Cheat Meals / Refeed /Off Plan - Scale impact?

noodlesno
noodlesno Posts: 113 Member
edited January 2023 in Health and Weight Loss
Hey,

So I am a believer in having an evening or lunch off the tracking every so often for me to have a mental break from it (roughly every 3-4 weeks). I have a very addictive personality and I know I can get a bit obsessed with weight loss.

This system works for me. I have the times planned months in advance. It will always be for an event like a wedding or party etc. I will walk in and turn my brain off to calories consumed and tracking and just enjoy the celebration. I will drink and eat the food and laugh with my friends and family.

I know this may slow my process down but it is worth it to make sure I don't get too mentally addicted to the counting and the weight loss. Also that I am not losing out on life just because I am on a diet.

However, I need to manage my expectations so as not to go into a tailspin after...What do you think the impact on the scales will be from a night of indulgence? I know that a lot of this can be water weight.

My first one of this diet series is on Thursday and I want to make sure I am not in a tailspin on Friday if I am up 5lbs and I am not expecting that.

Thanks

Replies

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,416 Member
    edited January 2023
    Well...my suggestion is to just do it and see what happens. We won't be able to see into our crystal ball any better than you will.

    I have big-over-calories days probably once a week. Like 700-1500 calories OVER my goal. So far, in 15 years it's never caused me to gain weight for more than three days. It's possible to be up on the scale by 4-5 pounds for me, but it drops back down in a few days. You could always just not step on the scale for a couple days if you think you will "tailspin." I mean, to me the body weight scale is just another data point, it's not very emotional (any more.) That is something that came with long term weighing and logging. Do what you need to do to ease your stress, but I believe knowing is better than not knowing. It's interesting to me to see how big overfeeds really affect long term goals.

    I would not try not-logging. That's not true: I've tried not logging those days and what happens to me is that I just keep going with over-eating or not logging on the next day and the next day and that does eventually cause weight gain. I do much better just making an educated guess, logging it and moving on. I've been logging food long enough that I really can't even eat anywhere without the mental calculator ticking off numbers. I don't see that as a bad thing, though. It's just life maintenance in my opinion.

    If you're going to roll the dice, I think you have to expect snake-eyes. :)
  • clairrob
    clairrob Posts: 38 Member
    I have a typical weigh day per week and a "cheat" day, the cheat is only a meal at a pub with a pint or two of lager.
    I've made my weigh day a Friday, so my Saturday cheat has probably been burned off by the following weigh-in, I've only been doing this for around 10 weeks but the numbers have only been going down on the scales. I know I'm slowing progress but we need to keep our sanity, I find myself looking forward to my Saturday treat, and I've been losing an average of 2.8lbs a week! :smile: The rest of the week I'm in a 500cal deficit from my BMR, with additional deficit brought by exercise that I don't eat back.

    Coming from another obsessive person when it comes to dieting, allow yourself treats in moderation and try to weigh the same time weekly.

  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,155 Member
    cmriverside wrote: »
    [snip]

    I would not try not-logging. That's not true: I've tried not logging those days and what happens to me is that I just keep going with over-eating or not logging on the next day and the next day and that does eventually cause weight gain. I do much better just making an educated guess, logging it and moving on. I've been logging food long enough that I really can't even eat anywhere without the mental calculator ticking off numbers. I don't see that as a bad thing, though. It's just life maintenance in my opinion.

    If you're going to roll the dice, I think you have to expect snake-eyes. :)

    Yes. I do regularly-ish scheduled maintenance breaks, but I still log, because if I don't, that trajectory is pretty much what happens. Circumstances are a little bit different but this is what happened to me when I was pregnant last year - at first I wasn't going to log because I was tired and hormonal, but then I ended up just not logging for the entire pregnancy and hoo boy did I gain more than I wanted, even though I thought I would be able to just eyeball everything and be fine. A few weeks turned into nine months and then a few more postpartum, and now I have more work to do and have to get back into the habit. I know it'll be fine, but I built the logging up in my head as something harder than it really was, and now I have to do more actual hard work (sustaining a caloric deficit.) Darn.

    For me, when I have surplus days it's not just extra calories I'm consuming but way more salt than usual, which makes me incredibly thirsty, so I'm gulping down tons more water (and I already drink a lot of water!) The scale may jump a lot the next day, but over the next couple it settles down. I do try to budget extra for those times, but on average (which is the thing I really care about) a diet break means I stay the same weight while I'm on it, even if I get a few high blips on the graph. But logging, even roughly, means I stay on track for when I start up the deficit again.

