Cheat days, kill me!

BTW try skinny cow candies and ice cream for your sweet tooth. And no more than one a day. ;-) That should help keep your sweet tooth at bay

Perhaps you can cook/prepare your own cheat meals from scratch? I love to make pizza and plan to make some on Sunday for my free meal. I even have the ingredients to throw together some fudge brownies. There is something visceral about seeing each and every ingredient that goes into the preparation of food that makes it hard to over indulge (for me). However if I get a restaurant meal, it is hard to tell what all went into it, I will mindlessly eat whatever is set in front of me.

Pre-plan what you're going to have. I do that. It helps me evaluate how much I should have and what I maybe should cut out. You should always have a free day to eat whatever. 1-3 times a month never hurts anything.
It's all about moderation NOT deprivation.

I dont do cheat days (never have) for me this isnt a 'diet' its a healthy eating regime... MFP is encouraging me to have a healthy eating lifestyle so I can eat healthy foods with a few treats chucked in (thats real life) When no foods are off limits I tend not to want to indulge as much if I allow myself to have a what i want when i want it ( within reason and always within my cals limit) there is no ned for a 'cheat day' who are you cheating at the end of it all only yourself. Happy Chowing x

I am going to be honest with you, if I try to have one piece of candy, I am left unsatisfied. I tried it last week. I had 4 King Size candy bars in my freezer for me to pick off slowly as a treat. Well, two Kit Kat sticks led to 4, which led to both halves being ate and me having to log it in shame. Then I said f- it, the damage is done, so throughout the week I ate all the other. Unnecessary. Since I can't control myself around it just yet and I only eat it if it's in the house, I refuse to buy it. I won't let my husband buy me any candy either. I don't even want to see it because I felt so guilty about eating those empty calories that for the first time in my life, I didn't feel like chocolate was my friend, if that makes sense. I can eat a piece and still crave more, and that worries me. So, maybe no cheating with things you can't control, it just seems better that way. I haven't had or thought about candy since last week, and that is new for me. Hope this helps.

I dont believe in "cheat days", why would anyone want to cheat themselves. I have what I want when I want IN MODERATION. If I want chocolate I'l have some (and I do....almost every single day!). My opinion is that if you have everything you want in your diet then you wont need to cheat on yourself, this is my diet for life, not for a short while while I lose weight, and I do NOT plan on giving up chocolate or KFC or anything else I love, I just cut down how often I have it and how much when I do indulge.

I do swap things I like with lower calorie alternatives though, like 1 square of dark chocolate (instead of a treat size bag of malteasers haha) or homemade southern "fried"(baked!) chicken. Making your own can cut the calories (not to mention the sodium!) drastically. xx

I think you've got the whole cheat days concept wrong. Cheat days are not about eating whatever you want in whatever quantities you want, but you can indulge a bit. And of course, the more sugar and carbs you load yourself with, the more you crave.
And the worst bit... is that you will still crave them a couple of days later. So don't over-do it when you have a cheat day is my advice.

I'm finding that if I have a cheat day, it takes me a week to get it back under control. I don't even feel like exercising for that week either, so I'm double set back. I'm not sure they are worth it.