How many calories do you go over your base on cheat days?

I just had a bunch of fried Chinese food. First cheat day in a month.

RachelAE89 wrote: »

Rowan09 wrote: »

Cheat days work for some people. Let's not be judgemental, kids...

I agree.

I love the idea of cheat days. I have one once a week. For some people, not all, they can easily ignore the temptations of fast food and other unhealthy foods, but for people like me, I need a cheat day to not go completely insane and fall off my diet. For ME I feel like bottling up food temptations is like bottling up your emotions. One day you'll break and say "*kitten* it".

So on my cheat day I'll maybe have a donut for breakfast and McDonald's for dinner or something like that. I don't add any extra excercise, I just continue the next 6 days of my diet normally.

I can admit not being mentally strong enough to handle a strict no cheat days rule. So maybe that's why some people need it, and others don't.

So to the OP, don't sweat it too much. As long as you continue your diet normally, you'll be fine. It's all about balance.

I tottally agree with you. I found that if i am very strict and ignore all temptations for ages, i end up binging and falling of the wagon for ages. So i treat myself now and then. As for your question annjass, on how many calories i go over. I averge about 200. but i can really blow it sometimes. Don't feel bad. Just get back on track as its a new day

Birthdays (family of 6 ) and celebration days ie Christmas are 'free' days for me otherwise everything else is counted/earned

63.

Never 64.

I'm not taking an exam, I don't have cheat days ... What would I be cheating??

I have my calories set as my lightly active TDEE (I do a desk job) which is 1664 - so I eat freely, but try to make sure that my exercise calories exceed my food intake calories, but if it doesn't, oh well, tomorrow is another day.

My weight loss figures show that this method can work, so I really can't get my head round this "Cheat Day" nonsense, any more than I can the "Eating less then 1500 calories a day" logic ... Starvation ain't fun and I don't wish to try it ... !!

I don't do 'cheat days'. I will however sometimes eat more because I'm hungrier, have bad cravings, or it's a Holiday and IDGAF... and I'll try to make up for it that week. But cheating just for cheating is pointless. I start every day with the intention of staying within my calories.

Typically my 'bad days' end up being 3000-3400 calories though (during PMS 99% of the time).

I don't like the concept of cheat days or reward days because both concepts seem tied to unhealthy ideas about food and dieting that I have had to overcome. If I want to reward myself for an accomplishment then I will do it with something other than food... because seeing food as this hugely important thing to make myself happy or stop being sad or cure my stress or celebrate a good day etc etc was just a really unhealthy rut that caused my obesity in the first place. I needed to find joy or reward or mental health in something else, something that wasn't destructive to my body the way binge eating was.

As for cheating, I think it is part of a dysfunctional view of weight loss that is based on a concept of "dieting".... starving and deprivation and eating sad little portions of iceberg lettuce and beating yourself up with exercise, followed by breaking loose in a binge so you have some fun. All you learn on this roller coaster is how to embrace two forms of extreme and unhealthy behavior--asceticism and gluttony--that aren't conducive to learning how to live a healthy moderate lifestyle and maintain long term weight loss.

I am speaking as someone who has maintained 110 pounds of weight loss for about a year and a half. Losing weight isn't the hardest part, it is learning to keep it off because you've really adjusted the way you live and broken free from the unhealthy patterns that caused the gain to in the first place. You gotta make this a new lifestyle that you enjoy enough every day that you don't need to escape it with an eating binge. That doesn't mean never having some pizza or always eating bland diet food or always eating the exact same number of calories. It means allowing yourself enough calories every day that your body is fueled properly. That might mean being more active or tolerating a slower pace of loss. It also means making room for something you enjoy occasionally and just seeing that as a normal day and not a horrible transgression. It is also helpful to eat more on days that are special occasions or exceptionally hungry days and a little less on others but again not as a "cheat" but just as normal part of a healthy lifestyle.

I've been at this for a year and the longest stretch of days I've been able to meet my low calorie goal, which was <1700 calories, was about 35 days. My unplanned high calorie days, I don't call them 'cheating' because I do try to honestly log my food, usually wind down after I've eaten about 3000 calories total for the day. That's 1300 above my target, and scarcely 1/3 of a pound of added fat. It's nothing in the week or the month, as is doesn't even nullify a weekly calorie deficit. I have a hypothesis that this cycle which I do by going a month on low calories then having a day of high calories actually serves the purpose of keeping my NEAT from trending low in response to the persistent calorie deficit.