cheat days

You lose weight by eating less calories than you burn. To lose 1lbs of fat you need to burn 3500cal less than you eat. So you need to make 3500cal deficit.

Say you want to lose 1lbs per week. Then 3500cal divided by 7 days equals 500cals per day. So if you burn 2000cal per day as an example, then you need to eat 1500cal every day to lose 1lbs per week. If you eat more than 2000cal per day you will gain weight.

In so called cheet days people eat more food and often much above their maintanance. For example say you eat at 500 calories deficit as the above example. 6 days per week times 500cal equals 3000cal deficit. Then say you eat 1500cal above your maintanance on the cheat day. Then your total deficit for the week will be 3000 minus 1500 equals 1500cal. That is less than 0.5lbs loss per week, instead of the planned 1lbs.

If you decide to go on a holiday and eat above maintanance every day you will gain as much as the amount of calories you overeat. Say you eat 1000cals above maintanance for seven days. Then you will gain 7000cals or 2lbs during your holiday.

This is how cheat days work.

It is not true that you can take 1 cheat day per week. You see that is some arbitrary rule for people who need rules. You can take as many cheat days as you want. It depends how quickly you want to lose weight.

Editted to add: Your body burns calories just to exist. These plus your movement burns make your total burns. Your maintanance calories are your total burns for the day. If you eat as much as you burn you will maintain your weight.

Some studies (please don't ask me to cite them!) that have shown that varying your daily calorie goal can lead to better weight loss in that it keeps your metabolism on its toes, and it makes the diet easier for you to stick to, AND it makes weight loss more sustainable once you reach goal.

You pick a weekly calorie goal, but vary the daily calorie goal. So, say my daily goal is 1700 total calories (I don't eat my exercise calories back, so my daily goal is set higher.) That's 11,900 calories a week. I could eat:

Monday: 1400
Tuesday: 1700
Wednesday 1300
Thursday 1600
Friday 1900
Saturday 1700
Sunday 2300

You could call Sunday a cheat day. But it still fits into my calorie goal for the week.

There's also evidence that taking a one-week diet break will boost weightloss in the long run for the same reasons as above. You'd eat at maintenance that week, then go back to cutting afterwards. Doing that every few months can make your diet much easier to stick to. It's not the same as saving all your cheat days for a holiday. You can do that, but you can expect to come home a bit heavier. But that weight will probably be easy to lose again because you've had a break. :-)

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Oh, good grief: The pointless moralism! It's just tood, not a cycle of sin snd expiation.

Which was my point. I don't like the term because it represents a concept that is unhealthy. Namely, that there is a moral judgement to be made when somebody decides to treat themselves or splurge on a snack or meal. It reinforces and perpetuates some societal notion that fat people are somehow weak and/or inferior because they enjoy a Dove Bar or Fettuccine Alfredo once in awhile. We who are overweight then develop some very negative thoughts regarding ourselves because we seem to be unable to manage a 'diet' without having to cheat on it.

Plus, most 'cheating', even though immoral, is designed to advance somebody toward their desired goal. How exactly does that work when it comes to 'cheating' on a diet?