“Treat/Cheat” or no?

If it works for you?
Then it works for you.

Who am I to judge?

What I did the last time I used this app and lost weight was to take a day out of the week and "cheat" but still track. I kept it to 2k calories or less, but that well accommodated treats. Personally, I think cheat days can help avoid/mitigate plateaus, and they keep you sane if you like food. Right now, I'm only two weeks into re-starting, and I want to go the first month without purposeful cheat days. But yeah, if they work for you, go for it!

I do that all the time, but dont think of it as cheating. The cheat/treat mentality toward food just seems wrong to me. I'm working on loving the foods that are healthy for me.
I know it's a funny analogy, but it's sort of how I used to be attracted to guys that were good looking, but real a-holes. And now I can still appreciate someone's aesthetic value, but no real attraction whatsoever.
I'm just losing the taste for foods that aren't good for me.No cheating necessary!:D

Personally, I don't like the "cheat/treat" framing. I don't understand who or what I'd be cheating. It's just food, and we need to eat some. Food is tasty, but I don't want to be thinking of it as a reward/compensation for anything else.

For me, the "cheat/treat" concept turns the simple act of eating into an epic melodrama about good and evil, and I don't need that kind of extra drama!

Most of the time I eat close to goal calories and my personalized targets. Sometimes I eat under goal (usually not by much), sometimes I eat over goal (on rare occasions quite a lot over - thousands of calories), most of the time I eat close to goal. Ideally, any of those are intentional decisions, and I take responsibility for them.

During loss, I logged everything - good, bad or indifferent - to my best practical ability. That included over-goal or nutritionally unusual days. I wanted to see how my body responded, and I particularly wanted a detailed calorie record so I could see whether MFP's estimate of my calorie needs was accurate. (NB it's just an estimate for demographically similar people, a sort of group average, and I'm an individual.) For me, that was a good plan, because it turned out that I'm the odd duck for whom MFP's estimate is far off (25-30%, hundreds of calories).

I did the same in the early months of maintenance once I reached goal, because I wanted a reasonably accurate estimate of maintenance calories with my complete maintenance routine.

Now that I'm nearly in year 8 of maintaining a healthy weight, I still log most days to keep my head in the game, but will skip days when I'd be wildly estimating or if I'm ultra busy/distracted. I watch the scale as backup. That's been working fine for me for several years now.

I'm not saying everyone should do likewise. Tailoring our tactics to our individual preference, strengths, limitations, and lifestyles is a key success factor, IMO. If having a "no rules" day once a week helps a person, and they can achieve their goals doing that, that's great, sincerely.