I know this is a really late response but I think you bring up a great point. Sometimes I think the title "cheat day" leads us all to think ok today is my day to go crazy with food. The issue with this is two-fold, one it tends to lend itself towards binge type eating (Chris recommends only 1,000 calories more than deficit on "cheat day" .....essentially maintenance for one day). The other issue is that by eating in a carb-cycle and eating only healthy carbs, you tend to break your sugar addiction....ming aking foods you used to want (or many of them) or used to feel deprived from while "dieting" less and less appealing because you aren't as addicted to sugar.

For me, I definitely feel the deficit much more the day after a cheat day, but that really is the whole point. To "trick" the metabolism and a more kind way to think of it is to reassure it that it can keep losing at huge deficits because there is plenty of food available. I also find the more I really am focused in 100% I tend to have about 2 "cheats" on cheat day and I don't go crazy the whole day. I love fried chicken too so that is usually a shoe in on cheat day. I usually also have a sugary desert or a pasta carb that i may have been craving on and off throughout the week. To each his own but i find that when i keep it to about 2 meals/desserts it tends to put me in the suggested range. I would play with what works for you.