Husband says have a cheat day once a week.....REALLY ?

Tell him to don't quit his day job.

Metabolisms don't just 'reset', nor are they so fussy that eating more calories one day a week will cause any change to them. Your husband has been reading too many magazines

So, is it possible that what he really wants is to have one day per week when the two of you eat more "normally"? Whatever that means for you? Has his food changed as a result of your dieting? Because one way to accommodate that (if you want to) is to eat a little less six days a week so that you can have one day per week where you can have dessert or a drink or a higher calorie dinner or whatever. It's called banking calories. The idea would be that if your goal was to eat 1500 calories/day, you'd instead eat 1400 calories/day for five or six days of the week - which gives you an extra 500-600 calories to play with on the remaining day(s).

I'm not saying you have to do this. It's completely up to you whether or not it appeals to you. But, in the grand scheme of things, it's the weekly average that matters not every single day. And this has nothing to do with any sort of metabolic anything. It's really more about making dieting easier on your social life. It's not a "cheat day" in the sense of being "eat anything and don't care". It's a planned maintenance day - which can be really great from a psychological perspective.

You may also want to talk to your husband about what he means by "going overboard". Is it just that you're eating *differently* than before (which may well be necessary to lose weight) - or are you eating at low enough levels that he's worried about your health?

I think what your husband is referring to is the idea of a refeed day or cheat day. It was believed for some time in some circles that having a few days where calories were above maintenance would result in an increase in Leptin levels. Leptin is the prime regulator of body fatness by initiating signals to the hypothalamus to control appetite. In response to a diet, Leptin levels notably decrease, which acts as a homeostatic defense mechanism to defend the body from losing stored fat any further. This can notably cause a decrease in NEAT levels and even the calories burned during exercise. This is part of the semi-true idea of starvation mode. Yes, it is true that the body does try to defend itself from long periods of being in a deficit, but it very rarely will ever cancel out the deficit entirely. There have only been a few studies that show this to be the case in some individuals.

While cheat days or refeeds can be beneficial psychologically, due to being able to eat more, Leptin levels do not increase enough to make a significant impact on energy expenditure. A far better idea is to take a diet break after every 8 weeks of successful dieting, where calories are brought up to maintenance and stay there for 2 weeks. This will help increase some of the Leptin lost from the deficit and ease ghrelin, which will make dieting easier.

* One thing to note is that if you are going to implement a strategy like this, the increase in calories should come primarily from carbohydrates, as they have the biggest impact on circulating Leptin levels, while protein could perhaps be lowered a bit, and fat could be kept the same, assuming that you are not consuming a very high fat diet of 40% calories or higher.

Once you use the word cheat on an eating plan you've told yourself your deprived
Cheat days can mean anything from eating a higher cal meal than normal or blowing all your good work out the window for that whole week

If he's worried you run off reassure him
If he's missing how you used to eat explain how I lots t your health is

Parkercomom wrote: »

I have read that a cheat meal a week is good. It has an effect on thyroid levels.

Read better sources.