cheat day while finding maintenance?

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  • Achrya
    Achrya Posts: 16,913 Member
    I'm not sure you CAN cheat once you're on maintenance. Surely it's all about finding out what your body can tolerate or can't. It also depends on what you mean by cheat. Do you have a day when all bets are off and you eat anything and everything or do you just have a couple of squares of chocoloate?

    Personally I don't like the idea of any food being labelled 'cheating'. No food is bad for us in moderation. Whatever you consider a cheat food I think I'd work small amounts of it into my maintenance plan. For instance, once I reach my goal weight I know I can't eat huge amounts of carbs. They play havoc with my blood sugars and my weight but I'll still have a cream tea once in a blue moon and have the odd roast spud with my meat and veg.

    The best maintemance plan I ever saw was the old WW one from the 1970's. You got back 50 calories a day with a different type of food every week. I think it lasted for 8 weeks so eventually you were back up to about 2,000 calories a day.

    You shouldn't starve yourself for days and then have one huge blowout on unhealthy foods. You'll feel so deprived you'll stuff yourself till you burst and then you'll feel like crap. You need to learn to regulate what you choose from a buffet. Just remember....NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD AS BEING SLIM FEELS. :-)

    Lies. Lots of things taste better than being slim feels.

    Fresh baked cookies.

    Apple pie

    My mom's lasagna

    A nice steak

    Fresh baked yeast rolls.

    I could go on forever.
  • sjohnny
    sjohnny Posts: 56,142 Member
    Why have a cheat day? You can instead have a very tasty day with whole, unprocessed foods :)

    You'll enjoy it and be guilt free when you go to bed.

    Good one! :laugh:

    My favorite part was the part about the guilt. :laugh:
  • ScottF83
    ScottF83 Posts: 233 Member
    Why have a cheat day? You can instead have a very tasty day with whole, unprocessed foods :)

    You'll enjoy it and be guilt free when you go to bed.

    Good one! :laugh:

    My favorite part was the part about the guilt. :laugh:

    she has a lot of guilt, it seems
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
    I don't believe in 'cheat days' (who are you cheating?), but I do have days when I choose to eat more than others and balance my week with that. It just has to average out.

    Okay - confession. I'm a scientist.

    If I want to find maintenance calories, I want good study data to find out what my weight does over a period of time. I would look at weight change over three weeks or so and calculate the average number of calories per day in that period. I would want my data pretty steady because it's my impression that big binges of calories have different effects on fat deposition than being relatively steady. But I would also want to generalize from those weeks to my regular life. So if I typically eat 500 calories more on Friday than I do the rest of the week, that should be reflected in the data I collect.

    Bottom line:

    The shorter the time you want to spend collecting your data to establish maintenance, the more stable you want your calorie (and sodium and exercise) intake.

    If you're willing to go out for a longer period of time, the variability in your data collection (e.g., cheat days) is less important.

    (Sorry to everyone - I just left class teaching research methods).
  • grantdumas7
    grantdumas7 Posts: 802 Member
    People who have a cheat day or cheat meal one day and then eat well bellow maintenance the next are setting themselves up for eating disorders. Go ahead and have the cheat day or cheat meal and the following days just normally.

    Maybe for some but I've been doing this for years with no problems. I hardly think eating 200-300 calories below maintenance 4 days a week to allow a little wiggle room on the weekends is an eating disorder. Unless being a healthy weight (neither too thin nor too heavy) for nearly all of one's life constitutes an eating disorder...
    200-300 below maintenance for a few days is not an issue, but often people overstress eating below maintenance just before or after a cheat day. They may do extreme dieting such as fruits and veggies only for a few days or eating only 1/2 of their maintenance calories.
  • maureenec
    maureenec Posts: 34 Member
    People who have a cheat day or cheat meal one day and then eat well bellow maintenance the next are setting themselves up for eating disorders. Go ahead and have the cheat day or cheat meal and the following days just normally.

    Maybe for some but I've been doing this for years with no problems. I hardly think eating 200-300 calories below maintenance 4 days a week to allow a little wiggle room on the weekends is an eating disorder. Unless being a healthy weight (neither too thin nor too heavy) for nearly all of one's life constitutes an eating disorder...