    BTW, I don't think it's bad to be really motivated by data collection. I think a lot of MFPers are, and it's just a certain kind of nerdery that works for our brains, not an obvious sign of disordered attitudes about food. It's true that some/many people with eating disorders do data collection of a sort and then misuse the data, but that's about the misuse (e.g. weighing your food to eat at starvation levels, rather than weighing your food to maintain a healthy deficit for safe weight loss.) I treat it like my household budget - I want to know my body's income and expenses, too. And keeping track of household money doesn't automatically make me miserly, either.
  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,848 Member
    noodles, while I completely agree with taking frequent diet breaks and returning to maintenance for a while, I do think you should keep logging and tracking, especially because you obviously want data. Continuing to log will provide you with that data, and possibly accountability to not spiral. If you're at a dinner party or wedding reception, take a picture of your meal and ballpark it later. Try to remember how many drinks you had, so you can later log those calories too.

    As an aside, I dislike the term "cheat meal". Who/what are you cheating? Yourself, your goals? That's not cheating, that's sabotaging. Make such meals/days part of your sustainable plan by banking some more calories in the week before, or working out more around those times. Or, time those events you mention like a wedding with a proper refeed break of at least 2-3 days.

    Ann shared these vids in a different thread recently. I think you'll find them very interesting. Basically, after a couple of binges of +6400 above TDEE and +8400 above, she tracked her stats in the days after and up to two weeks later. Most of the weight gain from temporary, however some fat did remain, and she explains how that amount is less than you might assume.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeDvYExqhOI

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6cIbIvEGJM
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,225 Member
    Keeping cals low enough for either weight loss or weight maintenance is commendable so when a big event comes up your payment is to not worry about the calories. It may impact your weekly numbers however there will be no long term effects so just enjoy the event with no guilt. The issue is if you do this too frequently
  • noodlesno
    noodlesno Posts: 113 Member
    Oh, I love Stephanie Buttermore. Have you seen her recent journey? She has gone 'All in' and removed herself completely from tracking in order to bring her mental and physical health back. Definitely worth a watch.

    Thank you all for your advice. I really appreciate it.

    I am taking a break from tracking for a meal occasionally (I am not calling or thinking of it as cheating or cheat meals) because I know my personality well enough that I know I need to have a mental break from it to stop me from slipping into an ED. This is a very personal reason for doing it and I am not saying for a second that it is something everyone should do.

    I have done this journey once before where I lost 100lbs in just under 11 months and I became super obsessed in the end and it wasn't very healthy.

    I don't think it is a good idea for me to track the off meals as I know I will then be punishing my body by trying to balance the calories for the rest of the week. I know that the healthy way to deal with this, for me, is to have a lovely night and then just get right back on track the next day and give myself the right amount of fuel to live an active life at the same time as being in a deficit. If I track the meal then there is absolutely no reason for me to be doing the break. I need to have a nice time and not be scared or worried about the calories to understand that food should not be feared.

    The point of this is a mental health break nothing more.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Nothing really more than water weight and more inherent waste in your digestive track. The human body strives for homeostasis...it requires consistent underfeeding or overfeeding to override this. In the short term the human body is very good at balancing out excess calories or insufficient calories. Just like if you fasted for a day, you're not going to lose fat...you're not going to gain it with a night of indulgence either.
  • Rockmama1111
    Rockmama1111 Posts: 262 Member
    Like many above, I also have several days a month where I eat a LOT more. (Over the holidays, I recorded some epic-sized meals!) I rack up several 1200 calorie days throughout the month and it balances out. I try to keep my weekly average at 1600 calories. I'm losing at a very comfortable pace.

    I do log whatever I eat, even if it's a guess. I want the data for analysis. This does two things for me: If the scale doesn't budge one week, I can look back and see why. Second, it gives me the comfort of knowing that it doesn't stop my weight loss at all.
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,259 Member
    The long-term weight implications of one big meal or one big over day in the context of weeks upon weeks of compliance with a reasonable deficit will be... a blip. It will be lost in the ordinary noise that you get from daily weigh-ins. Your trend will continue what it was doing before the big day. I saw my scale go up over the last two days because of some tasty things I ate (and logged), but the trend continues down because that's where I'm at.

