Dogmeat's thoughts on weight loss

All this being said, absolutes won't work for most people. If you really, really like something, even if it's unhealthy, don't decide to deprive yourself from it for the rest of your life. You'll likely fail anyway, and enough small failures might lead to giving up altogether. Be it beer, doritos, twinkies, mountain dew, whatever - if you really like them, allow yourself to have them, in moderation, and not too often.

I like Panago's Super Cheezy Pizza, Tim Horton's Boston Cream Doughnuts, Diet Dr. Pepper, A&W Root Beer, for example. I generally squeeze my vices in a regular, within calorie goals day, not to a specific "cheat day", but you might want to do differently.

And on the topic of "cheat days", here's my take on them. I believe having one every 7-10 days or so is beneficial. The most important thing about cheat days is that they're NOT cheat days. You're not "cheating" your diet. You're engaging in a deliberate, controlled plan to both keep your metabolism going and giving you a chance to feel less restricted (if this is an issue for you). MARK everything down. This is very, very important. Skipping food diary days tends to lead to higher chances of giving up counting altogether. You want to know what to expect after your cheat day. I prefer to fill up the extra calories of an over day with nuts, you might want to use it to go for stuff you crave.

On cheat days, or "over days", I hit my maintenance level or go SLIGHTLY above it. "Slightly" doesn't mean over by 5000 Calories. Go above no more than you go under on a regular day. If you go above by 3000kcal (it's not very difficult to do, even by accident) on a cheat day every week, and follow 500kcal deficit the other 6 days, your net outcome is +-0.

Thus my thinking is, if you're trying to lose fat, the best way to do that is with a moderate, sustained cardio heavy schedule. Maybe 4 to 5 days of cardio with 2 to 3 days of weight training, ALWAYS on different days (because the two types of activity mitigate each other's effectiveness). The weight training will activate muscle growth and recovery and bone calcium and potassium replacement (much more important to muscle health than people give it credit for) and as such is important for fat burning, but the cardio is what will really burn the fat.