    This what I do also. I just stay a little under for 5 days a week and then relax on the weekends. Or, if I know I have something during the week, I do a better job of logging on the weekend. I've been maintaining for almost a year now. And I don't go hog wild. No fast food or anything. We were at a dinner party Friday, and it would have been weird to not eat the delicious chicken parmesan!
  • cpayagen
    cpayagen Posts: 4
    You can still have a cheat day. 99% of the people on these forums saying "no cheat day" have cheat days ALL THE TIME! My calories at maintenance is 2200. I eat 2200 calories everyday but once every 2 weeks, I have my cheat day and eat as much as I want. Obviously you can't have a cheat day often, but once every two weeks is sufficient. Also, you'll notice that when you have a cheat day, you won't want to eat after that big meal. So what I suggest on your cheat day is to skip breakfast and eat as much as you can past noon. You'll find that you won't want to eat anything after 8PM because their is still some food in your stomach.
  • husseycd
    husseycd Posts: 814 Member
    This what I do also. I just stay a little under for 5 days a week and then relax on the weekends. Or, if I know I have something during the week, I do a better job of logging on the weekend. I've been maintaining for almost a year now. And I don't go hog wild. No fast food or anything. We were at a dinner party Friday, and it would have been weird to not eat the delicious chicken parmesan!

    Right. You'll never see me eat an entire cake or quart of ice cream. A major indulgent event, like Thanksgiving, I don't even worry about. It's the ones that happen on a regular basis that I account for. Like drinks with friends, or dinner out...

    As far as eating very low calories on a regular basis (such as 1-2x/week), supposedly there are health benefits to it. Intermittent fasting...I don't follow it, but haven't discounted it either.
  • Wingg_
    Wingg_ Posts: 395 Member
    If you aren't accurately tracking food intake, and are eating very inconsistent amounts from week to week, you're going to have a very difficult time establishing maintenance calories. It's fine to eat a little less on some days and more on others; but you still need a certain degree of consistency.

    So I should restart my journey of finding maintenance calorie and start tracking calories of my rice accurately? I am suppose to weight the rice dry and not cooked right according to the nutrition info given on the package... Im confused.

    It doesn't matter which one you use, so long as you add it correctly into your diary, You can search for both dried or cooked rice on here. Dried rice is a heck of a lot easier to weight

    But for the brand that I'm using it only has the calories shown on the package and it didn't mention if it's dry or cooked rice. It's really not much rice when I measure it when it's cooked considering the amount of calories it has.
  • Wingg_
    Wingg_ Posts: 395 Member
    I don't binge often because I normally include chocolates and chips in my diet (in proportion of course) due the the fact that I'm scared of gaining weight. Now that I know I can eat under maintenance for the week and go over maintenance calorie a little on weekends is great!
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
    I don't binge often because I normally include chocolates and chips in my diet (in proportion of course) due the the fact that I'm scared of gaining weight. Now that I know I can eat under maintenance for the week and go over maintenance calorie a little on weekends is great!

    That doesn't sound like a binge. That sounds like eating.

    Most people who keep their weight off do exactly what you do - eat what they wants and include it in their calorie intake.
  • D8vidFitness
    D8vidFitness Posts: 104
    Don't think calories when you cheat,

    cheat days can motivate you to keep proactive throughout the week until your next cheat.

    Cheat day is like a reward, you wouldn't want to reward yourself less for all the hard work you've done.

    However, that is all up to you,

    best wishes
  • colortheworld
    colortheworld Posts: 374 Member
    I'd go with averaging your calorie intake by the week rather than the day. Some days you just aren't as hungry as others, so why not save those extra calories you don't really want for a day you do want them?
  • Wingg_
    Wingg_ Posts: 395 Member
    Don't think calories when you cheat,

    cheat days can motivate you to keep proactive throughout the week until your next cheat.

    Cheat day is like a reward, you wouldn't want to reward yourself less for all the hard work you've done.

    However, that is all up to you,

    best wishes

    I shall not think of calories during the buffet then! I shall reward myself!
  • Wingg_
    Wingg_ Posts: 395 Member
    I'd go with averaging your calorie intake by the week rather than the day. Some days you just aren't as hungry as others, so why not save those extra calories you don't really want for a day you do want them?

    I will do this after I've figured out my maintenance calorie intake to maintain my weight now! Thanks for the advice!! (:
  • mlogantra76
    mlogantra76 Posts: 334 Member
    I like to call it a treat day and I try to make it a treat meal. I don't starve myself on other days but I try to keep my calories lower so it averages out in the end. I am trying to eat to satisfaction these days. If I have a craving for something, a serving should do. I tell myself I don't need to eat it till I feel sick. I weigh myself daily so this is helping monitor things.I should say I exercise a lot as I'm running my first half marathon on Sunday.
  • Wingg_
    Wingg_ Posts: 395 Member
    I like to call it a treat day and I try to make it a treat meal. I don't starve myself on other days but I try to keep my calories lower so it averages out in the end. I am trying to eat to satisfaction these days. If I have a craving for something, a serving should do. I tell myself I don't need to eat it till I feel sick. I weigh myself daily so this is helping monitor things.I should say I exercise a lot as I'm running my first half marathon on Sunday.

    I can see that you;ve a great mindset there, good luck for your marathon!

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