Cheat days

pebbles45112000
pebbles45112000 Posts: 6 Member
edited November 25 in Health and Weight Loss
Do u do them and if so, do you do them once a week or how often?

Also has having cheat days slowed down your weightloss?
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Replies

  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
    Depends on what you mean by "cheat"... but personally, no I don't.

    My cheats are too big and involve too many calories to do on any kind of a routine basis - they simply undermine my progress too much.
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,099 Member
    Balance. For me flexible dieting lifestyle works for me. I follow 80/20 suggestion. 80 as much whole food/ micro dense nutrients, with 20% wth I want. If I know I am going out on a certain day, I will cut calories for a couple days before. Best of luck.
  • for_ever_young66
    for_ever_young66 Posts: 2,877 Member
    edited March 2018
    My quick take. I would make them as infrequent as possible. If you know you'll be attending a party or perhaps a relative's house and your host has no clue as to what your macro-nutrient goals are, you may want to reserve that as a cheat day. But when you start planning cheat days (most folks use Saturday) you end up wiping out everything you worked so hard for during the week. Especially if you're trying to lose weight, you should not plan for cheat days.
  • Mikkimeow
    Mikkimeow Posts: 139 Member
    Are you wanting to eat a certain item and feel like you only can once a week? OP, you could consider trying to fit the things you enjoy into your daily life. Alot so many calories/macros whatever you track with for extras. Eat them, enjoy them, and then you can move on with your life without guilt or disordered eating patterns.
  • shatabdi
    shatabdi Posts: 5 Member
    Unfortunately, I cant afford to cheat. If I permit myself to think about it, I would plan my cheat meals all day everyday :D . After I reach my goal weight, perhaps I would add a drink or some sweets into my diet. But I eat healthy satisfying meals and if I cheat with for example, a slice a pizza, i feel uneasy for up to 2 days and thats just not worth it for me.
  • darrenbeckworth
    darrenbeckworth Posts: 64 Member
    With MFP you can eat whatever you want as long as you burn the calories. Why not just workout more on days you want to eat the higher caloric meals? A whole day of eating badly and not exercising seems reverse to the whole idea of this website.
  • bobshuckleberry
    bobshuckleberry Posts: 281 Member
    I follow a Macro diet. If I want something I make it fit into my calories/macros. I do not do cheat meals or days. Mostly because I do not feel like this is a diet. Of course I cannot go crazy and eat everything, but I can eat 'anything'.
  • butterfli7o
    butterfli7o Posts: 1,319 Member
    A whole "bad" cheat day can easily destroy a whole week of progress. Been there, done that.
  • RecognitionT
    RecognitionT Posts: 120 Member
    Every day's a cheat day.
  • SabAteNine
    SabAteNine Posts: 1,867 Member
    I'm personally not a fan of cheat days, at least not exercised regularly. And especially not if their purpose is to be a reward. I find it counterintuitive to reward myself for a successful behavior with the very same things (or amounts) I have done so good overcoming. Then again, I also know that if I would pre-plan a cheat day, I would find a way to justify a second one too. It's a slippery slope.

    However, there are situations and situations. I consider free days the ones which I can't control for various reasons, or those special ones like weddings and so on. If I'm going to a wedding, I'm'a eat my cake, and I'll definitely drink copiously for the occasion.

    If you really feel you need cheat days, maybe it's time to re-evaluate the plan all together? After all, the long-term goal should be to adopt a better, healthier way to eat as a way of life and not a temporary restriction.

  • malibu927
    malibu927 Posts: 17,562 Member
    JustinAnimal wrote: »
    I've recently been more on-board with the concept of one cheat meal per week. Some diet plans even mandate it (something about tricking your body into thinking you have an excess of calories, even though you're at a deficit the majority of the time... could be misguided).

    I do it for sanity. If I didn't drink alcohol, goodness knows the tremens would kick in and someone would wind up in the hospital. I like staying "good" (different for us all) the majority of the time and exercising my long-extinct will power, but NOT actually feeling any guilt when I have one meal that happens to be something like five beers, a bacon cheeseburger, and onion rings.

    As others have said, a cheat day or weekend basically squares you back up with all of the "good" days you had, rendering your efforts futile (if you're trying to lose pounds).

