"Craving" a cheat day.

Fit them in your day, you'll feel better about it that way, I know I always do.

I had pizza and beer for dinner tonight. It was a treat, and I will still hit my calorie goal for the day. Sodium goal is out the window thanks to the pepperoni lol, but you can eat your cravings...just plan it into your day. And yeah...work out. You can eat most of those calories back (I don't eat them all back because even with a heart monitor your calorie burn is not exact...don't want to accidentally over eat).

Don't cave!! lol that's my experience anyway. Gotta keep working at it every day.

I also fit those things in every day. A 12 ounce Pepsi is just 140 calories. If you just have one occasionally or even once a day you should be able to fit it. I have pizza almost every week. My husband loves it and he doesn't need to lose weight. I just usually have a big salad with it and only have one or two pieces. I don't have cake often because my husband doesn't eat sweets and I don't want the temptation but I do have something sweet almost every day. I wouldn't be able to stick with it if I gave up everything I like to eat.

If I eat too little, I definitely start having cravings for just about anything. (My worst enemy is a giant bag of greasy potato chips.) On the days where I eat enough calories, I don't even think twice about "junk".

Make a piece of pizza fit in your day. And have a chocolate cupcake another day. It can all fit, you just have to be smart about it and not all eat it at once.

It won't hurt your efforts much (if at all) to eat at or slightly over maintenance if you cannot fit it in your day. Life happens. Pizza happens. Have some pizza and pick up where you left off.

I have a treat every night but it also fits into my calories.

iamagodess998 wrote: »

I've been doing so well for the past month. I haven't started working out - yet - but I'm down 8 lbs by watching the calories.
I've been really craving a cheat day, though. Some pizza, maybe some Pepsi, some chocolate cake. Yep. Definitely want that. So, in your experience is it better to give in this time and then get back on track or push through?

Where are you in your menstrual cycle? You sound like you have either been undereating or are premenstrual. When my appetite goes up premenstrually, I eat at maintenance for a few days, which makes foods like pizza easier to fit in.

ClosetBayesian wrote: »

youngpip wrote: »

Pizza is the main thing I crave too, sad that it's one of the highest calorie items you can get!

At a 2lbs loss per week I guess you've got quite a low allowance so it could be tricky to fit pizza PLUS chocolate cake into one day (even with exercise). So you might want to look at your week as a whole and be a bit lower on other days so you can fit it into the week's calories.

I'm not sure where you're coming from with that claim about pizza being one of the highest calorie items you can get; 1 slice (1/8) of a large cheese pizza at Domino's is 290 calories; one Lender's brand bagel, by comparison, is 230 calories. The pizza is probably more satisfying, thanks to the protein and fat (35g carbs, 12g protein, 11g fat, as compared to 48g carbs, 8g protein, 1g fat). 4oz of ground beef (1/4lb hamburger) is 287 calories by itself; eat that as a lettuce wrap, and you have more calories than that slice of pizza. I can make a salad with more calories than that slice of pizza.

/Mind boggles at the thought of stopping at just one slice of pizza./

A little different view, possibly dangerous (plus it's long, and has math in it!):

I think of the weight loss process as, in part, a time to learn how to eat healthily for the rest of my life. I don't plan to give up pizza for the rest of my life, so I need to figure out how it fits in.

I never have had a cheat day - the concept doesn't even make sense to me! Cheat who? How?

But I do eat over my weight-loss calorie goal sometimes . . . occasionally substantially over. And I log every bit of it as accurately as possible (even if estimating is required), so I know the impact. Sometimes, I do extra workouts, or - if it's a predictable special occasion - eat slightly lighter for a few days in advance to make some calorie room, and eat lightly at other meals that day.

But mainly, I just do the arithmetic to see the impact, and learn from it. What if I eat (making up a realistic example) 1000 calories worth of pizza, and 500 calories of craft beer, and I've already eaten normal breakfast & lunch?

When my daily goal was 1400, at around a 0.5lb/week loss rate, I probably would've eaten around 900 calories before dinnertime even arrived. So, the day's total eating would be 900 already eaten + 1000 pizza + 500 beer, or 2400 calories.

My maintenance calories (neither gain nor lose) at that point would've been around 1900 a day (1400 calories I was eating + 500 daily calories of weight lost ( because (roughly 3500 calories in a pound / 2 because I'm losing only half a pound a week) / 7 days in a week) = 500 calories loss a day).

Therefore, I've not lost any weight on pizza day (because I ate at least at maintenance) and I've even gained a bit (I ate over maintenance).

What's the impact? You can look at that in terms of gain, or delay in achieving your ultimate goal.

Gain: Because maintenance calories per day are 1900, I've gained about (2400 eaten - 1900 maintenance) of fat, or 500 calories worth. That's 1/7 of a pound.

Delay: Clearly, I don't lose any weight on pizza day. I have that 500 extra to lose. How long will that take? At my 0.5/week loss rate, my daily deficit is 500 calories, so I don't lose anything the day after pizza day, either (except the excess pizza/beer weight). So I've delayed reaching my ultimate goal by two days.

Is 1/7 pound of gain, or 2 days delay, a problem? That's an individual choice. Clearly, I can't do it often, or I'll never get to goal. Can I do it once a month, especially if it's a special occasion like my birthday or when out-of-town friends visit? Maybe so. The point is that I can evaluate the choice rationally.

The big risk here is the most of us want to be "nice" to our current self more than we want help our future self be healthy, so it's easy to trade off a long-term goal for short-term pleasure. But if you can deal with that rationally, this is one approach for weighing (pun intended) the impact of over-goal days.

P.S. I'm at goal weight, 5'5", weight in low 120s, having lost 1/3 of my bodyweight since April 2015. I've had at least a dozen or more substantially-over goal days along the way. This approach can work.

E.T.A.: I will always see a water weight gain from an over day, potentially 2-5 pounds on the scale, but I've found that that disappears within a couple of days, for me. My mental math as per above has always tracked very well with my actual scale results, after the water weight is out of the picture.

tl;dr: Learn how to do weight-management arithmetic in your head. It's easy, supports rational rather than emotional decision-making, and is a powerful approach that can work forever.

Work them into your plan without it being "cheating."

I get the Dr. Oetker thin crust pizza's. You can have half the pizza for between 380-440 depending on the kind. Then we have a nice big side salad to go along with it. So satisfying and easily fits into our daily calorie goals! Its usually our friday or saturday night meal as it really feels like a treat after having a good week!