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

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.

Liftng4Lis wrote: »

If you have to cheat, you're not doing it right.

+1

How long is a piece of string?

If you have to ask, it's too many.

I don't have any cheat days a week - because I know me and I KNOW i'd totally and utterly destroy my weekly deficit if I 'cheat'. This has been repeated many times on MFP but it's true - if you are a following a sensible and sustainable diet plan, there really is no reason why you should have one day of totally overloading yourself with high calorie foods. I used to have 'cheat days' once a week because I felt so utterly deprived the rest of the time I simply thought I'd 'earnt' the right to eat rubbish for a day! I stopped losing weight because of these 'cheats'.

My advice would be - fit what you want to eat within your calorie allowance. If you're on a very low calorie diet, you're not going to be able to succeed in doing this which means you may need to re-think what you're doing. This is about a 'lifestyle change' and making good decisions. Instead of going to my favourite restaurant and eating the highest calorie food on the menu because 'it's my cheat day', I'll find something equally as tasty but I don't need to overdo it because there is absolutely no need.

tishie1 wrote: »

Thanks for the tips, guys. By "cheat days" I meant days when i don't log into myfitnesspal and I allow myself to eat sugar (I don't eat sugar the rest of the week). I have 3 because I have events that come up only on Fridays and weekends where sugar is served. However, not logging in means I have no idea how far I went over. So I am going to log in on weekends and see if that will make a difference in me losing weight. Thanks for the ideas!

Why restrict sugar during the rest of the week? That actually makes sugar far more addictive than if you just had sugar in moderation throughout your week. It's basically what behaviorists would term intermittent reinforcement - you desire something, sometimes you don't get it and sometimes you do. That actually strongly reinforces the craving, in fact much more strongly than if you consistently allowed yourself to eat it in moderation. One of the most powerful tools to reinforce a given behavior is to sometimes (but not always) reward it.

Not into cheating myself. This is asked nearly every day. Whats the point in cheating? Are you so deprived you cant restrain yourself? Eat within your alotted calorie intake. If your eating 1200 calories its nearly wrong everytime. Look up your TDEE. Most people start off with way to few calories.

I track every single calorie. I need to know what my macros are. I dont get hungry because I'm eating the right foods and the right amount.

If your cheating yourself you are not ready or committed to yourself yet. Your setting yourself up for binge eating . Enjoy food and come back when your ready.

hamlet1222 wrote: »

cheat days don't work for me at least - I can do cheat meals at most. I tried the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet and found that on the non-fasting days (effectively 5 cheat days a week) I could easily eat more than enough to wipe out my weekly deficit.

I find the discipline of keeping to a small deficit every day easiest.

I did really well with 5:2, but I ate at mainenance and still logged everything on my non-fasting days. Otherwise I definitely would've wiped out my deficit posthaste.

Cheaters never prosper! And cheetahs never prospah.

None. I log everything, every day. I also eat whatever I want. I don't deprive myself of certain foods while staying within my calories. Its the only way this works for me and I've been steadily loosing 1-1.5 lbs/week for over a month now.

Liftng4Lis wrote: »

If you have to cheat, you're not doing it right.

I like this answer too. I made coconut carrot cake this week - it's over 600 calories for an adequate slice, and I love it, so it's just gotta fit. I had it 3 times. That meant lighter dinners. For me and this sweet tooth, it was totally worth it. I don't do that every week. But come on, ya gotta live!