What do you think of a "cheat" day?

so what does everyone mean when we say cheat day?

For example, I tend to have chocolate (especially recently) every day.

To me, that's not a cheat - it's aprt of my daily calorie intake.
Yesterday I had a snickers bar and two slices of pizza for dinner. It (sort of ) added up into my daily calories.

Thoughts?
Cheat to me would be not logging (weekends for me).

A cheat/spike is a day to increase calories well above maintenance for the benefits that russell posted.

Including some "unclean" foods into your daily cal/macro goals is not cheating.

I log everyday, good or bad. It's the only way to be able to accurately analyse past history for future progress.

This ^^. But refeeds/cheats like this described are not for people who have a significant amount of weight to lose yet, the last 10-15 lbs is where refeeds/cheats start to come into play big time and boy do they ever work wonders. I too log everyday, good or bad, check out last week, I ate half a jumbo box of Vector with milk in a 24 hour span, it wasn't "unclean" so to speak, but it was a bump up in calories, carbohydrates. When I was doing a lean bulk last winter I was going for a weekly refeed of 5000-7000 calories. Why?? Because I wanted to get stronger, get faster, gain muscle and not have to eat in a large calorie surplus everyday of the week leaving me bloated and full all the time. I would rather have one day where I get to just veg in my fat sweats and eat within reason, now my refeeds are 2000-3000 on top of my normal caloric intake now that I'm cutting. Leaning out below 20% bf isn't just about calories in calories out, there is a science behind it, and I truly believe it's an art when done properly without losing a lot of LBM.

I found out about "Spike" days pretty early on in my weight loss journey and I personally don't think it really matters how much weight you have to lose as to how effective it is. Since I've started spiking I've had many great benefits.

1. I haven't stalled my weight loss
2. I have a ton of energy especially on my workout the day after my spike.
3. I don't have the urge to "cheat" on my diet because I know the spike is coming.
4. I've lost 1.5 to 2.5 pounds EVERY week since I've started spiking
5. I've gotten stronger and it shows in my lifts
6. I feel great about myself in general

What's not to like about those results?

BTW if you do the math which the diet is based on you are at an overall caloric deficit for the week. I personally had a very hard time accepting that it could work until I could work the numbers on spreadsheet myself. Right now I eat 1700-2200 calories for 6 days a week and then 4400ish on my spike day. Based on my exercise pattern that still has me at a 7000ish caloric deficit for the week and no cravings.

See that to me is just awesome. I'm so happy to hear that. And it's so true. From most of what I've read the reason why they can be so beneficial as your closer to goal weight is strictly from the hormone side of things. But your right, the math doesn't lie, what the refeeds do though for your metabolism while in a deficit is the biggest key, and the bonus of having kick butt workouts (I always have my refeed the day before my weakest link/body part training that I'm trying to "bring up" so to speak) while still being able to lose body fat at the same time. For most people eating like this, they won't put on a large amount of actual "mass" in terms of muscle if they are trying to do so, but the conditioning from training/eating like this ends up being the most beneficial thing I can see. I most often do legs after cheat day.

I don't do specific "cheat" days, but if I know I'm going to be in a situation where I won't know all the nutrition details of what I'm eating (i.e., traveling, a party, at someone else's house, etc.), I will just try to stay within my maintenance levels.

I think the concept of "cheating" itself implies that you are severely depriving yourself on your "good" days, which is not how I'm choosing to eat, anyway. I'm tracking everything I eat as best I can, and eating back at least 75% of my exercise calories, and if I have enough extra calories left over for a bit of ice cream or chocolate or something, then I'll have it. It wouldn't work that well for me to say, "well, I'd really like some chocolate tonight, but I'm not allowed to have it until Sunday," because then Sunday would roll around and I would feel free to eat as much chocolate as I want. I'd rather just honor the cravings as they come, and fit those foods into my daily calorie limit. That to me seems much more sustainable because it doesn't mean that there are "good" and "bad" days.

For me, I take Sundays off completely. Food and exercise. For 6 days a week I am really, really good at keeping my calories in tact. At times though I wonder if I might in the end be a tiny bit lower than my number of 1500 calories. I usually end the day with between 1300 and 1450. That said, I think my cheat day keeps me on track and keeps me from falling into starvation mode. I continue to lose the 1-2 lbs a week with my cheat day.