CHEAT DAYS!

HMonsterX

I honestly know that if I dont "relax" with it now and again I wont stick to it.

Instead of "relaxing" 100% once a week, try "relaxing" 10-20% every day. Makes it seem much less like a diet and more like something you could do forever.

VeganGal84

I am FINALLY realizing that my "cheat" day was a bad idea for me. :grumble:

For me, the cheat day is using a lot of my weekly and activity points (Weight Watchers!) on Saturday. So not really cheating, because I was still tracking, but a much higher calorie day than Sunday through Friday.

This is not something that I really wanted to let go of, because it worked for me for such a long time to have one higher calorie day a week.

Unfortunately, lately it's been taking longer and longer to get back on track after the weekly cheat day. Like Saturday = eat anything! And Sunday felt like torture and deprivation and I would keep on overeating a bit until finally getting back on track by Wednesday... and then it would all start over again on Saturday.

Doing this has lead to a slow creep back up the scale over the past several weeks.

So, I'm done with my weekly cheat day for now. :sad:

emtess123

I probably have a cheat day once or twice a week, usually on weekends! I usually go about 500/600 cals over my 1200 allowance, sometimes more if i have done a lot of exercise that day. Im not sure if it is slowing down my weightloss or not but i do know that if i dont 'let go' every now and again and have a nice tea and some treats i will give in! Allowing myself a day off every now and again means i stay motivated for the rest of the time!

zippo32

.............call them spike days!

ADobs

I have a "cheat" day once a week and eat whatever I crave throughout the week and double my calories. It sort of serves to "shock" my metabolism and give it a boost. This is from the "Spike Diet" theory so in other words it spikes my metabolism. The rest of the week I eat super healhty and clean with no junk whatsoever. I'm sure it does hinder my weight loss/maintenance, but it's what I can maintain for the rest of my life. If I gave up this food forever, it would be worse in the long-run. Plus when I have my one spike day, I find it so much easier to maintain my clean diet the rerst of the week as I don't find myself craving anything!

ADobs

.............call them spike days!

yay - meeeee tooo!!!

midnightbirch

I don't like negative words like cheat. I would be cheating myself. I seldom eat all of my goal calories but always above 1200. I eat a buffalo sirloin sometimes but still keep my goals. I shop at whole foods and watch my fat,sodium,cholesterol and sugar and find I can eat some very tasty satisfying meals without the guilt. I feel alive again and don't even desire to go back to junk (non-food). I have not had carbonated soft drinks for six years! I drink water and Braggs apple cider drinks. No cheating for me!

ladyphoto

I am FINALLY realizing that my "cheat" day was a bad idea for me. :grumble:

For me, the cheat day is using a lot of my weekly and activity points (Weight Watchers!) on Saturday. So not really cheating, because I was still tracking, but a much higher calorie day than Sunday through Friday.

This is not something that I really wanted to let go of, because it worked for me for such a long time to have one higher calorie day a week.

Unfortunately, lately it's been taking longer and longer to get back on track after the weekly cheat day. Like Saturday = eat anything! And Sunday felt like torture and deprivation and I would keep on overeating a bit until finally getting back on track by Wednesday... and then it would all start over again on Saturday.

Doing this has lead to a slow creep back up the scale over the past several weeks.

So, I'm done with my weekly cheat day for now. :sad:

couldn't have said it better myself! I have had teh same problem- and- my "free for all days" went from one day, to two, to three... the scale doesn't move and I get frustrated. Really silly and really simple. No more "cheat" days for me either.

midnightbirch

I think you are making the right choice. in my opinion cheat days are a trap for addictions. You can treat yourself to healthy alternatives once in a while but eat anything mentality is what put many of us in trouble to begin with. &4 lbs is an accomplishment don 't cheat yourself!

missikay1970

my cheat days have been the key to my losing. on a TREAT day, i will eat one meal that is out-of-control. such as, double cheese burger & fries with a soda. about 800 calories or more for one meal. the other meals i either eat light or don't eat at all. i don't feel guilty. i do it about once every 2 weeks. i've lost 11 lbs. so far in the past 2 months.

TonnaJai

I don't necessarily call it cheat days but I do have them and I don't feel like they hinder me but actuallly help since I spend the week working hard and making up for it the following day. It helps me to be able to still eat the foods I love and not hate the process of dieting and weight loss

kendib

I'm finding that the more I'm eating healthy and working out, the less I crave crap.

