Weekly Cheat Meal Question

I never understood the concept of cheating in terms of weight loss. Work the foods you like into your calorie budget. If you want more food, eat at your calorie maintenance level from time to time. You could eat French fries every day or switch it up. The choice is yours.

I am going to do a bi-monthly cheat day. On my cheat day I still don't go over my calories but I allow myself to fill those calories with less than ideal food. My cheat day was two or three days ago and I ate the Chinese food I was craving but chose foods that would keep me under my limit for the rest of the day. I also did lighter physical activity. Instead of 10-15 miles of bike riding I took a walk around the neighborhood. I agree with everyone else about the fries. If you want them on your cheat day, go for them. If you have a day where you are doing very well and can work them in, go for it. Heck, I have a bunch of ice cream bars sitting in my freezer (not all for me) but if I have a really awesome day, cheat day or not, I'm going for one!

Okay here's my opinion for the average person. People have cheat meals and cheat days because they think that their metabolism is too slow without them. In my opinion, you have to make a choice. What tastes better? Getting thinner or eating that cake? Now nobody is perfect. There are times when you may slip. As long as you're doing the right thing the vast majority, like 95 to 99 percent of the time, you'll succeed. Like there are times you might not watch every calorie at a special event. So you just move on and get back on your program right away. But my point is that it's okay to slip up once in a great while and you shouldn't feel bad about it. But don't go WAYY overboard when you're eating something bad. Still keep it under control, because you don't want to have extra calories that you need to burn off. You want to be ahead of the game. So don't PLAN on cheat meals. I think it's okay to eat a little more if you've lost a lot of weight and happen to be a little extra hungry that day. But for the most part, I don't believe that cheat meals are conducive for weight loss. And I certainly don't believe in eating 7000 calories on your cheat day.

Bottom line is get to your goal first. That's the way I see it. Once you get to your goal, you might not need to be on an extreme diet anymore. You just need to eat healthy, and can loosen up at times, but any additional calories have to be burned off and that's why working out consistently is important once one has reached their target weight.