Sticking to your meal plan

I don’t think of it as cheating. I just log everything with my best estimate. If I have a lot of delicious food one day, it still gets logged. The choice is mine, the consequences are mine. If I don’t lose anything that week, I know why.

I also won’t eat anything that isn’t delicious, even if it’s free. I’d say no to leftover meeting sandwiches and donuts in the break room, but yes to someone’s homemade pie. Choices!

Basically the diet you've designed is not sustainable and the need for a cheat meal or day is basically the proof, imo. For some people sweets and desserts are enabler foods that muck with their hormones so much it make it very tough to resist and when a person that's on a diet where they feel deprived, it's bound to happen.

For me a mostly whole food diet and one that is lower in carbs and not necessarily really low will by default be higher in protein and fat, which all of these aspects (changes) positively effect those satiety hormones and why lower carb diets are recommended by pretty much all lifestyle physicians that deal with obesity and diabetes. That sweet taste in a diet that isn't satiating very much can be a very slippery slope into binge and overeating, no doubt about it. Personally I don't crave sweets at all anymore, but what's even more profound is that when I consume fruit I don't get the same urge to want more. Processed and ultra processed foods are ultra palatable and that is by design, so maybe look at a diet higher in whole food. Cheers

Myabe this is just me, not you . . .

When there's something like that going on for me, I need to acknowledge that I'm making a choice, and own the results that flow from that choice.

Free food, or treats, or (like today) pizza and beer, or whatever: They don't have some mysterious force that rules me, against which I'm powerless. I'm making a choice. If I say I want some long term goal, yet make choices that I know won't get me to that goal, I have to admit that I didn't really mean it when I said I wanted that goal.

That said, when it comes to food and eating, I don't necessarily need to make the choice that leads to my long-term goal every. single. time. I just need to make that choice the overwhelming majority of times, and balance out the short term pleasure vs. the long term goal on average over time. (Hence today's pizza and beer. Oh, and gelato. Not the first time, in year 7+ of maintaining a healthy weight.)

For me, it isn't necessarily always easy, because my internal toddler wants immediate gratification every. single. time. She doesn't have a care for future Ann's well-being.

But bottom line, it's just that simple: My choices, my consequences.

Empowerment kinda stinks sometimes.

I’m just curious. Your cheat day. Describe your normal week and what the cheat day is usually like. How often?

I don’t “cheat” because I’d only be cheating myself, and that’s just plain silly.

What I do do, though, is eat well below calories six days a week and not beat myself up if I decide to demolish a (big!!!) chocolate bar the seventh, an extra donut Sunday, or have an extra piece of Mellow Mushroom pizza over and above what I’ve already prelogged.

Prelog? Yep. I plan and log several days in advance so I know what days I’ll be low or high on, can change things up on the fly if a friend calls and says “sushi for lunch?” or don’t feel like the original planned meal and need to squeeze in a replacement.

I don’t sweat the daily, but I do keep tabs on my seven day average for both calories and macros. If I wreck it, then I know I’m headed in the wrong direction. If it’s ultimately within goal, I’ve aced it yet another week.

This helps avoid guilt for other things: bunco parties (aka Eat All Tha Thingz), dinner with friends, the rare CookOut shake, a chicken biscuit for breakfast.

I no longer frame any of it as cheating. It just “is”, and I’m in charge.

It’s amazing how fast saving a few hundred calories a day adds up to a feast, as opposed to the bitter grind of trying to under eat and out exercise a bad overage.