Binge Fridays? Yay or Nay?

My most honest opinion is that without doubt you can still keep losing by doing that BUT binging is not going to help you in the long term, especially when it comes to changing your attitude towards food.

Personally I think it's totally fine (say once a week) to eat things you wouldn't include in your every day diet (otherwise we'd all go mad!) but the idea of a binge day goes against what I'm trying to teach myself in order to be able to maintain my goal weight when I get there. "satisfying those junk food cravings" doesn't mean that I can't keep an eye on quantity!

In my opinion, a much better solution is to have what other people call a "cheat meal" rather than a full day of pigging out!

I guess it depends on what works for you and contributed to your weight gain in the first place.

Binging is a bad habit... why do you need to binge? If you still have that mentality I think it's the start of a slippery slope. If you fancy something work it into your week, rather than eating it all on one day.

PS - I've lost 54lbs and since I allowed myself to have an 'off' day I haven't lost a pound.. Needless to say I'm back to 7 days consistency.

Nay for me - my weight in day is Saturday am!

I don't binge - I'm not sure that is healthy way to relate to food. If you don't disallow anything, then nothing becomes forbidden and more tempting. Eat within your allowance, some days you may go under or over - it's no biggy as long as the weekly totals add up.

well I'm all in favour of eating *what* you want, but if you're having a whole day of both what and whatever quantity, it is possible to eat enough in that one day to cancel out your deficit for the whole week. This depends on how big your deficit is to begin with, and also how much you manage to eat on your cheat day, and what kinds of foods you eat (some very high calorie density foods it's easy to eat over 1000 cals in one go... do that three or four times in a day and you're waaaaay over your TDEE and starting to eat up your weekly deficit....)

the short answer is that this probably will work for some people (e.g. those who can't physically eat that much, or whose cheat foods are not that high in calories...) but it's going to fail badly for some people.

There are some eating plans I've seen on the internet that combine this kind of thing with fast days, low carb days, low calorie days etc... I guess that must work for some people but personally 6 days of too much restriction then 1 day of bingeing seems a) to be actually a lot more gruelling than just eating at a moderate deficit each day and b) I don't think excessive restriction followed by bingeing is a healthy mindset to be in. In some people this may even trigger eating disorders. also c) for some people even with excessive restriction during the week, they can still manage to eat enough on "cheat day" to kill the entire week's deficit.

What I do is I have a moderate deficit, one that enables me to eat enough that I don't end up with really strong cravings or hunger, then I fit whatever foods that I really want to eat into my calories, after I'm sure that I'm giving my body enough nutrition (protein, fat, carbs, fruit, veg), so I don't end up feeling the need to binge at all. I also have "cheat" meals (but not entire days) where I don't count calories but not too often and I stop when I'm no longer hungry.... and days when I forget to log what I eat (although I eat my usual kinds and amounts of foods on those days so not likely to be under or over by much if at all)....

An alternative to this is maybe to have a day when you eat what you like, so long as you stay within your calorie goal (or make it a refeed and eat your TDEE on those days) or something like that.... then the rest of the week eat at a deficit and include all the healthy foods. That way you can be sure you're not killing your weekly deficit by eating too much of those foods.

If you're successfully losing fat and improving your body composition and getting enough nutrition while doing what you're doing, then there's no reason stop. But if you're asking "will this work?" my answer would be probably not for a lot of people.

I have not had a binge since I started to eat more
I am maintaining at well over 2000 calories, so I can fit whatever treat I like into my day.
Depriving yourself can lead to really bad binges.
But I guess it can work for some

Wow. Thankyou for all the great - and speedy - advice guys!

I like the idea of cheat meals.
I guess my only concern is that if I consume some of my favourite foods (I'm a big fan of things from the bakery) throughout the week as part of my diet it may get me into a mentality where they are no longer a special friday treat and so, I'll just eat them whenever and return back to my original eating habits.

I think I will try and do cheat meal fridays as opposed to whole days and try and keep those kcals in the 2000 region. So it's within the recommended daily amount still but just exceeds my diet kcal daily goal for one day.

Thankyou for all your help, you guys have been really helpful. Back to normal eating routine today - feeling rather heavy after last night!

I think the plan is fine. Like I said, its perfectly OK if you want to have cheat meals in the start to perfect your other days. Keep things simple. As long as you're under calories over the week in general, you're fine. Or a little bit above the cals. Basically, around the calories. Just when you think you've got the other days down well, try and slowly move away from the cheat days and try to eat the yummies daily

Wow. Thankyou for all the great - and speedy - advice guys!

I like the idea of cheat meals.
I guess my only concern is that if I consume some of my favourite foods (I'm a big fan of things from the bakery) throughout the week as part of my diet it may get me into a mentality where they are no longer a special friday treat and so, I'll just eat them whenever and return back to my original eating habits.

My experience from doing this is that yes, they stop being a special treat, and start being run of the mill foods, and I can take them or leave them. As I still have calorie/macro goals, these run of the mill foods that used to be on my forbidden food list and "must have" foods, I kind of vaguely fancy them sometimes, then think "hmmm that's rather a lot of calories, fat and carbs, I'd rather "spend" my extra calories, fat and carbs on something that I really, really want, rather than just vaguely fancy" - and what I really want is usually something that's just as delicious (or signifcantly more delicious), but more nutritious (i.e. higher in protein, healthier kind of fat, more vitamins, minerals, etc). (and even if it's not, if it's something I want that badly, I'll fit it in my macros/calorie goals and have it anyway.... and that's still not going back to old habits, because it's paying careful attention to portion control)

If you're teaching yourself a whole new way of eating and changing your relationship with food, you won't go back to your old habits. And IMO there's a lot of benefit of foods being in the "run of the mill/take them or leave them" category, rather than the "mmm special treat, must eat" category.

I think I will try and do cheat meal fridays as opposed to whole days and try and keep those kcals in the 2000 region. So it's within the recommended daily amount still but just exceeds my diet kcal daily goal for one day.

This sounds like a good plan.