Is it Okay to have a cheat day?

All that matters for weight loss is eating under your maintenance calories on average. Doesn't matter what you eat. (For health is another thing of course) Doesn't matter how you spread those calories over the week, whether it's eating the same amount each day or having lower calorie days throughout the week and a cheat day on the weekend, etc.

I do recommend logging your cheat days to make sure you're not cancelling out your calorie deficit of the week. The precise numbers will depend on your chosen weight loss rate, what your calorie goal is (and how much you're actually eating),... To give you an idea: losing 1lb of bodyfat per week corresponds with a calorie deficit of around 3500 calories.

Cheat days don't speed up your metabolism. Refeeds (within certain constraints) can help moderate some hormonal responses that may make weight loss more difficult for some people. More information here:

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

IMO, it would be a good idea to be skeptical of anything that implies that one's metabolism has anything like an accelerator, or brakes. Metabolism is pretty much the summation of the energy required at the cellular level to keep you alive, while at rest.

Lietchi is right about logging the cheat days: If you do so, you'll have a better idea of the effect. Sometimes it's just a nice psychological break to eat a bit more, when on restricted calories for a long time. If you know how many calories were involved, so know how much impact those calories had, you can decide whether the delay in reaching goal weight is worth it. Sometimes, IME, it is.

amyrluk wrote: »

I let myself have a cheat because I have heard that cheat days can speed up your metabolism. When you hit a platue. But are there certain rules about cheat days. like how many calories you can go over. And what you can eat?
I let myself have one yeasutrday but I think I ate to much.

Who or what are you "cheating"?

Just make sure 'cheat' doesn't mean 'binge.' I don't know about you, but if all bets were off, I'd have no problem downing an entire frozen pizza, a half batch of chocolate chip cookies, an entire box of ice cream bars and a big bag of Doritos - all washed down with a jug of milk or 2 liters of Pepsi and happily call it a 'cheat day.'

What does "cheat day" actually entail for you?
I assume the general range of meanings of that term could be anywhere from eating at maintenance to an all out uncontrolled binge.
Which would make the range from perfectly fine to an absolutely terrible idea. Can see you went a long way over your goal but is that logging everything or not as lunch is blank?

Why do you want a "cheat day"?
Is it because your dieting method is unsustainable and you need the release? Is it because you want to enjoy a social event involving food?
Again a big range!

"I have heard that cheat days can speed up your metabolism" - sorry but that's not true.
It comes from a common misconception of what metabolism actually is, plus pandering to a desperation for some magical calorie burning. Sorry but life and dieting isn't like that.

If you have a weight loss plateau then maybe stop drinking so many empty calories in Mountain Dew and increase the accuracy of your food logging?

I consistently drop scale weight a couple of days after eating more than my usual calories more for me is at maintenance rather than at a deficit.

I suspect this is where the metabolism boosting myth comes from.

Reality? I think I drop scale weight because my body drops WATER weight because the long deficit sort of stresses it out and it holds water a bit and the extra food prompts it to go. Alternatively I drink more coffee those days and pee more. Since I have been eating closer to maintenance this is less of a thing.

Either way, I do days (and sometimes weeks) out of a deficit and it does nothing for FAT loss. Except keeping me sane which is long term useful.

Like lots of others, I don't like the term cheat days. I definitely allow myself some days when I eat over my daily calories, but I balance that out by eating some days when I am under, so over the week, I am within my weekly allowance. This allows me to socialise with friends over a meal, and/or lets me enjoy some higher calorie foods like pizza which would be tricky to fit into my daily allowance AND still have other meals that day too. Whatever I eat, I log... I do this to help with accountability. Sometimes it's actually to make sure I am eating enough as I don't want to lose any more weight, but most of the time it is just to reassure myself that I am in control of my eating, it is no longer in control of me.

mylittlerainbow wrote: »

I note that some of you are talking about "cheat days" during the weight reduction phase. Maybe that can be motivating in terms of keeping people on track (so you don't feel like 'the most deprived person in the world' and give it all up!), but I would probably make those very rare during weight reduction and only start to work them in during maintenance, when we have parties and social events and other things that we're opening up to again (as the pandemic permits, of course). You want to feel that you can eat more normally - i.e. less restrictively or vigilantly - once you're in maintenance.

I mean. I've maintained about 2 weeks out of every two months the whole time. The only thing that has changed is the number I maintain AT (Ie: It drops down). Also a lot of us here average our calories out over a week, not a day to day basis. It all works.

And not feeling deprived is pretty important DURING loss too. There is no big change when you flip to maintenance. By the end you should be losing half pound a week. Meaning what you gain back is a whole 3 apples or 1 candy bar worth of calories so might as well practice as you go, be it 'banking' calories/averaging out over a week, or otherwise working those special occasions in.

So, of some relevance here and that Ann's post made me think of:

When I first started trying to lose weight, I had to do a LOT of experimenting. There was a lot of cutting things out, or substitution for lower calorie/light versions of things, and a lot of working toward volume because I was used to eating a lot more - clearly, since I was obese.

That was probably the period I 'needed' cheat meals and diet breaks the most. Because I was hungry and unsatisfied and fumbling around through my mistakes of thinking something was worth it that turned out not to be (and so having fewer calories for later in the day), or making TOO MANY substitutions and ending up just being really low on calories PERIOD. In both cases ending up hungrier than I would have been with a more fine tuned understanding of what worked for me - as well as a bigger deficit than I have now, of course, plus at that point I was still used to grazing all day.

At this point the diet breaks aren't a big change from when I'm trying to lose - 250 extra calories a day, sure, but it's just slightly bigger servings of what I'd eat, anyway. The deficit is smaller in loss and my TDEE has gone up some, but also *I know what I am doing* and my habits have changed and my hunger has ramped down. I don't do a lot of snacking anymore. I eat more - volume and calories - at once. I'm not eating egg whites on 35 calorie bread for breakfast - I'm using regular bread with whole eggs *and* bacon for breakfast. Or avocado toast with egg on top. My yogurt is 5% fage not oikos triple 0, nd so on and so forth. It's just eating, at this stage, and even the occasional 'I'm getting a whopper for dinner' isn't something that really puts me over.

During loss though? Learning how to feed myself led to me being hungry and antsy a lot. The odd day of going 'Can't deal' and just eating helped. I needed, basically, to make the mistakes that left me hungry, learn from them and adjust to get to the point where 'cheat days' or 'high calorie days' or 'breaks' weren't a thing. And I needed them to not be a mental thing, either. Ie: Not binging, not 'cheating' on something, not failure, just a 'okay we're doing this on saturday and if I don't lose, so be it'. But as ann said I had enough deficit that I never failed to lose SOMETHING.