Cheat days (calling all successful people) lol

I've lost about 50 lbs from my highest weight ever. I don't consider any day a cheat day because I eat treats almost everyday. I do have high calorie days on Friday and Saturday where I eat at maintenance just to boost my metabolism back up since I reduce my cals during the week. Plus by Friday I'm hungry from eating at a deficit and this sort of refeed helps me get my leptin levels restored and the boost I need for another five days of deficit eating. We rarely eat out at restaurants because our homemade food taste way better. I also log on my high cal/maintenance days.

IMO it's not a free for all or a binge. My deficit during the week is only 500, so it's totally manageable.

I have days that I go over...they aren't scheduled or anything like that...I don't call them "cheat" days...they're just days when I over eat a little...like last night I went out for my anniversary and had a 14ounce ribeye and all kinds of other stuff...it was a nice night out and considering that it was an occasion, it's pretty much irrelevant to the whole.

Sometimes I will eat up to my total calories burned (according to my Fitbit) but I have discovered that not logging is a mistake for me. I used to think, "Hey, six days a week logging is pretty good, right?" Then my weight just kept staying the same. Now it's dropping regularly!

I don't have cheat days. I have days that I choose to eat above my calorie goal. I do try to log everything. If I go out and the place is not on the list, I look for a similar item and usually will take a midrange caloric count. I also will save half my meal for a later time. Instead of weekly trips to the Chinese Buffet, we go maybe once a month although last time it lost its allure for me so we will probably go less often. This is not a diet with forbidden foods but a lifestyle change that you will want to make permanent. Celebrations happen and you will want to enjoy. However, you will find as you become more calorie knowledgeable you will be satisfied with much less than you needed before. Ex. Order the small fries instead of large at the fast food restaurant. Preplan your meal to fit your calorie goals. Realize you can have anything and everything, just not all the same day and in the quantities you have had before. The good news is you do not have to eat until you are so stuffed you waddle away from the table.

What is a cheat to you, OP? Eating certain foods, or going over calories? Because they're not necessarily or always the same thing

Eating certain foods? Well that ship sailed a long time ago. I'll eat anything. I'm just not going to deceive myself that I can eat a huge peach cobbler everyday (and still eat enough so I'm not hungry the rest of the day) and not gain weight

Going over calories? Pretty much same. MFP app has a really useful tool of displaying weekly net calories and letting you know if you're over or under. You can also play with the settings to specify a start day for the week, if you don't simply want to analyze the last seven days

You don't have to log every single thing 100% accurately if you're going over. But. Then again, if in three months you're not losing weight, or not losing at the rate you expect, then you might have preferred to do things differently, as the data was yours to create for possible review down the line all along. Are those two blowout meals poofing your entire deficit for the week or month? The data can easily be averaged to answer that

Restaurants - some prefer to dine in places that publish their nutritional info online for this reason. Once you learn a bit both from logging of home cooked food and logging of restaurant meals, it can help you better estimate food that is not listed in the database or the restaurant doesn't publish.

Either way, it's all a preference! If you're not getting the results you expect in, say, eight weeks, it may be time to do something different, maybe tweak your approach a little

BrittaniDirks wrote: »

Thanks ladies. Also what do you do if a place is not in the database? I love a local Mexican place it us authentic and not a chain, I thought about comparing / just putting in the same item from a diff restraunt. Do u do buffets at all? My husband loves the Chinese buffets, not saying that as an excuse I know I could just eat salad, but it's tough. Ok I'm thinking no more cheat days then I will try my darnedest to count everyday of the week.

For items not in the database I just do the best I can. At this point in my logging, I know what a 400 vs 600 vs 800 calorie meal feels like and so can do a reality check against a user-entered database entry.

I've done buffets at family gatherings, but not restaurants. There's surely a middle ground between all the fried food and salad. I give myself maintenance calories for a few days when I have my period and that's when I have higher calorie food.

In Food psychologist Brian Wansink's book Mindless Eating, he shares some tips about buffets. This book was available in my library system so maybe yours as well.

Great question and super helpful answers. Thanks everyone.

I waited until I was about 20lbs down and two months into it before I started having "cheat" days. Having said that, they are actually calculated and I always make sure my average weekly calories keep me in deficit. I have my "cheat" day on my weigh in day. I've been very successful. Now down 45 lbs. I wouldn't have trusted myself in the beginning to handle it.

I don't cheat unless I get drunk. Mysteriously on the occasions I have had a drink I tend to lose weight quicker over the following 2 weeks. Currently 49 / 50lbs gone..

29lbs down 13 to goal weight (but once I'm there ill reevaluate and probably want to lose more) I just had family in town for 3 weeks and had "cheat days" basically every day lol. I still lost 3 lbs (my weight loss slowed from the 2.5lb/week rate I was maintaining) I just spent A LOT of time being hungry. if I knew we were having pizza/burgers or whatever I budgeted it. im sure I went over my calories quite often but I weighed myself daily and when the # started creeping up I made up for it the next day.

I do a "free" day once every two weeks. I usually log my breakfast and lunch just to keep my logins. I eat anything I want that day. Anything. I also gave myself complete eating freedom while at the beach last week (8 days) and two days after my return, my weight was unchanged. I ate so much, I have no idea how. Now I'm back on track.

I have lost 65 pounds in 6 months. I cheat at least once a week, and usually two times. I don't go crazy I eat my normal low cal breakfast and lunch and then have a "cheat" dinner. 4 times since I started I have really gone crazy (wine and cheese party, trip to watkins glen ) and I still had losses! We still have to live!!

I've lost about 50lbs, though not as quickly as some of the folks here.

During this final stretch I'm really hunkering down, and I find that what works best for me is to severely limit cheat days. Real cheat days, that is, where you eat and drink as much as you like of whatever you like. I'll have maybe one a month, and I like to make is special. Like last month was my birthday, and this month I got drunk with my friends and floated down a river for six hours in the sunshine. So I don't feel bad that I drank an obscene number of ciders and topped it off with a massive burger.

One day in thirty or forty isn't so bad. Its when it's every week - then maybe twice a week - then whenever you've had a bad day - that it becomes distructive to me.

I'll have 'light' cheat days every week or two and fit some junk food into my calories, too. I can't overdo those either, though, or I start to have cravings and eventually fall off the wagon.

You have to figure out how to balance being kind, and demanding of yourself. Evrryone needs a reward to help them keep going, and if that reward is a cheat day, then so be it. Sure it may slow down your progress a bit, but if it keeps you moving, then that's what counts.