Cheat Days

I am sure many people have shared their sentiments on "cheat days", but I wanted to get something off my chest.

I struggle(d) with disordered eating. Not an eating disorder - there is a difference - but a disordered thought pattern surrounding food, and a very unhealthy relationship with it.

There were a lot of different ways that these thoughts presented themselves; but the biggest part of it for me (and by far the most disturbingly normalized part) was assigning value to foods, which came along with failed attempts at cutting out entire food groups that I deemed to have a negative value, and feeling guilt, shame, and embarrassment when I would "cheat".

But cheat on what, exactly? A healthier lifestyle? A healthy lifestyle can (and should) include all kinds of food! Sure, there are some foods that have more to offer nutritionally, but something I am working every day to remember is that food is not inherently "good" or "bad". If I have a donut for breakfast, I'm not "being bad" or having a "cheat" meal, but simply enjoying a donut for breakfast.

It took me a long time and a lot of failed attempts at losing weight before this all clicked for me. I worked through some of it and still deal with my binging problem. It's been more than a month since my last binge, and I found this article particularly helpful in bringing me back down to Earth. I'm working to identify some of the triggers that cause me to binge, and one of the biggest ones was labeling foods as "bad". That always lead to guilt, and before I knew it, feeling guilty about having that one "cheat" donut turned into shame-eating an entire box of them.

I'm not implying that anyone who uses the term cheat day or cheat meal has an eating disorder, or even that they struggle with any sort of disordered eating. What I am saying is that it's a far too normalized way of thinking about food in general, and can certainly contribute or lead to some potentially dangerous ways of thinking about food.