Cheat meal weight loss

maisieraef
maisieraef Posts: 15 Member
edited December 2024 in Food and Nutrition
Last night I had a pizza cheat meal. I had eaten 952 calories prior, and then had 3 slices. I woke up this morning and went from 286.4 to 285.2. Why does it seem as if I lose more weight once I have a cheat meal? And then the week I’m strict and track what I’m eating, it is quite slower? It makes me want to have more cheat meals!!

Replies

  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    It may or may not "catch up" with you another day. I'd have probably seen a spike from a bit of retained water from eating more sodium than usual. Three slices of pizza isn't a big deal, either, but If you've been in a nice deficit for a week or whatever, your body doesn't just switch over at midnight and reflect that you cheated. And mid week in your mental space of being good on your diet, your body is still on its own schedule handling what you ate days ago.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    Your body doesn't react immediately to what you do each day. Weight you gain or lose today could be due to something you did yesterday, Wednesday, or a week ago.

    And big gains or losses overnight are due to water weight swings or digestion changes, you don't burn 1.5 lbs of fat overnight.

    To judge fat loss or gain, you need to look at your weight trend over weeks, not overnight :smile:
  • Wendyanneroberts
    Wendyanneroberts Posts: 270 Member
    kimny72 wrote: »
    Your body doesn't react immediately to what you do each day.

    And big gains or losses overnight are due to water weight swings or digestion changes, you don't burn 1.5 lbs of fat overnight.

    Having read this reply, I felt I would try to clarify my post, (I hope).

    My "fat" loses were being hidden by water weight changes. Dropping the water weight, revealing fat loss. A trend that shows over time.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,688 Member
    Wendyanneroberts wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    Your body doesn't react immediately to what you do each day.

    And big gains or losses overnight are due to water weight swings or digestion changes, you don't burn 1.5 lbs of fat overnight.

    Having read this reply, I felt I would try to clarify my post, (I hope).

    My "fat" loses were being hidden by water weight changes. Dropping the water weight, revealing fat loss. A trend that shows over time.

    Yeah, anecdotally (and maybe more than anecdotally), that seems to happen for some people. I think (don't quote me) the mechanism may be related to stress, cortisol, water retention.

    Have you read this thread?

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

    You may get some insights from that.

    Kimny's still right: It's the long term pattern of eating vs. activity that determines the long term effect on weight. If you keep eating how you're eating, except add more frequent over-calorie-goal days, it's likely that you'll lose weight more slowly, over a multi-week period.

    The one possible exception might be if your normal routine is aggressive loss to the point that your energy level (observably so or not) is depressed, so is reducing calorie expenditure (through fatigue, basically); and your cheat days result in a just enough higher calorie intake that your energy level perks up overall, but it's not a enough extra calories to overcome the energy increase

    I suspect there's a kind of narrow band of calories where that sort of thing might apply, for an average person. We do seem to see people who, once they go to maintenance calories, sit at a consistent bodyweight for a few weeks, then start to slowly lose weight again, presumably because of this sort of thing.
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