    Here's an idea that may or may not be worthwhile for you. I made a "recipe" called Rafters Rations. It's for when I go on multi-day trips and there's no way to really gauge how much I eat, and since we all take turns cooking (bringing ingredients and doing prep), there's no way to even know exactly WHAT I'm eating. I know I eat more on raft trips than normal, and I am also just a lot more active so it balances out. My "recipe" is 3300 calories, or what I figure I eat in a day. That's over 50% over my normal day. The "recipe" is simply 100 grams of "protein," 100 grams of "fat" and 500 grams of "carbohydrate." That's it. It's one serving per recipe. I log one serving per day I'm on the river. It's a place-holder, and I never worry about what or how much I eat for those three to 23 days.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,223 Member
    I don't like the cheat mindset, but I do eat more some days, and calorie bank a small amount (maybe 150-ish calories) in maintenance most days. Occasionally I eat way, way over maintenance, in a rare case 2-3 times more than my maintenance calories. This isn't cheating in my world, it's decisions about food that make my life pleasant now, and keep it pleasant for future Ann.

    The scale blips up, but if I go back to my routine habits, the scale drops again over a week or so, NBD.

    For those who haven't watched Buttermore (from the videos above), don't let her appearance deceive you into thinking she's an intellectual lightweight. She has a PhD in a human biology kind of field, and the videos explain the technical backdrop of what happens after a big intake, and one has actual lab tests of relevant physical/metabolic factors. Very informative, pretty short, fairly entertaining: Good stuff.

    Here's a case study of my own, with just scale-weight data, FWIW.

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10603949/big-overfeed-ruins-everything-nope/p1

    IIRC, it links to someone else's similar self-case-study.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,225 Member
    mtaratoot wrote: »

    Here's an idea that may or may not be worthwhile for you. I made a "recipe" called Rafters Rations. It's for when I go on multi-day trips and there's no way to really gauge how much I eat, and since we all take turns cooking (bringing ingredients and doing prep), there's no way to even know exactly WHAT I'm eating. I know I eat more on raft trips than normal, and I am also just a lot more active so it balances out. My "recipe" is 3300 calories, or what I figure I eat in a day. That's over 50% over my normal day. The "recipe" is simply 100 grams of "protein," 100 grams of "fat" and 500 grams of "carbohydrate." That's it. It's one serving per recipe. I log one serving per day I'm on the river. It's a place-holder, and I never worry about what or how much I eat for those three to 23 days.
    I do something similar. I have a food I call “Stuff”.

    Stuff is 100 calories of equal macros. I can go to dinner and will have a pretty good idea of how much Stuff I had or if I miss a day, the next day I can go back and think back on Stuff and put in the rough amount of calories so there aren’t blank days in the equation

  • sbelletti
    sbelletti Posts: 213 Member
    It's not cheating, it's just eating. Log it, weigh daily for the following week and see what happens. Then adjust as needed before you do it again.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,223 Member
    Sounds like a reasonable plan. It'll be interesting to hear your after report, of you choose to share it.

    Also, congratulations on your nomination: That's a really big deal!
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,259 Member
    Congratulations on the amazing nomination! That must feel really good. I've been nominated for a few things, but nothing that big, and even the little ones I've received really feel good. I hope you get to stand up and have your colleagues honor your achievement!

    And congratulations on stepping back from any concerns about having a CELEBRATION that includes food and just writing down that it happened without too much hullabaloo and then continuing onward. Sticking to it is how it works, and I think your approach is fantastic.

  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,416 Member
    edited January 2023
    HUGE Congrats on winning the award! :flowerforyou:

    ...also for realizing this:
    I am glad I gave no head space to tracking and just lived in the moment.

    It doesn't have to be 100% perfect - but getting back on track the next day like you did is a great strategy!
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,259 Member
    Congratulations on the recognition from your peers. There are some things that are that rewarding, and they're all great. I was recognized by my peers a few years ago for an annual award. I had been nominated previously. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so if I'm nominated again, I'm not eligible. Of all the teams in the organization, the last three awards were for people on my team; we have an awesome team!

    Now on to the NEXT great achievements. Some might even be right here on MFP!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,223 Member
    Congratulations on the award from your peers: That's a wonderful reflection on your hard work and character.

    I'm glad that you were able to let "diet mindset" rest for the event, get back on track with your routine, then find a mindful, moderate way to enjoy life through the weekend. That's perfect, IMO. Bodes well for your ongoing progress, on the weight loss front and for maintenance beyond.

    I'm also glad the scale didn't do something freak-out provoking. I didn't expect that it would, based on experience . . . but sometimes the scale can just be a weirdo lying scoundrel for a few days for no reason at all!

    Kudos for all of your accomplishments: May you sail on to many more successes!

Categories