birthday.

People who are still in the weight loss process have a bit different calculation: It is indeed possible to wipe out one's whole calorie deficit with a really big cheat day once a week. But if the calories are at or under maintenance on that day, or there's a net under goal for the week, weight loss still happens, just somewhat more slowly. Maintaining is different.

While losing weight back in 2015, down to my current weight, I decided I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to do permanently to maintain a healthy weight (except a sensibly moderate calorie deficit), essentially treating the weight loss process as an experiment in how to happily maintain a healthy weight. That included figuring out how to fit treats, celebrations, indulgences, etc., into an overall way of eating and living, that balanced out long term with calorie and nutritional goals. So far, seems to be working.

As an aside, I'd point out that people who are restricting calories pretty aggressively, or who've been restricting more moderately for a long time, seem sometimes to see a big scale drop, down surprisingly below previous low weight, after the way-over-goal day's initial scale jump drops away. It seems probable that there's an explanation for this in mechanisms of stress, cortisol, and water retention, i.e., it isn't "surprising fat loss from a cheat day", it's "surprising release of retained water weight from a refeed. revealing fat loss on the scale".

Others will have different opinions and experiences. These are just mine.

hesn92

My response will probably sound generic but. No I don’t do cheat meals or cheat days. I don’t consider any type of food to be cheating. I eat what I want to eat, every day. Period. To lose weight I control calories. I think my overall diet is pretty healthy, and I also eat things like chips and cookies and chocolate. Sometimes I skip logging if I’m having a particularly complicated day (parties with homemade food, eating out at restaurants that don’t have nutrition info available etc) so maybe to some that could be considered cheating.

kshama2001

Blooperss wrote: »

I know some are going to say they don't cheat, yadada, but seriously, anyone in here do an actual cheat where you just eat whatever you want every now and then? I used to cheat once a week and I would go HARD. I'm talking pastas, chocolate, pizza, burgers, fries, just everything. In my experience, how is it that this one day of cheating and the weight gain ALWAYS falls off within 2-3 days when I'm back to my calorie limit? If I didn't "cheat" beyond that one day, my weight loss stayed at a consistent downward trend too.

I don't do cheat days anymore, but rather, cheat meals and I try to accomodate so that they fit into my goals. I realized after many many years that this is a healthier way of thinking since it's a lifestyle change that I'm going after and not a one time fix. Having 2-3 "bad" meals each week has been more sustainable for me.

Based on your experience, you were either having a pretty aggressive calorie deficit earlier in the week or your definition of HARD contains considerably less calories than mine would

13bbird13

I rarely go out to eat, but when I do go with a group of friends, I order what I want. I guess technically it's a cheat because I pay no attention to my calorie intake for that meal. I could order a nice salad... but I won't, when chicken pot pie or fettuccine Alfredo is calling my name. If we go out locally I'll try and take half home for a second meal, but if we're too far out of town for a doggie bag I'll finish as much of it as I feel like eating. That happened last weekend, but doing my regular tracking through the week still resulted in the loss of a pound.

KevinWH87

I don't think this is what you had in mind, but I'll sometimes add a little cheese or extra butter/guac to my sandwich. It's still healthy but I get that rewarding feeling of treating myself. I savor that extra deliciousness and don't feel the need to splurge/binge any further. Except when I do, of course, but I'm trying to kick that habit

lokiidokiiartichokii

As someone that used to struggle with BED/bulimia, I don't do cheat days/meals. I feel like that's just a recipe for disaster. I think it's much better to incorporate all sorts of foods within my daily calorie budget/going over slightly when I want to indulge some days.

That being said, I've also found substitutions/variations for things which has helped a lot, too. Rather than eating a whole candy bar at once, I'll break it into chunks to enjoy throughout the day. I opt for spring rolls instead of sandwiches. Cucumbers and ranch instead of chips. Banana ice cream (bananas + almond milk + chocolate chips + a little honey) rather than ice cream.

cwolfman13

Blooperss wrote: »

I know some are going to say they don't cheat, yadada, but seriously, anyone in here do an actual cheat where you just eat whatever you want every now and then? I used to cheat once a week and I would go HARD. I'm talking pastas, chocolate, pizza, burgers, fries, just everything. In my experience, how is it that this one day of cheating and the weight gain ALWAYS falls off within 2-3 days when I'm back to my calorie limit? If I didn't "cheat" beyond that one day, my weight loss stayed at a consistent downward trend too.

I don't do cheat days anymore, but rather, cheat meals and I try to accomodate so that they fit into my goals. I realized after many many years that this is a healthier way of thinking since it's a lifestyle change that I'm going after and not a one time fix. Having 2-3 "bad" meals each week has been more sustainable for me.

Because you don't gain actual fat in one day. The weight gain you see on the scale after a day like this is attributable to water retention and more inherent waste in your system. Gaining actual weight (fat) or losing actual weight (fat) requires a consistent surplus or deficit over time, not some one time occurrence...like if you fasted once per week for 24 hours you aren't going to just burn a ton of fat...you're going to lose water weight and have less waste in your system and the weight on the scale is going to bump back up when you eat again.

I tend to look at my nutrition on the whole rather than the minutia of one particular meal or one particular day. I have pizza most Friday nights as that is our family pizza and movie night...I don't consider it cheating or a "bad meal" within the context of the rest of my diet. It doesn't magically undo my nutrition for the week and in the big picture is pretty immaterial to my overall nutrition.

bathsheba_c

I don’t like framing it as “cheating” for the same reason I don’t view myself as “on a diet.” My goal is to improve my nutrition and my fitness, and I am losing the weight that was caused by poor nutrition. So if I have a week where calorie restriction interferes with my physical or psychological well-being, I’ll eat at maintenance for a week. If there’s a special occasion, like a birthday or holiday, I recognize the sociological function of food and partake in delicacies that are harder to fit into a balanced diet. If I want a specific treat, I’ll adjust what I eat the rest of the day accordingly. In addition to being significantly happier than most dieters, I am also less likely to fall into the trap of, “Well, if I’m already eating ice cream, I might as well eat the whole pint.”

Samanthor

I do a cheat meal once a week. To me, that doesn't mean a meal where I am trying to eat everything I can, just a meal where I can eat something that would be hard to log -- i.e., going to a local restaurant where they have a unique dish -- and eat it without worrying about it.

rainbow198

I go out for pizza every Friday night. On a normal week it's the only meal I don't make at home. I still track it and estimate the calories.

I don't overdo it though. I usually eat a garden salad, have 2 maybe 3 slices and drink water with it and maybe a small dessert if I wanted it. So this "cheat" is not high in calories, but I look forward to it.