    Your body doesn't get "tricked" by anything

    OP, I don't do cheats, because I'm not cheating on anything. If I want something, I work it into my weekly calories.
  • pebbles45112000
    pebbles45112000 Posts: 6 Member
    What I meant by cheat days is once a week kind of thing. Usually on my cheat day I have a fried Cobb salad from Zaxbys with 3 light ranch dressings and 2 peti fours from Publix.

    Also I am trying to lose 2 pounds a week, so I guess what I am trying to ask is, am I undoing a whole week of progress and slowing down my weight loss?
  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
    Cheat can mean a lot of things. For example:

    Do I have days that I don't log? Rarely. I genuinely don't mind logging, and it's important to me to know that I'm hitting my averages. I've gotten better at estimating calories, but it's still too easy to lose track, and the less weight you have to lose, the easier it is to wipe out an entire week of dieting in one day. That said, maybe every couple of months I just quick-add some calories and say f-it.

    Do I have days that I eat things I don't eat other days? Yes! I save certain high calorie items for regular "special occasions" - Sunday night is pizza and movie night with my husband, so I often eat less earlier in the day to balance it out. I donate blood every 8 weeks and usually get a sausage breakfast biscuit beforehand (these often turn into maintenance days especially since you're not supposed to exercise for 24 hours after).

    Do I have days that I eat more calories than others? Also yes! I cycle calories, so I eat at a large deficit five days a week and then two days where I eat maybe twice as much as the deficit days. I understand there's some science behind regular "refeeds", but honestly I just do it as a way of sticking to my diet while still being able to go out to eat.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    pebbles45112000 wrote: »
    What I meant by cheat days is once a week kind of thing. Usually on my cheat day I have a fried Cobb salad from Zaxbys with 3 light ranch dressings and 2 peti fours from Publix.

    Also I am trying to lose 2 pounds a week, so I guess what I am trying to ask is, am I undoing a whole week of progress and slowing down my weight loss?

    Nobody can know that without knowing what your deficit is the rest of the week and how much you're going over that deficit on your "cheat day." It's certainly possible for a single meal to cancel out an entire week's deficit depending on what you eat and how much large your deficit is.

    Have you tried logging your "cheat meal" to see how many calories it is? This is probably the best way for you to determine how much it is going to impact your weight loss.
  • eisterunicorn
    eisterunicorn Posts: 158 Member
    shatabdi wrote: »
    Unfortunately, I cant afford to cheat. If I permit myself to think about it, I would plan my cheat meals all day everyday :D . After I reach my goal weight, perhaps I would add a drink or some sweets into my diet. But I eat healthy satisfying meals and if I cheat with for example, a slice a pizza, i feel uneasy for up to 2 days and thats just not worth it for me.

    One slice of pizza throws you off for two days?!?! Damn!
  • pebbles45112000
    pebbles45112000 Posts: 6 Member
    Yes, I always log my cheat day. How do I find out what my deficit should be?

    I
  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
    pebbles45112000 wrote: »
    What I meant by cheat days is once a week kind of thing. Usually on my cheat day I have a fried Cobb salad from Zaxbys with 3 light ranch dressings and 2 peti fours from Publix.

    Also I am trying to lose 2 pounds a week, so I guess what I am trying to ask is, am I undoing a whole week of progress and slowing down my weight loss?

    Again, it depends. Losing weight is all about balancing how many calories you consume versus how many you use. So if your body uses 2000 calories a day, you need to consume less than that on average to lose weight. Say that this Cobb salad is 1500 calories, and you otherwise eat 1500 calories a day (2500 total on Cobb salad days). That means that you have a 500 calorie deficit six days a week, and a surplus of 500 calories on Cobb day. Your Cobb day cancels out one of your deficit days, but you're still in a 500 calories deficit for five days a week, which works out to 2500 calories or a bit less than 0.75 of a pound lost a week. Pretty good if you ask me!

    Now, if you skipped the Cobb and ate 1500 every single day, you'd have seven days at a 500 deficit, totaling 3500 calories and one pound lost a week. But the trick to losing weight isn't how fast you go, it's how consistent you are. If eating that salad once a week makes it easier for you to stick to 1500 calories the other five days, then that's awesome and go for it! Just be aware that as you lose weight your body needs fewer calories, and that high calorie day will start having a larger and larger impact on your rate of loss.
  • MegaMooseEsq
    MegaMooseEsq Posts: 3,118 Member
    edited March 2018
    pebbles45112000 wrote: »
    Yes, I always log my cheat day. How do I find out what my deficit should be?

