Is it good to have a cheat day??

To me, there are a couple of different problems with "cheat" days. And these do not even address the problem for me, which is that I'm a very habit-based person. I'm almost Rain Man like in my routines, and when I'm on a routine of good habits, it's important for me to capitalize on that.

But the bigger problem with cheat days is that they implicate an ideal about food that contributes to poor health in the first place. Why do people eat poorly? There are many reasons. Most of them are emotional. They eat pizza not because pizza tastes better than a piece of salmon, but because pizza has emotional attachment. They remember pizza parties, and they associate pizza with youth or some other positive experience. In some cases, the emotion is grief. People use food to fill voids, however those voids are caused.

When you engage in a "cheat" day, you are going back to using food in the way it's not supposed to be used. Food is fuel for your body. In our society, eating is a social activity, but that does not change the fact that food has one primary purpose. If you need to feel better, get a hug from your family members or friends. If you want to remember your youth, look at pictures or go to a ballgame. Those things don't wreck and ruin your health. Cheat days take food out of the fuel category and put it somewhere else, and a person who engages in cheat days is viewing food in the wrong way.

Likewise, cheat days say something to me about identity. The idea being that the person taking the cheat day in some ways sees the diet as something that is taking him away from his true self - that self being a big eater. It's like saying, "Man, I've done so well, so I'm going to reward myself by being that bad eater again. In my estimation, the best way to get fit is to change your mind about what you are. You don't have to be fat or out of shape. You are a human being with incredible potential, and living up to that potential is just the product of many small, good decisions. That is the identity that people should cling to. A cheat day treats overindulgence as a positive, and though it may not wreck a diet long-term, it says some powerful things about the resolve of the person taking that sort of day.

Me? I get off on non-cheat days. It feels much better to go to bed knowing I worked my body hard and fed it the right fuel...even if it's the 100th consecutive day I've been able to say that. In fact, ESPECIALLY if it's the 100th day.

I have days where my calories are quite high, but they're usually planned, so I don't really think of them as "cheat" days. I also plan days where my calories are very low, so that it balances out over the course of the week.