Cheat meals

How do you define cheat meal? Eating food you don't usually 'let' yourself eat? Or eating above your calorie goal? Or a meal where you don't count the calories?

I don't do cheat meals in any definition, since I'm not married to my diet 😉
I eat all the foods I like within my calorie goal (and sometimes above my calorie goal, if I'm still on track long term). I have 'treat' foods every single day, in appropriate portions. I'm aiming for a slow rate of loss, which also helps to reduce cravings.

Who or what would I be cheating? To me, "cheat meals" are like Santa Claus is to me as an adult, maybe appealing, but certainly mythical. My body counts every calorie.

I didn't eliminate foods, let alone whole groups of them, to lose weight. I just rearranged portions, relative proportions, and frequencies of what I eat, to hit my calorie goal, while balancing calories, nutrition, fullness, tastiness, practicality, athletic performance, social connection through food, and more. (It was a gradual remodeling process.)

There aren't "bad foods" or "good foods", "diet foods" or "unhealthy foods" (as long as not literally poisonous, allergenic for me personally, or contraindicated by a medical condition). There are just foods, with various characteristics. I need to combine them in ways that achieve the balance I mentioned in the paragraph above. For sure, there are bad overall ways of eating (too many/few calories, undernutrition) and better ways of eating. (Perfection probably isn't realistic. Balance!)

All of that said, I have days where I eat below goal (occasional), right around goal (frequent), a bit above goal (occasional) and way, way above goal (rarely, but it can be up to 2-3 times my maintenance calories, on rare occasions, maybe a handful of times a year). Those are *decisions*, in my world, not "cheats". If I eat over goal and decide afterward that it wasn't worth it, I need to revise my plan to avoid repeats. If it was worth it, I need to work it in somehow.

Routinely, especially now in weight maintenance, I calorie bank. I eat *a little* under my maintenance calories most days. Occasionally, as I mentioned, I eat above my maintenance calories. Logging and my scale weight tell me what my calorie bank account balance is, over time. It's not that different from budgeting money, really. Things need to balance; sometimes I use my credit card, or sometimes I put cash into savings. Becoming over-fat is like too much credit card debt, basically: It becomes a burden.

I budgeted a little more closely during weight loss, and am a little more loose (but not inattentive) now. I'm still BMI 20-point-something now (around 125 pounds at 5'5"), in year 5+ of maintaining a healthy weight after previous *decades* of obesity, so it works for me.

One can calorie bank during loss, too, but I think it requires some caution. It would be silly to eat 900 calories 7 days a week in order to eat 10,000 over the two days of the weekend. The weekday deficit would need to be reasonable, healthy, sustainable. But the general strategy works.

Best wishes!