Cheat day?

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  • TheVimFuego
    TheVimFuego Posts: 2,412 Member
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    I typically don't worry about calories on Sundays. I still log my food and try and get some exercise in, normally in the form of an activity, but I eat whatever I'm craving. I find that while I do go over my limit for the day, I rarely use up the leftover calories from the previous 6 days.

    Yeh, that's pretty much me too.

    My working week means I tend to be well under my daily goal so I treat Sunday as a 'metabolic reset' day and deliberately go over the goal if I've been under all week.

    Not by a ridiculous amount and still eating good quality food though.

    I think keeping the body guessing is a decent strategy ...
  • kuntry_navy
    kuntry_navy Posts: 677 Member
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    I use my cheat day to get the max amount of carbohydrates I can in a day. I usually eat under 100g and on a cheat day it's all about filling up on carbs from all varieties.
  • DzenisZukovic
    DzenisZukovic Posts: 360 Member
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    I don't have a cheat "day".. I just have a cheat meal once a week! Typical Friday or Saturday, just to keep my body guessing. Shock the system a little bit, so when the "unhealthy" food comes into my body, my body thing" What the h*** is this? You don't eat this kind of food" So I kind of "wake up" my body, because it's been digesting the healthy food the whole week, so it's probably not working as much now, so I just kind of shock it by eat some unhealthy so make it "wake up" lol .. But I do it in the early day, so I have time to burn the extra calories I get from the food.. So I don't totally fall of track. :)
  • SyStEmPhReAk
    SyStEmPhReAk Posts: 330 Member
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    I am currently consuming calories around maintenance, but I still refer to my Saturday's as cheat days and I will eat whatever i want without regards to calories or macros. Here is my OPINION on cheat days/cheat meals...

    Depending on (1) How much weight/body fat you want to lose and (2) what your time frame is, cheat days or cheat meals may or may not be ok.

    What I mean by that is this: I have friends who are bodybuilders and fitness competitors. When they prep for a show, there are NO cheat meals. They adhere to a strict caloric deficit and DO NOT deviate from it. These are people that have a definite deadline to be at top form so they cannot mess around with their diet. After the competition, however, they will do a cheat day about once a week. HOWEVER, most people are not in competition like my friends so they do not fall into that category.

    What I have found for myself is that I will typically gain about 4-5lbs (mostly water weight) when i have a cheat day once a week and less, or not much at all, if i do a cheat meal once a week. After eating clean for the next 5-6 days, my weight is back down to where i was prior to the cheat meal. So for every cheat day that I have (and these can be epic cheat days btw), it takes a few days for my body to get back to normal. This, I have noticed, is what most people will experience with a cheat day. Being that I'm looking to maintain my weight right now, this is perfectly fine with me.

    So with that said, if you are the type of person that has an "x date" to see results by and you need to see the scale going down on a weekly basis, you may want to wait until you reach your goal or get close to your goal before having a cheat day/meal. If a cheat day is going to erase the progress you've made over the past week, you may get discouraged by this. However, if you have a longer horizon on your weight/body fat loss then the fluctuations in weight may not bother you - just as long as you see the scale moving down over time. So the farther out you are from your goals, the more you may want to limit the frequency of a cheat day/cheat meal. Instead of once a week, it may be once every 3 weeks or so.

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