Cheat Days

Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »

I wrote this on another thread, i feel very strongly against cheat meals or cheat days.. so i figured i would just post it here since my opinion is still very much the same lol

I call cheat meals or cheat days negative associations with food. There are a few kinds of negative associations and i am going to list them here.

1) The Lists we create in our minds of good and bad foods.
2) The Foods and Meals we place into the category of Cheat Day or Cheat Meal
3) Corrective Behavior

Sometimes we do one of these or sometimes they can all snowball together into one big issue.
We see people do these things all the time and sometimes we do them ourselves, sometimes its intentional and other times we do them and don't realize that what we are doing is actually a negative behavior.

Listing foods into categories of good and bad may seem like a great idea.. Lots of people jump into a diet this way.. They get really motivated and hyped up and go "Alright, time to lose weight! No chocolate, chips, cookies, cake, candy, fast food, fried food...." the list goes on. They have labeled these foods bad. These foods are the reason they are over weight and must be avoided at all costs. They go out to the store and buy nothing but fresh veggies and fruit, lean meats and get it home. Motivation still high as the sky this actually carries them through for a period where they feel like they aren't missing anything, not craving anything, this is going to be super easy!

So some time passes and theyre feeling good, confident, some weight has come off and they say to themselves it's time for a cheat meal or cheat day.

Cheating is all in all just a negative. There is absolutely nothing in life that starts with cheating or ends in cheating that is good. No one ever thinks someone cheating on them is good or congratulates someone for cheating on a test. No one is ever happy some *kitten* hat cheated them out of their money.

Very few people in life can actually have a cheat day or cheat meal and process it properly from a mental perspective. And in my personal opinion though if you still need points in your life where you need to gorge on a huge amount of food then maybe it's time to understand why that is. Calorie density overages are one thing but if you need a one day a week or one day every two weeks where you need to sit down and eat half a large pizza to yourself.. its time to do some soul searching.

More often then not though, people using cheat meals often find themselves feeling shameful, guilty, or just plain depressed. They ate, they log it and at the end they look at the food log and they see a big fat red number. Several hundred calories in the red.

These feelings often trigger corrective behavior.
Corrective behavior is not a positive but people on MFP who are also new on their journey often support people doing it. I won't.
Example of Corrective behaviors are posting statuses that tell people how awful they feel about what they did and immediately follow it by saying they are either going to eat less over a period of time depending on how many calories they were over, They are going to workout extra long and extra hard the next few days to burn it off, or they are never going to eat those foods again and avoid feeling that way.

The difference between a person putting in extra effort at the gym because they feel happy and healthy and a person putting in extra effort at the gym because they feel shameful for eating is huge. One of those things is a positive and the other is a punishment. Eating less over a period of time only says one thing, you can't handle your cheat meal. You are not ready to mentally process negative calories and all you are doing is further labeling foods as bad. Avoiding these foods is just walking in a straight line into stress and frustration and falling off a cliff.

There is going to be Birthdays. Holidays. Parties. Work Functions. Weddings. Baby Showers. Anniversaries. Family Visiting from Out of Town. Vacations. Are you just going to avoid every social function? Or Show up and spend the entire day/night doing nothing but avoiding the foods and feeling like thats all you spent your time doing rather then having a good time? Eventually something is going to come up where the foods you are avoiding because you have labeled them as bad are going to be there and the longer you avoid them because you have listed them as a negative or you had a bad reaction to your cheat day and are using negative correcting behavior the more likely you are to binge when the stress and frustration become the more dominate feelings. That Happy, Motivated person who started off doing great is struggling more then they ever imagined.

The binge is the worst. The loss of control and the calories consumed and the feelings swirling in your head are so great.. its hard to find something to grab on to, structure, you want to go back to that happy positive motivated person who was eating so good! However thats the whole reason you ended up in this *kitten* hole in the first place.

When people change something... The end result should be that there is some slight differences but it should still be the same. Like painting a table from blue to red and adding an accessory, Its still the same old table you had but its changed and looks better. You don't light the table on fire and then go out and buy a new one. Nothing was wrong with the old table, it still worked fine it just wasn't functioning the right way for your life now.

Just the same as you shouldn't go from who you were before your diet to a 360 degree change. Being a picture perfect model of health and eating nothing but fruits and veggies and lean meats is a nice fantasy but honestly, its not reality. Some people can do it.. but for most of us, we like chocolate, we like cake and we like pizza. You are no different that that table. You need to stay you but you just need to customize yourself.

There is 7 days in a week with a lot of opportunities. There is no reason why pizza can't be worked in, in a reasonable serving. You put those foods in and then you plan around them.. Healthy salads, wraps, great snacks, lots of veggies, lean meats, Etc and suddenly you've got a great week planned and have something to look forward to each day. And funny things start to happen.. The more you start just having these things on a regular basis the less they happen to be heavy on your mind, Why do you need a cheat meal? You can have pizza any time you want. Youve made it work and fit it into your calorie goals. The more things you start fitting into your calorie goals the less times you end up seeing red. Now you can go to a party and if they are serving pizza, you have 1 or 2 slices and are good to go, cause hey, you worked in pizza lots over the last few weeks, its not something youve been avoiding so the need to shovel it in your mouth is gone now.

You get home from the party and you log that pizza but you've barely gone into the red because you had calories already set aside for dinner and the amount of pizza you ate was reasonable, you've had so many days in the green now that you know that if you continue with your well thought out meal plans that include the things you love that the few calories you were over will be erased simply by waking up the next days and carrying on with your new lifestyle change.

Weight keeps coming off. And suddenly all those bad labeled foods that you kicked out of your life the first time have kept you more on track then any cheat meal could have and now they are doing nothing wrong, they are actually helping, not only from a weight loss perspective but from a mental one. Your relationship with food has become better then ever. Because food is just food. A good healthy balance of nutrition and what we love makes the months that pass during our weight loss journeys feel a lot more enjoyable rather then long and hard.

I will always promote and encourage Healthy food relationships.

luangie16 wrote: »

Agree. In the past, I would view the heavy meal day as a cheat meal and for some reason it derailed all of my efforts. Turned into another cheat day and so on. Had to change how I viewed that half cheeseburger and few fries or 2 slice pizza meal. If I work it into my meal plan then be at peace with it!!