I second that. I usually eat more calories and unhealthy things on days that my husband is off work. We tend to eat out more. I do well the other days. I have recently found that even on these days I'm not craving the unhealthy things like I used to. But if I do eat them, I don't stress. Just start a new day. I'm not going to get down on myself because I had a piece of birthday cake or whatever.

finchase

A few weeks ago my weight actually began to rise, even though I'd been working out hard and staying rigidly within or below my daily calorie count. I was not happy about this. I talked to someone about this (a personal trainer), and he advised me to really exceed my calorie count that weekend. He said my body was becoming accustomed to the amount that I was feeding it and it was starting to hold on to the weight. Well, the next weekend I went out to dinner and had a big meal which I think was more than my daily calorie all by itself, and the next morning I even allowed myself a blueberry muffin with butter. I still continued to work out those days because cheating didn't mean I should be lazy. Anyway, it worked because within a few days I started to lose weight again.

So now I'm a believer in having a periodic cheat meal so my body doesn't become too accustomed. I just try and plan these days. Tomorrow will be a cheat meal because I'm meeting family for lunch and I'm thinking about a hamburger (first one in months.) Thanksgiving will be a cheat day, as will Christmas. I'm just trying to plan my eating in advance so that these days will fit in and help me towards my goal.

AngelikaLumiere

My husband & I are trying to create a long term healthy life style. Six days a week we eat small well balanced meals, with fresh fruit and vegetables, but we both love to eat really good food, you know, high calorie gourmet cuisine. So if we meet our goals during the week, we spend Saturday morning or afternoon indulging in one of those meals (calories equal to one days normal consumption). It gives us something to look forward to, it satisfies the desire for delicious food and we don't feel deprived. Ever since we started doing this I have not had a bad week. It is a cheat day in the sense that we are off our daily healthy food and small meals, but we usually make up the difference in calories by doing something Saturday afternoon. Doing something special, once a week, makes the whole thing sustainable and fun for us and since our goal is to create a life style that we can continue after the extra weight is off this works for us.

rockstarginaa

I don't have many cheat "days," but I do have a cheat "meal or dessert" every once in awhile. I'll have a cheat day if there is an event or something if the choices are all bad. I'll have a cheat meal, but if it's really bad I'll only eat half so it's not as bad.

Espressocycle

I cheat whenever I damn well feel like it and make it up the next couple days. Some people refer to this as zig zag dietting. I refer to it as sometimes I want to get drunk and eat a big greasy burger.

shelly650

I dont have cheat days, but instead every sunday I allow myself a treat once it fits in with my daily calories! If I go over a little bit I dont sweat!! For instance this sunday Im planning on having a moro bar while watching the X Factor!! Once you dont go overboard then it shouldnt be a problem!!

sailed2japan

I feel alive again and don't even desire to go back to junk (non-food). I have not had carbonated soft drinks for six years!

Awesome!

I agree with having one day a week where you eat some things you wouldn't while on your meal plan. I feel it really helps mentally. the key is to not eat the junk stuuf, though. For instance: a 97/3 lean beef burger w/ swiss cheese and sauted mushrooms and onions on a whole wheat sandwich thin and baked sweet potatoe fries is way over my nomal meal calory count with a fruit smoothie to drink, but still heathier than a burger fries and a milk shake from (insert crappy fast food resteraunt here). That's my kind of treat/cheat/spike/bump/binge/whatever

sailed2japan

I forgot to say that I feel Sunday is te best day to go off-plan. Then you jump back into the work week routine, back on the meal plan, back to the gym. I feel like the one away is like a little vacation. Also doing Saturday as a break then being at the house Sunday makes it easier to go off track in my mind. If you are at work you only have the food you brought.

kjannan

I don't have cheat days, some days I HAVE to eat so much just to meet my calories that I feel like I'm cheating!!

On Wednesday nights we have takeaways but I stay within my calories. Thursday is my rest day & on Friday it's weigh in day & I've usually lost at least 1lb.

I'm so used to eating healthily now I don't think I could have cheat days if I tried.

tameko2

I "cheat" everyday! IMO, there's no reason to cut anything you like out of your diet as long as you stay within your calorie allowance.

