Eating Out Once A Week & Feeling Guilty...

You can look at my diary if it makes you feel better. I make it a point to eat "crappy" once or twice or thrice a week. It's good for the soul. I have no guilt about this. You shouldn't either. Guilt has no place in this journey.

Don't feel guilty! We all deserve a cheat day. And it's just the way it sounds, a "cheat day". Some people will fully log in what they eat and some won't. I know I do if I know I still have plenty of calories to waste or I avoid logging if I know I went way over.
If you feel that guilty, cut down to once every two weeks. Or you can try to exercise half a hour more on the day you're going out to eat as well as the day after.
That's what I do. I eat out once every two weeks or sometimes once every 3 or 4 weeks. And I plan ahead to try to exercise a bit more than usual. I use to feel quite guilty because meals at restaurants have about 1200 cal alone and that's not including the drink or dessert!
We're all human though. Having one cheat day every once in a while will not kill you. you will not gain 2 or 3 lbs off it. Just jump right into your dieting routine the next day and I guaratee you'll do just fine.

Your right, if you deprive yourself from foods that you enjoy you will fail, as long as you do it in moderation you will keep your healthy lifestyle and succeed :drinker:

Monday nights are my "cheat meal" night. I stay under my cals and rarely go over my sodium, but on Mondays I allow myself to go get one of my fave foods- a burger from my fave restaurant Shindigs. They have a $5 burger night on Mondays and this has become tradition every Monday for me and my boyfriend and I still am under my cals So, guilt free!!!

Hi,
I know exactly where you are coming from, I use to be the fast food queen!
Just like sweets, all that stuff is bad carbs and thats what I was living on, until
i got a wakeup call, the Dr. told me that I was pre-diabetic, that if I didn't make a major
change right now, I would become a diabetic...well with my daughter and Ex being diabetics
I know full well what they go through so I did not want that so I almost immediately changed
my lifestyle, I saw the Doc on the 2nd of June and started eating healthier and exercising on June
6th...sincde then i have lost 15 lbs and weigh in is tomorrow, so hopfully that number has increased!

I absoltely DO NOT eat any fast food what so ever now, or sugar loaded snacks, but yesterday was my
19 year Anniversary and some friends invited us to dinner and i made exceptions, we went to Outback Steakhouse
and I had 1/2 grilled chicken breast, garlic mashed pot., a salad with honey mustard dressing, 2 slices of bread with butter
and some bloomin onion, and that was a huge wakeup call, you know before when the eating was so out of control, you know that these things are very unhealthy, but when you actually put in the foods and it tracks and logs the calories and nutrition
info and you actually see the numbers WOW, a whole new perspective! It is not worth it to me, you have to work way to hard.

I do believe though, that you can induldge once in a while, in fact i think that it is imperative that you do, to prevent you getting bored and feeling all deprived, just watch portion sizes and don't do it all the time, make it as a reward of sorts.
I really hope that i have helped you in some way, I am so sorry that this was so long. Good luck to you in meeting all of your goals! Please feel free to add me!

Are you still losing weight? Are you eating more healthily overall? Do you enjoy those meals?

If the answer to all three of those three questions is yes, you have nothing to be guilty about!

but when I see my friends diaries it seems like they NEVER eat a crappy meal and I start feeling so guilty.

I learned that no two (2) diets are alike, so you are still loosing the weight just like your other MFP friends you just may be loosing it a little slower because of what you're eating not how much {you tell me}. For me, it took some time not to feel guilty about eating out, but I started making better choices at restaurants {like eating half of my entree and no starters unless it's a salad. One habit I've given up are drinks. Not completely but 95% of what I drink is water, green tea (no calories), coffee w/ few additives, and a drink a few times a month {either diet or regular}. I look up the calories before I go eat and in most cases I just accept that the sodium is going to be high. So I don't feel guilty anymore since I know there's little I can do about that part unless you ask them to go light on the salt, lol.

To some extent the "I won't deprive myself" excuse doesn't work. That's how we all got fat, lol. . . We ate EXACTLY what we wanted to, when we wanted to. So not to say we should never eat what we like, but the times we do should be in moderation, not as often as we use to, and maybe an alternative. Like I eat the weight watchers chocolate {it tastes good and I don't worry about eating other kinds of chocolate}. . . I've given up McDonalds Completely though, there's no compromise on that one, lol.

Good luck, hopefully my rambling amounted to something.

Don't feel guilty. Assigning "good", "bad", and guilt to food only harms your progress toward a healthy attitude and lifestyle with food. Food is either high in nutritional value or low in it.

It's normal to enjoy a meal out, so enjoy it. Long-term, you're looking at a lifestyle change, so make the changes that are sustainable for you. If that means eating out once or twice a week, do it and enjoy it.

Plus, feel free to look at my diary. Plenty of low nutritional foods make their way on it a few times a week. I'm still losing weight.

last night I ate two chessesticks, and three boneless buffalo wings, and a few chips with s[inach dip and it was 1100 cals!!!! =0(

So what? That was one day. How about the other 6 days of the week?

You are doing a great job so far!! Stop feeling guilty!! I know I should cut out most the crap I eat. But its hard when you work a lot and don't have much time to prepare meals. So even though my diary has a lot of processed meals and take out I try and make the best choices when I'm at a restaurant. If I go over on sodium I know to drink a lot of water and take in some potassium to offset it. And be careful of sodium intake the next day.