How many "cheat" days can you have a week and still lose weight?

ninerbuff wrote: »

7...................well I eat what people would call "cheat" food. Ice cream, candy, chips, hot dogs, etc.

Me too.

I never go over my calorie limit.

I don't deprive myself.

I eat "junk"; I eat "healthy"; I eat whatever I feel like within my calorie limit. I make room for treats.

21 kg lost in 6 months and counting.

Yes, I'm confused by your approach. This is what works for me: I always log, but not always with the same goals...
1) Most of the time, all the regular boring days, I try to be at least a few hundred calories below my total calorie allotment including exercise calories earned. Every 7-10 days I'm usually a wee bit over one or two of those days but remain comfortably under for that week's average. Logging these residual deficits, even if they're small, is very satisfying.
2) On predetermined circumstances, eg family vacation, 4th of July BBQ, etc. I log but plan to eat at maintenance. I try to fit in a lot of activity at the same time & I figure these are my calories to spend, I earned 'em! This probably accounts for a month to six weeks out of a 52 week year... Doing this right now while I'm in DC.
3) There are 3-4 days that are just huge calorie bombs. Thanksgiving. My birthday. I haven't encountered some of these yet... I had one day like this on my daughter's birthday. I don't fight these days but I do log them accurately and marvel at just how high the over runs can go, effectively wiping out the calorie savings of the previous week. MFP helpfully announces when I close my journal out for that day 'If every day were like this you would weigh XXX lbs in five weeks!' and that XXX number is higher than any weight I have ever weighed in my life!!! Yikes!!! Scares me straight every time & I am grateful for the normal days to return...
Imagine your eating is money: So you budget & spend only cash four days a week, but for three days you spend without limit on a credit card? Can you see how the over runs on the credit card days could easily outstrip the modest savings of the cash days? You need to dilute the damages there. Maybe plan to log one day at maintenance every week. If you must have a log-free day to psychologically blow off steam, I would say no more than one day a month.

tishie1 wrote: »

I have been having 3 cheat days a week where I don't count calories and I gain ALL the weight I lost ( the previous 4 days) back everytime. Has anyone else has this happen? How many days a week have you found that you can go off myfitnesspal and still lose weight in the long run?

Um ... yeah. That's how I got here in the first place.


But for the first 4 months here, I did not cheat. At all. No cheat days. Then I reached my first goal and took a 1-month break. And then I was back at it again. Since then, I have had one celebration day where I went over my calories by about 300 calories. It was my husband and my anniversary. That's it.

If you want to lose weight ... stay within your calorie limit.
If you want to eat more ... exercise lots.

Maybe once a month when PMT kicks in but I'll still log it all.

tishie1 wrote: »

I have been having 3 cheat days a week where I don't count calories and I gain ALL the weight I lost ( the previous 4 days) back everytime. Has anyone else has this happen? How many days a week have you found that you can go off myfitnesspal and still lose weight in the long run?

You're basically wasting your time. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have days where you go over your calorie limit, but at least track them so you know what's what. I have bad days, recently it has been both my daughter's and wife's birthdays. On both days I exercised in the mornings so that I could enjoy a nice meal and drinks with them. I don't want to spoil their days by being Mr boring, but equally, I don't want to spoil my progress.

Like anything, if you're not in the right frame of mind, you won't achieve.

If people could stuff their faces 43% of the days and still lose weight, there probably wouldn't be so many overweight people.

Your approach is just fundamentally flawed.

I just read the blog below....

The argument for cheat days – Rewarding Yourself.
Some day that giving yourself a day of indulgence is giving yourself a needed break from your diet. These cheat days are a relief valve that help you stick to healthier foods.

The philosophy behind this basically goes something like this: Healthy eating requires some willpower – willpower you’ve used to keep yourself from forbidden foods – so to reward your constraint, it helps to have one scheduled day (or meal) per week where you’re allowed to eat some of the treats you’ve been avoiding. When you give yourself a window to enjoy these off-limit foods, it’ll satisfy your cravings, replenish your depleted willpower, and, some studies suggest, even increase your production of the hunger-dampening hormone leptin while boosting metabolism.

The argument against cheat days – Name Blame.
So cheat days sound like a good idea, right? No. The logic behind these days has more than a few flaws, and it’s due to psychology and physiology behind them.

The trouble with cheat days starts with the wording. The very phrase ‘cheat day’ sets up enjoying a meal as something forbidden. Separating foods into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories encourages you to associate eating with guilt and shame. This means instead of enjoying everything we eat, we feel bad about ourselves when we eat something we consider “bad”.

What’s more, when we deem certain foods “bad” or “cheating”, the negative name doesn’t help us pump the breaks!

