A Cheat Meal IS a Cheat Meal

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  • ItsCasey
    ItsCasey Posts: 4,022 Member
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    My opinion is live and let live. If a weekly "cheat meal" works for you, do it. I'll keep eating cookies and ice cream every night. That works for me.
  • ktsmom430
    ktsmom430 Posts: 1,100 Member
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    Eat what you want, when you want. Whether in losing or maintenance mode. If you go over, so what? How is it hurting anyone? The effort you put in may take longer if you go over, but it is your personal choice how you want to manage your weight loss or maintenance. Who are you cheating? It is living your life and your personal decision. Who is it cheating? If you choose to look at it as cheating, the only one it affects is yourself.
  • RunBakeLove
    RunBakeLove Posts: 101 Member
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    These "clean" eaters WILL go crazy without a "cheat day" because they havent learned jack **** about moderation. They learned two extremes.

    Yup.
  • tigersword
    tigersword Posts: 8,059 Member
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    I always hear people say that they either eat what they want but in moderation or they fit whatever they want into their daily caloric intake. Then they will say that they hate the word cheat because it sounds too restrictive...or something?

    Lets be clear here......


    The reason most of us on on MFP is because we were too loose with what we ate. Cheat Meals... are meant to restricted because it helps calm our binge trigger. Eating micro-dense foods throughout the week and having a whatever you like for one meal will decrease the trigger in the back of our minds that wants us to stay fat by gorging on high calorie foods. It also teaches self control and prepares you for the maintenance phase when the hard part begins by keeping the weight off.


    Opinions?

    if your mindset includes the concept of "cheat meals" then you are already dangerously close to binge behavior IMHO.

    i say this because i believe you must knowingly be depriving yourself to the point where you are obsessing about food frequently enough to actually need scheduled "cheat meals" to alleviate these food obsessions. that's mentally disordered thinking in my view.

    instead, plan your dietary intake around your micronutrional and macronutritional needs and then choose whatever foods you want that meet those needs. if you sometimes want more calories to eat, then offset those calories with extra exercise. if you still come in over your calorie goal some days, then offset it by coming in a little bit under on other days.

    this isn't rocket surgery. some people make it much too hard by holding themselves to unrealistic expectations.
    This.
  • cmandd
    cmandd Posts: 8
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    Different strokes for different folks. Some people can handle it better than others. I eat "clean" Monday - Saturday (and by clean I mean staying within a calorie goal and usually no junk foods), on Sundays I eat what I want, within reasonable standards though I have 3-5K calories. This works for me as it gives me a reward to look forward to, I've lost 122lbs in the last 10 months and never looked back or stopped losing.

    Some people couldn't handle that way and would need to find another way of moderation. Everyone is different.
  • ImpishVanity
    ImpishVanity Posts: 224 Member
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    I don't have "cheat" days/meals whatever. I eat whatever I want. Being on MFP is more about teaching me it's OK to eat pizza or whatever else - as long as I pay attention to how many calories I'm consuming and work out more to try to offset it. I've lost 22 pounds so far without "dieting" or "cheating" so I have to believe this system is working. No stress, no weird foods to try to eat (cauliflower pizza and such) to try to get my cravings without eating the actual food. No shakes or "meal replacements". None of the stuff my friends are doing to try to lose weight. Just eating fewer calories and working out more. And not stressing when I go over goal - because 90% of the time it's still a deficit even if not as big a one as planned. Yesterday I hit maintenance calories. Not gonna cry about it. For me this is life, not a "diet"
  • cmandd
    cmandd Posts: 8
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    if you sometimes want more calories to eat, then offset those calories with extra exercise. if you still come in over your calorie goal some days, then offset it by coming in a little bit under on other days.

    this isn't rocket surgery. some people make it much too hard by holding themselves to unrealistic expectations.

    This is poor advice and dangerous territory as most people: 1. Overestimate the calories burned in exercise and 2. Don't compensate for the calories later.
  • sullus
    sullus Posts: 2,839 Member
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    I don't look at nutrition from meal to meal - I look at the week. On a given week, if I have a 3500 Calorie meal of chicken wings, bacon cheeseburger, fries and beer, but am still averaging my daily calorie goal for the week ... I haven't cheated anything. I'm still on track.
  • bradXdale
    bradXdale Posts: 399
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    All I know is that on this Friday when I go to Joe's Crab Shack...I'm going to destroy crab legs until I turn into a crustacean.

    funny-gif-cookie-monster.gif
  • mapnerd2005
    mapnerd2005 Posts: 363
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    I can't do cheat meals. They actually set off my binge trigger. When I follow the "whatever I want in moderation as long it fits into my daily goals" mentality, I don't binge because I'm not depriving myself of anything. When I say, "I can't have that because it's bad, except for a 'cheat' meal", during that cheat meal I will gorge and eat as much as I can because I know I won't be able to have whatever it is until the next cheat meal. I'm also much more prone to caving on non-cheat days due to emotional eating than I otherwise am. If I have a bad day, and say to myself, you know, it was a really bad day, I don't really want to eat what I have planned for dinner but would like something else instead (yes, this is emotional eating), I can re-calculate and find a way to fit in some comfort food I am wanting without getting off track. So maybe I eat two slices of pizza. If I tell myself, "You can't have pizza, it's forbidden", not only will I still eat pizza, I'll probably eat the whole thing and then berate myself for binging.
  • UpEarly
    UpEarly Posts: 2,555 Member
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    I've been maintaining my 66 pound weight loss for two years now.