^ And in addition to the lengthy reply I gave, I fully agree with this and apply this myself (IIFYM).

That being said, in the context of the OP's post I'm referring to a cheat day as one where you don't hit your macros.

I also assumed the OP meant cheating on your calorie intake (or macros) rather than on 'eating healthy' or whatnot.

And to answer - I have them but they aren't super regimented. And I don't think of them as 'cheat' days per se. I just have days where I think "Darnit I'm gonna eat this ________ and I don't care if its 200 calories over my daily maintenance goal"

Because I don't care.

I wouldn't sweat whatever you did honestly - if you are like most people you have tons of days every week where you don't eat all your recommended daily calories or you don't eat all your exercise calories or whatever.

I like to tell people this: MFP has me set to 1680 calories before working out. If I want to eat all my exercise calories, I do it. If I want to eat all my exercise calories AND dig into my deficit (I only have a 250 cal deficit now, but i used to have a 500 calorie one which is a lot) then I do it. If I want to go over my deficit by a little bit I do that too although I try not to go like 1000 over and I try not to do it multiple days in a row.

And if I want to eat 1500 calories some days, I do that too

In my opinion this is normal healthy weight maintenance -- not the deficit but the schedule where some days you eat a little bit less and some days you eat a little bit more. "Naturally" thin people (people who don't seem to have any trouble staying at a reasonably low weight - maybe they 'put on a few pounds' here or there but generally they are a healthy weight) don't really think about their daily calories. They think about things in terms of several days or a week - like my friend will kind of pig out on the weekends but then over the next week he'll say "oh I can't have that, I really pigged out this weekend" - so maybe he goes up 2 lbs over the weekend and then he drops those 2 lbs over the rest of the week. That's maintenance for him.

You can pretty much do the same thing for weight loss -- as long as you have a net deficit of Calories Burned > Calories Eaten over SEVERAL days or even several weeks, your weight will go down.

Marcel7

What my wife is saying is absolutely true. It's all about being reasonable and sensible in your portions.

ninerbuff

Cheat days don't really work because once people reach goal, they cheat more and guess what...........................the weight returns. And for people that eat that strict, I feel sorry that you can't enjoy life the way you really want to.

Breadoholic

I "cheat" everyday! IMO, there's no reason to cut anything you like out of your diet as long as you stay within your calorie allowance.

^ And in addition to the lengthy reply I gave, I fully agree with this and apply this myself (IIFYM).

That being said, in the context of the OP's post I'm referring to a cheat day as one where you don't hit your macros.

I also assumed the OP meant cheating on your calorie intake (or macros) rather than on 'eating healthy' or whatnot.

And to answer - I have them but they aren't super regimented. And I don't think of them as 'cheat' days per se. I just have days where I think "Darnit I'm gonna eat this ________ and I don't care if its 200 calories over my daily maintenance goal"

Because I don't care.

I wouldn't sweat whatever you did honestly - if you are like most people you have tons of days every week where you don't eat all your recommended daily calories or you don't eat all your exercise calories or whatever.

I like to tell people this: MFP has me set to 1680 calories before working out. If I want to eat all my exercise calories, I do it. If I want to eat all my exercise calories AND dig into my deficit (I only have a 250 cal deficit now, but i used to have a 500 calorie one which is a lot) then I do it. If I want to go over my deficit by a little bit I do that too although I try not to go like 1000 over and I try not to do it multiple days in a row.

And if I want to eat 1500 calories some days, I do that too

In my opinion this is normal healthy weight maintenance -- not the deficit but the schedule where some days you eat a little bit less and some days you eat a little bit more. "Naturally" thin people (people who don't seem to have any trouble staying at a reasonably low weight - maybe they 'put on a few pounds' here or there but generally they are a healthy weight) don't really think about their daily calories. They think about things in terms of several days or a week - like my friend will kind of pig out on the weekends but then over the next week he'll say "oh I can't have that, I really pigged out this weekend" - so maybe he goes up 2 lbs over the weekend and then he drops those 2 lbs over the rest of the week. That's maintenance for him.

You can pretty much do the same thing for weight loss -- as long as you have a net deficit of Calories Burned > Calories Eaten over SEVERAL days or even several weeks, your weight will go down.

Thanks for the reply mate. Very logical.

Christina