When a food is off-limits, it can develop a specific, emotional charge. We begin obsessing over it, fantasizing about, and looking forward to that ‘indulge day’ all week. Then, when you finally have access to it, you overeat.
On the flipside, labeling foods as “good” or “healthy” can also backfire. Science shows that when we think something is healthy, we’re not concerned with portion control and thus overdo it – whether it’s a ‘normal’ day or a ‘cheat’ day.

Along these same lines, thinking of a meal or shack as ‘healthy’ can have a surprising effect on our hunger. Studies show that merely considering items we put into our mouths as healthy can literally make us feel hungrier. Especially if we select a good-for-you item out of obligation over something we’re truly hungry for.

You are not a dog, don’t reward yourself with food!

Attack of the calories.
Folks who assume they can compensate for giving into temptations – say, by holding themselves back on all days except for their cheat days, are actually less likely to reach their dietary goals. This is because they’re more likely to consume a greater number of calories, not just on their cheat day but on the days following it.
Restricting ourselves throughout the week and then slamming our bodies with sugar and fat once our cheat day rolls around can have a massive impact on blood sugar and insulin levels. A person will wake up the next day craving more sugars and simple carbs, a person will find themselves ragged and not feeling well and if the above baseline caloric intake is repeatedly increased, a person will end up gaining more weight over time.

Cravings serve as a sign that one’s nutritional approach is not sound. Most cravings come from overly restricting food intake, using food as a drug or over exercising.

Binging – Cheat Days – Binging – Cheat Days
There is a very fine line between a cheat day and a free fall into food binging, especially if you’re white knuckling it during those other six days of sticking to a meal plan that you don’t particularly like, or that may be too restrictive. Once that day of indulgence comes, it’s not about enjoying foods you haven’t had all week. Instead, it becomes a need to consume all you can before the day goes away. It feeds into a feast-and-famine cycle. We can thank our biology for cheat days turning into these all out food fests. We are hard wired to chase down food when we’re caught in the feast and famine cycle. People will eat beyond satiety when they’re coming from fear of a scarcity. Binging on cheat days also makes it challenging to confine cheat day foods only to that designated 24 hour window.

The Solution: Stop Restricting, Start Enjoying—in Moderation. So if cheat days don’t work, are we all better off eating whatever we want, whenever we want?
Well, not quite. Following a healthy diet means including a number of foods—all of which are consumed in moderation, this usually means three square meals a day with planned snacks, incorporating treats but in smaller portion sizes. Research suggests eating a balance of foods—with none of them off-limits or labeled “bad”—is the best way to reduce the kinds of cravings that can lead to a binge. During the first week of a new diet, most people experience an increase in cravings for coveted foods, but when people stick to a balanced weight loss diet, the tendency to occasionally overeat actually goes down over time.
You cannot out exercise a bad diet!

So what does a game plan for a healthy eating with no cheat days look like?

Remember these three things:

1. Listen to your appetite.

If you want to eat spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, have it! Don’t find the low-carb version with the fat-free sauce. If you actually eat what you want, you’ll likely end up eating a more reasonable amount of it. Eating in tune with your hunger is a principle of intuitive eating, and it’s shown to have a positive effect on both your weight and your wellbeing.

2. Enjoy treats from time to time.

Research shows (and experts agree) that sprinkling reasonably sized desserts or treats into your daily diet encourages you to find pleasure in meal time again—and that pleasure will help ensure you don’t feel the need to go overboard. So instead of confining your treats to one single day, drop them into places throughout the week. For example, enjoy a cookie or a few pieces of chocolate after dinner on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

3.Savor every bite.

Once you place any item of food into your mouth, take a moment to: taste, smell, and experience it as a whole. When you take the time to be mindful about what you’re eating, you tap into your satiety cues.

The Takeaway
Forget about designating a cheat day to reward yourself. Denying yourself most of the week and then indulging like crazy on your one day “off,” just promotes guilt, anxiety, and shame around eating—which means you won’t likely get to the health outcome you’re looking for. Instead, make every day a great day by listening to your appetite, periodically adding in some of your favorite foods in small portions, and savoring each and every bite of everything you eat. This sustainable approach will help you think of all of your eating as enjoyable, and that’s what gets you down the road to where you want to be.

Short and simple... 3 cheat days a week is too much. One or two a month would be preferable.

3 in one week? Oh well that's too much... It happens to everyone once in a while and you shouldn't torture yourself afterwards but once every 2 weeks is far enough otherwise you'll never have a rhythm

I don't have cheat days per se. I sometimes eat over my calories, and before the time of month this can be 1000kcals over my goal (never more than 2500kcals) but I log EVERYTHING.
Helps to know the exact "damage" you have done to your deficit, so you can compensate.