Will one cheat day mess up the entire week I worked hard?

It really depends on what you eat that day. It very well could eliminate the deficit you worked for all week. Or it could actually make you gain if you end up eating a weekly average that is a surplus. Or it could just reduce your deficit and lower your weight loss a bit for the week.

What is your deficit daily? Do you work a treat in each day? I do and usually dont feel the need to 'cheat'.

CICO rules. I eat light all week long but on the weekend I let go. But I am still in a deficit!

One whole day of eating whatever you want could easily use up all the calorie deficit you spend the previous 6 days creating. When a single restaurant dinner can easily put 2000 calories and 2000 mg sodium into you, the temptation of reckless abandon should seem less delightful. How long have you been using mfp to log your food and count calories? If this is less than a month since you began and is your first cheat day, then go ahead and have it, but accurately record everything you eat so that you can know exactly how much pain you have to go through to deal with this reversion. Weekends are the time I take Mrs out to a nice restaurant. I can find stuff at most every place to fit on my plan and I don't call 'a nice meal that fits my plan' a cheat.


OK, now that I've read your whole post ... You can be sure that you had too much sodium and you are going to retain excess water for a week. Don't feel bad about that. Just be patient. Unless your incredible day of excess netted an extra 3500 calories plus whatever deficit you'd assembled in the week prior, you will not gain 1 pound of fat from this. I haven't looked at your food diary, but I will say that if you're fairly new to this logging journey you probably don't have a good grasp of nutrient-dense low-cal foods and thus you probably had developed a deficiency of several nutrients the craving of which exacerbated your eating today.

And now I've looked at several days of your diary. Counting last Saturday's 2 calories over plan and adding several days of severe under-eating to get to today's pizza party, you still have 932* calories of deficit to your plan and your plan is going to have another 1000 or so deficit to your TDEE. You are doing fine for the week and you'll lose some fat. You just won't be able to see it on the scale until the excess sodium works off in a few days.

* Assuming of course that you accurately recorded each thing you ate.

jemhh wrote: »

Based on your statement that you find it hard to stop eating and your current weight, my guess is that a weekly no holds barred cheat meal will negate your other 6 deficit days.

I agree with this. I'm 4 1/2 months into this and if I really want to eat more, I exercise like crazy, but still keep my eating at a deficit overall.

Nope! Count it as a maintenance day and get back on track as soon as you can

Just log everything and do the math. 3500 calories = 1 pound. If you're set to lose 1 pound a week, it's a 3500 calorie deficit per week, so 500 calorie deficit per day.

So if you eat 4000 calories over your goal on your cheat day, you'll wipe off your deficit. If you eat 1000 calories over your goal one day, you'll just lose a bit over half a pound that week, etc...

Measure everything, even on cheat days as best you can. You may be surprised how many calories you take in when you aren't watching. Beer is my weakness, 2 beers nullifies my days progress but now I know that so I can compensate. Measure, then you will know, even if you don't really want to know...