Cheat day or cheat meal?

I am odd... i eat whatever as long as it fits in my cals for the day. this is because i lost almost 2 stone eating mega healthy and then disappeared for a month or so and just about managed to stay the same.. im easing myself in this time. as i go along i will try and get healthier, but i think denying yourself of everything will make you want it more! so im neither, but both at the same time lol!

I vary my number of calories so that I have some higher days and lower days. On the higher calorie days, I might have something I wouldn't be able to fit into a lower calorie day (like eating out or a couple of margaritas).

Since I plan it into my calories, I don't consider it "cheating", and I do track everything.

I allow myself one day but I dont go crazy. I will have a meal with a friend or treat myself to a coffee *full fat*. Like monday was my "cheat/treat" day and I had pizza at my favorite place and two big salads (with thousand island dressing which to me is a treat in itself). I only went over 1500 calories by 200 so I didn't view that as a fail. I think those are needed to keep you sane. Now I don't reccommend going off to the extent where you are eating extremely bad for a whole day.

I think one cheat meal would be better perhaps rather than the whole day.
I stay at my boyfriends Sat/Sun nights and we tend to have a takeaway or something on one of those nights and cook something the other night.
It keeps me sane lol

I have a cheat meal. I eat clean all week and all day on Wednesdays. But, on Wednesday night I go out for fajitas and ritas and usually have something sweet after, like Peanut M&M's or some kind of chocolate.

I can't do cheat meals. It messes my weight up, and I don't find it worth it.

Cheat day is a pure disaster for me... Cheat meals usually happen after a work out so im trying to pick up ready made salads/pasta salads/sandwiches from tesco after workouts now instead of just heading to the takeaway

I have really good meals all the time. I don't have to cheat to do it. Last night I had steak and mashed potatoes and wonderful vegetables with an ice cream sundae (it was my son's birthday). With half a beer. All in my 1310 calories.

I just had a SMALL sundae and a very small serving of mashed potatoes.

Eating too much makes me feel sick. The first taste is always the best. One of the things that I have learned is that small helpings of wonderful, delicious food are more satisifying - AND make me feel better - than overeating.

check out this article, i just read it today.. might be good with helping you answer your question. really put some things into perspective for me : http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/nutrition_articles.asp?id=1753

all the answers I wanted!

A couple of weeks into my healthy diet I had a cheat day and the next day my stomach hated me for it. Now I allow myself treats if I have enough calories left and try to do good cheats like gettin bbq rancher salad at KFC. Delish but under 200 cals.

I do 90% clean/fresh/healthy food and 10% treats that fit into my limits (usually). Therefore I never binge or blow the whole week.

I have 1 good high calorie high fat meal a week. But, even then I try to not eat white carbs. At this point I don't even like bad carbs so why bother. Ohhhh except for a good hard roll.. If I could get one here in the south it would be game on. LOL.

Cheating is Baaad.....

However that depends on your definition of cheating.
To me, cheating is eating a shedload, not logging it then wondering why you didn't loose, or even worse gained that week.

Now what you're talking about here to me seems like a treat. You have something really nice as a treat, and you log it. Hopefully you had enough calories through the week for it not to take your weekly average over your target and all is fine.

More to the point, if you logged it, you were way over and didn't loose you at least know why you didn't loose and can make informed decisions ongoing. maybe half a treat next week! Just keep half an eye on that weekly average and you'll be fine.

You intro sounded like we aren't just talking special occasions here, but more like a regulary occurring event ... so I am answering accordingly.

Are you disciplined enough to "write whatever you bite" even on "cheat all day" days? So that you can look back at the data at a later time and decide if it was worth it? Or does Cheat Day mean no logging either? That would be VERY DOUBLY dangerous, because you might be thinking it "wasn't so bad" but if you had added it all up, you would shock youself to see it in black and white later.

If you respond to "Cheat day" as license to "eat bad the entire day" - that is NOT a good thing. It can become tooooo psycologically easy to extend.

If you are able to treat it more like hunter624 does, where "Cheatday" (or "Treatday") is like the name of a day on the calendar when you allow yourself a Treat (that you make a big mental deal out of savouring, but HAVE to work around the calorie-cost of the delight either on the day or by the following day), you can avoid the Elephant in the Room of "Never Being Able To Have[ProblemFood] Again" thinking, which tends to lead to obsessing about what you can't have - and giving short shrift to what you can.

Only proviso: If you are early in your MFP journey, and "having just the one" tends to automatically trigger "blow the rest of the day" response - you might be better off with "just for now, I am bypassing [ProblemFood] so that I can concentrate on discovering NEW favourites"

They can be anything that are only-just within acceptable limits but either harder to come by, take longer to make or at the high-calorie end of OK. And once your new eating habits have a chance to take hold, you may find that your tastes have changed and the [old ProblemFood] now seems too sweet / salty / rich / whatever, and no longer worth the "price".

once a month i have a treat meal, but it's a big one. i have chicken mole and two margaritas at a local mexican restaurant. i'm still losing 4 pounds a month.

the day before and after i cut back a little on calories.