Anyone have a "blow the eating" day a week?

To answer your question, yes.. I sometimes have a cheat day. I had a cheat day this week and still lost a pound. If you eat around the same exact calorie allowance every single day, your body gets used to this amount and doesn't work as hard to burn calories. If you vary your intake by doing one cheat day a week or one every other week, you are telling your body to work harder to get rid of all that crap you just put into it. I find that this helps with cravings, and normally you will not feel the greatest afterwards, leaving you wanting only wholesome healthy food the rest of the week. You have to have dicsipline though. You can't do it everyday, or every other day.
I don't know if you follow Jillian Michaels or not but this is what she has to say about eating. She says that staying at the same can cause plateaus.
"Eat more: Ninety percent of the time plateaus are caused by your body's survival mechanism of protecting against famine, which is triggered by calorie reduction. The best way to fix this quickly is to give your body a little more food so it feels secure.

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Varying your calorie intake is my best advice for keeping your body from plateauing:

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For a couple days vary your calorie intake between 1,800 and 2,400 calories. I know this may sound crazy, but trust me...I know what I'm doing. Then, after three days, drop back down to the calorie allowance."
Hope that this helps.

What I did was accidental, same I doubt can be said for you.

That was a lovely undertaking of accountability. Save for the accusatory bit at the end. No, my post was not accidental, I'm not sure anyone would think it was.

Anyway, good luck in your journey.

I am absolutely accountable for what I said, I clearly offended people and that I am very regretful for as its the last thing I want to do.
I have no problem being corrected when wrong, its just how it is done that is important.

Again. Apologies for those offended and good luck in your journeys.


-Blake

The way I figure it if I am going to eat like a skinny person, they will have celebrations etc and then eat less the following days or eat less before. So as far as I am concerned a high cal day is OK as long as you make up for it later in the week.

The other thing I know is that my body adapts pretty quickly to the amount of cals I eat and then weight loss slows down. So I plan once a week to have a low day sometimes eating only 1000cal ( which will not put me in starvation mode just for one day) and then make up the difference the next day, sometimes on that day I will eat 200 cals over TDEE but the next day back to my MFP cals. As far as I am concerned it is not binging it is a high cal day a planned day. If it were binging it would be out of control. I understand that there are purists who believe in eating weight loss cals or the time and eating clean all the time and it works for them that's great. At present I am doing what works for me and making slow changes that will last.

Hi There: Sundays are my hardest day-especially if the weather is rainy and damp.
I am learning about myself while tracking all these calories and exercise.
It's a process right?
Have a great week!

Absolutely not. Your either doing it or your not, can't have it both ways.
Most I have done in 16days is go over cals by 200, every other day I have been below. I'm down from 90.3 to 86kg.

Put foods you enjoy in your allowance and eat wise with the rest of it.

Cheat days are for those with weak discipline set to fail!

Sixteen whole days? Ah. Well, I suppose that makes you an expert.

Good luck.

At no point did I claim to be an expert and it was a opinion, one which I have already agreed wasn't thought out.
The last time I checked a forums main purpose was to share opinions rather than to try belittle people xwith sarcastic comments.

Not that its all that important I have for more experience with fitness than 16 days anyway.

Good luck to you too.

It is good to increase your daily caloric goal for one day of the week while on a caloric deficit diet. If you stay eating a low calorie diet for a long period of time, over time your metabolism will find ways to preserve energy, and lower your basal metabolic rate- therefore putting you out of a deficit. This process doesn't happen over night, and it affects some more than others, but by increasing calories by 500-700 more than your deficit you will slow the process of your metabolism slowing itself down a lot.

This happened to me, and sucks.
OP, keep it up.

I cannot understand the logic behind 'cheat' days. The only person you are cheating is yourself and you are making eating unhealthy, or too much, food, into something to look forward to and to aspire to. Surely you should be aspiring to that overworked phrase, 'a lifestyle change'? Part of my lifestyle change is that things I used to snack on daily are now something I eat in small quantities occasionally and always within my calorie allowance. Even then I find my tastes changing and the candy type chocolate I used to eat a lot is now too sweet for me, so I eat more healthy and less calorific dark chocolate, and not very much of it.

To me it's like cheating at golf, going out one day a week and not counting all your strokes so you can boast about how good you are.

Ron, the first three sentences sum it up PERFECTLY. Making food into a "reward".

Absolutely not. Your either doing it or your not, can't have it both ways.
Most I have done in 16days is go over cals by 200, every other day I have been below. I'm down from 90.3 to 86kg.

Put foods you enjoy in your allowance and eat wise with the rest of it.

Cheat days are for those with weak discipline set to fail!

^^ I respect your choice to not do this but I totally disagree. I also find your opinion a little offensive - I do NOT have weak discipline, in fact I may actually be more disciplined than you because I can control it. And I'm NOT set to fail. You might not be able to have it both ways but I can! I'm down from 77.6kg to 65.4kg.

In response to the OP - Every Saturday I have a free day, where I eat whatever I feel like - not a binge day, just a 'eat not so healthily' day. And every Sunday I jump straight back on the bandwagon and carry on as usual. :bigsmile:

For better or for worse, I had an unintentional splurge day last Sat. I had basically 1000 calories over my norm. I wouldn't recommend it but the great thing is that in the past, I would've spiralled into shame, self-hatred, powerlessness & the cycle prolly woulda continued for a week. Since my roomie introduced me to MFP, the culture of openness allowed me to laugh at myself & disconnect the shame normally associated w/this. That's changed everything for me. Now if I could only apply that to all areas of my laugh lol.

I had a tonsillectomy 8 days ago, so I haven't been able to eat very much at all lately. I have been significantly under my calorie goal every day since the surgery, so you better believe that on the day I can eat normally again I will probably go over my daily goal! However, I don't have a cheat day in general, usually just one cheat meal or snack per week.

My strategy is absolutely the same: saving calories for a blow-eating day, so the weekly budget is still fine.

When I was losing, I usually had one day per week when I ate to maintenance or thereabouts. I never considered it cheating...I ate to a maintenance level of calories which means I wasn't over-eating. I think a lot of people are just way to hard on themselves and/or they don't understand that even if you go over your calorie goal, you're often still at a deficit of calories, just not as big of one.

OP...@ 2,500 calories you're probably close to maintenance (I'm 38 and 5'10" and maintain at around 2,700 calories)...I would't worry about it too much if it helps you keep your sanity. Just do understand that it might slow you down a little bit though (not much in the grand scheme of things).

I completely agree with you... your most likely right that is just what they recommended for me mine is 1300 calorie diet so on my one day ever 2 weeks im not aloud to go over 2000 .. Im 5'9 female so yes his would probably be more