    I've never done cheat meals/cheat days or anything like that. While I was losing weight, I ate whatever I liked and just focused on portion size and total calories. I was careful about logging - all food was weighed and measured. Maintenance has been pretty much the same - eat what I like while focusing on moderation.

    I'm sure different things work for different people - for me, labeling foods as good/bad or calling certain meals 'cheats' is not a healthy mindset.
  • zzonked
    zzonked Posts: 16 Member
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    Calories and macros are most important. If I can meet my daily goal for these things while eating something, then that food is never a 'cheat' food.

    A cheat meal would be if I disregarded my macros and calories and just ate whatever I wanted for taste. This has no consideration for whether what I am eating is 'clean' or not. If I eat wildly over my calories and macros in a giant salad it is still as much of a cheat as if I did the same but with a pizza.
  • Bry_Fitness70
    Bry_Fitness70 Posts: 2,480 Member
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    I correlate "cheat days" with "clean" eating.

    Both poor practices.

    These "clean" eaters WILL go crazy without a "cheat day" because they havent learned jack **** about moderation. They learned two extremes.

    I've seen the two intertwined many times. Im not saying all clean eaters have cheat days or all people who have cheat days are "clean" eaters, but, they commonly sync.

    ETA:
    I balance my week,period... youd probably say I have more than two "cheat meals" a week.. i wouldnt cuz thats not how I approach things.. I enjoy life, period..

    That is not my understanding of clean eating. Clean eating (for me) has to do with having high food quality standards and an absence of food additives that exist solely to prolong the shelf life of the product. It has nothing to do with volume nor does it trigger "binging".
  • tennisdude2004
    tennisdude2004 Posts: 5,609 Member
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    127857
  • sargessexyone
    sargessexyone Posts: 494 Member
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    This has been a very enlightening topic for me. When I was doing WW I would allow myself a "cheat" meal once a week. Since I have been doing MFP and counting calories I realized I don't NEED the "cheat" meals. I eat whatever I want and work it into my goals for the day. Yes, there are some days where I don't bother counting, is that considered a "cheat"? I think, like a lot of others have said, it is all about finding what works for you.
  • AwesomeGuy37
    AwesomeGuy37 Posts: 436 Member
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    The only thing I consider cheating is not logging it.
  • nomad1000
    nomad1000 Posts: 206 Member
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    I don't have "cheat" days/meals whatever. I eat whatever I want. Being on MFP is more about teaching me it's OK to eat pizza or whatever else - as long as I pay attention to how many calories I'm consuming and work out more to try to offset it. I've lost 22 pounds so far without "dieting" or "cheating" so I have to believe this system is working. No stress, no weird foods to try to eat (cauliflower pizza and such) to try to get my cravings without eating the actual food. No shakes or "meal replacements". None of the stuff my friends are doing to try to lose weight. Just eating fewer calories and working out more. And not stressing when I go over goal - because 90% of the time it's still a deficit even if not as big a one as planned. Yesterday I hit maintenance calories. Not gonna cry about it. For me this is life, not a "diet"

    This is me to a T, down to my reaction when I end up at a maintenance cal day.

    TBH, it is kind of weird how I don't crave certain foods doing MFP since I just work them in (pizza, chocolate, pita chips, etc.). Unlike the other times I tried to lose weight on more restrictive plans. On Atkins I actually had vivid dreams about gorging myself on bread, bagels and pita chips. That's when I knew low carb was not the plan for me. :)
  • rockmama72
    rockmama72 Posts: 815 Member
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    Nobody should put rules around how anyone else controls their weight. It's up to each person to find their own groove. If the "cheat meal" idea works, run with it.
  • Mygsds
    Mygsds Posts: 1,564 Member
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    I agree but also disagree, I am now at a place where I can eat some "unhealthy" foods in moderation throughout the week and stay within my calorie goal, used to I couldn't do that if I ate those foods at all, I would go and end up eating way too much and would go way over my calorie goal, but now that I'm able to I do so if I want ice cream or something I'm going to eat it but I'm going to measure/ weigh it out and eat a correct portion and stay within my calories it just depends on how it works for you, it took a while for me to get to the place where I could do that


    Totally agree. I know that this is all about life. Things happen. Birthday parties, dinner at someone's house where I can't control the choices, but I can control the portions. I feel if I call it cheating, I will somehow get a mindset that it's wrong. It's food. Control it, eat it. When maintenance happens , I should have learned this for the rest of my life
  • royaldrea
    royaldrea Posts: 259 Member
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    Nobody should put rules around how anyone else controls their weight. It's up to each person to find their own groove. If the "cheat meal" idea works, run with it.

    I don't think it's imposing rules on others so much as it is advising others as to what is sustainable and what isn't. And in a lot of instances a person's "groove" is unsustainable or worse, unhealthy and damaging.

    There's no virtue in watching someone potentially harm themselves without saying anything because they are able to make their own decisions - after giving your take you should drop it in my opinion, but I think it's not cool to say, "Cheat days are great! Only you know your body!" IF you are of the sincere opinion that cheat days are not great, and they are unhelpful to most people. (Of course you can be wrong, but if you feel you are right by all means say something, that's what the forums are for.)

    That said, I find that I work better not demonizing any foods. Eating healthier - in moderation, not in excess, getting enough proteins, fruits and vegetables - means I can eat whatever I want, whatever days I want. Some days I eat to excess but I refuse to stress over it. It's all a part of the learning experience and I think I will be able to eat like this for the rest of my life.

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