Self hate after cheat meal

If it makes you feel like that, stop doing it

Matt, I have an entire cheat day and I have lost 17 pounds in 7 weeks. It is one day out of the week I get to eat what I miss out on during the week of clean eating. I don't eat back my exercise calories and most days i am usually 200 calories or more below my daily goal. It really comes down to your weekly calorie deficit, which mine is 12,660 calories or less in 6 days. I figure as long as I stay under this i will lose weight. One day isn't going to break me. After my cheat day I usually workout twice on that day.

If its food, its meant to be eaten. For weight loss goals, there are probably some foods you should eat less of, sure. But this is built into your plan, so .... you are are compliant. So why have guilt when you did what you agreed to? No one is measuring for extra compliance.

But I get it. I am more using MFP in order to be nicer to myself. I would starve myself if I didn't have this app to tell me that I can eat my allotted calories and still meet my goals. Overachiever mindset and all that.

I log it and own it. The shadow of imagined wrongs are often larger in your own head. I have often measured up the calories of a wreck of a day and found out, wait, I am only at maintenance for today, or I am still on track for the week. MFP lets me rest easy and put those swirling negative thoughts down.

There's never a good reason to hate yourself over food. Even if you ate your way through an entire chocolate factory and had a side order of a bakery too. You are still never a bad person just because of what you eat. We all have off days. Log them, move on, do better tomorrow.

My perspective, though, is that I don't "cheat." I could easily eat far more calories than I really wanted to if I did that. I would then be unhappy that I'd erased some of the caloric deficit I worked so hard to achieve. So instead, I sometimes save calories for things I really want, or eat high calorie treats on my long run days.

I also budget for chocolate every day. Yes, chocolate every single day. I love it. I have been tracking and losing weight for over two years and I would not have stuck with it for this long if I couldn't have my chocolate. It's not a mistake to eat foods that you like. It's one of the pleasures of being human. You can incorporate your favorite foods into your diet if they fit your calorie/macro goals.

Disclosure: I'm an emotional eater, a boredom eater, an introvert who generally puts food in her mouth because it's easier than letting small talk come out of it, and I have some minor anxiety issues, especially in social settings. Which is kind of a recipe for hanging out at the buffet table all evening. So...

I keep telling myself that a treat is not a cheat. By which I mean, I don't have 'cheat meals' in the sense of deliberately going over my calories. What I do is try to be realistic about my attitude toward food and recognize that when I go to a birthday party, yes, I want cake and NO I am not going to be happy "virtuously" sipping water and munching on carrot sticks.

So before I go into the situation, I mentally sit down and ask myself, "Now, before the cake is on the table, calling your name like the Dish of the Day in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy and begging you to eat it, be honest: how much of the high-calorie stuff do you think you need to eat for you to not feel deprived?" Then I check the database and get an idea of how many calories we're talking about. And then, I enter that amount into the tracker before I even get to the party. (If there's a range, I usually aim for the high side of average; I can adjust later.) This achieves a few things:

• I have a reasonable idea of what the cake (or ice cream, or cookie, or whatever) is going to cost me. And while 300 calories, for example, is a significant part of my daily allotment, it's 300 calories. I would have to be 3500 above maintenance to gain a pound. So, if I choose to indulge in the cake...
• I have the cake. Without the side of guilt that has been thrown in for no extra charge in the past. Because I haven't blown anything. The pounds I've already shed aren't going to come flying back onto my hips.
• Sometimes, if I know I ate something high calorie and I haven't pre-logged, I resist entering it into the tracker afterwards. If I don't record it, it didn't happen! Of course, then I feel worse, because I know it really did happen, but as long as I'm not logging and as long as the day is already shot... Well, I might as well see what else is in the fridge, right? Yeah. Not fooling anyone, especially me. Pre-logging keeps me honest and accountable. More to the point, when I write it in ahead of time, I take steps to ensure I don't go over. Smaller meals, more exercise, whatever it takes.
• When I recognize that it's actually okay for me to have that piece of cake, I can enjoy it and then stop and stick to the fruit and veggie platters.

So far, I've dropped 37 lbs in 4 months (Got another 87 to go), and every week, I make room for a couple of pieces of potato kugel and a frosted cookie. I had cake at my nephew's birthday last week. I had latkes and donuts on Hannukah. But it all gets logged and it all stays within my daily totals.