    I

    If you want to lose two pounds a week, you need a deficit of 1000 calories per day. If you entered the two pound goal in MFP at setup, the calorie goal it gave you is what it estimates will create a deficit of that size. If you want to maintain this rate of loss while still eating over your goal once a week, you need to be under your goal enough on your other days to balance out the one high day.

    The thing to keep in mind, though, is that MFP will not recommend a calorie goal under 1200, which means that in order to lose 2 pounds a week, your body must need at least 2200 calories a day to stay at your current size. For an average height woman in her 30s who is only moderately active, this mean you would weigh something like 165 pounds. It's generally considered unhealthy for women to eat fewer than 1200 calories ever, so you want to lower your rate of loss as you get smaller.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    What are you "cheating" on if not your calorie allowance which you don't know yet?
  • gcaracciolo2
    gcaracciolo2 Posts: 130 Member
    I do very infrequent cheat days every now and then. I would say once a month.

    No tracking happens in those days! It hasn't slowed my progress to date, mostly because I have one when I feel/look really lean, get it out of my system and then move on. I gain a bit of weight for 3-4 days but then business as usual after that.
  • for_ever_young66
    for_ever_young66 Posts: 2,877 Member
    Yeah, if I get invited to a party and someone serves a dish I rarely eat, I have no idea what the ingredients consist of and of course, I'm not going to ask the host for a breakdown. Those days, however, are pretty infrequent and I don't log those.
  • fb47
    fb47 Posts: 1,058 Member
    edited March 2018
    pebbles45112000 wrote: »
    Do u do them and if so, do you do them once a week or how often?

    Also has having cheat days slowed down your weightloss?

    I never have a planned cheat days. I will only cheat on special events like a wedding or Xmas or social events with people I haven't seen in a while....but doing a cheat day for the sake of cheat day...nope, I don't need to. At this moment, I am bulking, so even if I decide to go at a fast food restaurant, I can still get away with it since I have room for 3200 calories. When I do cheat on those special days, I rarely change my diet, I just move on, because one day of overeating won't make me fat, just like 1 day of undereating won't make me skinny. All I usually end up getting is water weight and I take advantage of it at the gym :smile:
  • Kst76
    Kst76 Posts: 935 Member
    edited March 2018
    pebbles45112000 wrote: »
    Do u do them and if so, do you do them once a week or how often?

    Also has having cheat days slowed down your weightloss?

    Is a cheat days same as going way over your calories?
    Because I go over some days, and I'm way way under some days. It all evens out in the end. When I think if cheat days i think of restrictions and I don't have ANY restrictions.
    Right now Im drinking some Rose. That's ok. I have plenty of cals to cover for it. I planned for this moment. And the next day I wont be sorry.
  • fb47
    fb47 Posts: 1,058 Member
    Sakura_Tree wrote: »
    I have a cheat day once a week, for the rest of the week i follow a plant based diet. i will consume around 3000 calories or more on my cheat days, they haven't effected my weight loss as far as i can tell :P

    So you didn't cheat, I mean if your weight loss stayed at the same rate, technically you just ate a highly processed meal or food (aka junk food) but fit within your macros. I guess it all depends on how we define cheating. What is a cheating day, is it going over your calories or just eating junk food regardless how they fit withing our macros?
  • Kst76
    Kst76 Posts: 935 Member
    butterfli7o wrote: »
    A whole "bad" cheat day can easily destroy a whole week of progress. Been there, done that.

    Then again, how bad is your cheat day and what does cheat day mean to you? Throw you off for a whole week? In what sense?
  • saintor1
    saintor1 Posts: 376 Member
    edited March 2018
    When I cheat, I CHEAT. I allow myself one cheating day every 2 weeks. And I still lose weight. It is highly convenient for social happenings, and whenever it happens I don't weigh for 3 days. I typically feel like cr*p for those days anyway. I also cheat almost the whole time in vacations like 3-4 weeks a year (like next month in the Caribe, all-inclusive), 3-4 days in the Xmas period.

    This doesn't jeopardize my weight control, on a yearly basis.

    I think cheating a full day once a week would be too much, as your body would be in recovery mode almost half of the time.

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