Cheat days?
 

I am curious what everyone's opinion is on cheat days. So far I have had one cheat day a week and it's actually been a pretty good thing. I thought I would hate it bc I tend to be pretty militant when it comes to a diet. But I kept gaining back so I figured I would take the advice of someone who has been successful. I have lost ten pounds in a week. I am exercising 6 days a week and watching calories very closely those six days. I don't go crazy and binge on my cheat day but I definitely enjoy it. So far so good... For me anyway. Has anyone seen trouble down the road with cheat days? So far it's helping to keep me motivated throughout the week but I want to be careful! Any input is appreciated 😊

I usually "cheat" on Thursdays and maybe 1 weekend day. I am diligent throughout the week, mostly because I have to be bc of being Diabetic. Of course, losing weight too!!! When I do have "cheat" days, I still have to be mindful bc of the Diabetes (I suppose a blessing in disguise!) TBH, I think having those cheat days is helping me lose weight! Go figure :dizzy:

I think cheat days are important, but they can get out of hand. If you are doing it once a week you might want it to be a cheat meal rather than the whole day. And like Jesika said, still be mindful of what you are eating.

I don't believe in cheat days. It takes a while for the millions of tiny digestion organisms to get used to a new diet. To bounce back and forth will probably cause problems with your stomach. As a person who decided that Low Fat Vegan was the best thing for me, I cannot simply eat a fatty slice of meat and cheese because after a while Vegans actually become sick when they eat too much fat, oil, or protein. A lot of people get sick switching their diets back and forth simply because the millions of bacteria which helps to break down food in the lower intestines is specific to each diet. A person who eats a lot of cheese and meat is going to have a completely different bacteria population than a person who eats no oil, sugar, and only vegetable protein. Having a cheat day is just asking for stomach upset, and maybe diarrhea.

That does make sense, if you are eating a very strict (or different) diet than what you'd be cheating with. I personally don't diet that way, I just try to make better choices as I go along. I think of it sort of how a "naturally skinny" person eat. Eat pretty good, then maybe one day have french fries, or next week have a slice of cheesecake. Basically just allow little luxuries into your diet.

I've found that I go overboard with a cheat day once a week. I'm thinking of trying it maybe twice a month and see how things work.

My diet consists of food that I really enjoy. I just try to stay within my calorie parameters that I have set for myself. Nothing is off limits - so I really don't need a cheat day. However, there are days when I am really hungry; and If I have stayed on plan for over a week or two, I will give myself a free day. I'm sure it has slowed my weight loss over the past year - but at least I have consistently lost pounds and am still on plan.

I find I only "cheat" once or twice a month. If there's a birthday, PMS (lol) etc, then I go off plan. Ironically, the scale is usually in my favor a few days after a cheat day. Must be good for my system :) I'm pretty good about getting back on plan once the "celebration" is over.

All of this.

I've read a few articles that have said that cheat days can be mentally beneficial! So far so good for me 😊

I think having cheat days for me right now as I re-start is important. I am trying to phase certain things out, so a cheat day is a perfect solution. It is easier not to have my one soda a day when I know I can have it on cheat day. Something I am doing differently this time is still tracking my calories on cheat day and not going overboard. I had a friend who would start her cheat day at midnight and eat for 24 hours. I can't see how that is healthy or sustainable. Maybe it worked for her but it couldn't work for me. I'd like to eventually be to a point where I don't need a cheat day, and instead am just in tune with my body.

But right now it is a very useful tool! Can't wait till next Saturday ;)

i have one every friday but DO NOT EVER extend it into Sat-Thur, i eat healthy and within cal limits the rest of the week but ENJOY my Fri!

Honestly depending on what you eat sometimes a cheat day can set you back and you might lose less weight than you wanted.

For me I normally have a cheat meal no more than once a week. Once I start having "cheat days" I eat too much and go crazy. Making it hard to go back. So a cheat meal doesn't set me back and tends to be around my maintenance calories, so I don't gain weight.

I'm changing my routine to this, also. Limiting it to one meal, probably bc after going on Zoloft, i've been gaining even though i've limited my cheat day A LOT (thankfully i'm weaning off that med) but i do enjoy my cheat meal and don't feel bad about it at all and it helps me actually keep on track the rest of the week :)

I kind of do, but not quite. Basically I alternate days of very low calories with a bit higher. Like one day no more than 1000 calories. Then the next 1600. then 1000 the next, 1600 the next. But I go over sometimes on my higher days-but only if we go out to eat, then I don't count the calories I just try not to go crazy and stuff myself. And I switch days around depending on what we are doing(like I will do two 1000 days a row if I know that Friday we are going out to eat but that's my 1000 cal. day, I'll switch it to a higher day and then just eat 1000 on Sat and Sunday to get back on track). I was losing 2-5 lbs a week this way for a couple of months, but then I stopped(had some family emergency stuff, going out of town, etc, and blew it off for a while). Just started back on doing this again. I didn't/don't feel too deprived, because if I am feeling deprived on a 1000 calorie day I just tell myself I can have it the next. And I did. And as long as I didn't go nuts on my higher calorie days, I was losing weight well(and I wasn't even exercising). I had read about a diet plan in a magazine that was alternating 1000 calorie days with 2000 calorie days, and it said mixing it up like that helped keep the metabolism up. I don't know, but it seems to work for me to go up and down with my calories. But I know I go over 2000 calories some days, so if I am not eating out on a higher cal day I try to keep it around 1500-1600.

I just don't think it's realistic to spend the next 50 years never eating a piece of birthday cake or a slice of pizza at a party, so I "cheat" about three times per month. When I do it, I do a cheat meal, not a whole day. In the past month, two of my cheats have been pizza and one has been dinner at a steakhouse. I also try to stay as close to my calorie limit as possible even when I am eating a cheat meal. The last time I had pizza, I only went over by 66 calories. I went over by 167 at the steakhouse, but I didn't do so intentionally. I looked up nutrition info on FatSecret, made my selections based on that, and then found out when I got home that it was off by 200 calories. I actually would have been under my limit if I had accurate info when I was ordering.

My WOE has been a modified intermittent fasting and I believe it is something I can maintain for life. "Cheat days" are basically built into the WOE. I track my weekly calorie intake, rather than daily. I am trying to lose weight right now, so 1200 cal x 7 days = 8400 calories per week. Some days I have 500 calories, some days 1500, some days I have 2000, etc. My low cal days are packed with high protein low fat choices. I have found this method is working for me. When I hit my goal, I will up my low cal days and see how it goes.

I must acknowledge that I am lucky in that I don't generally crave snack foods like chips or sugary things. My weakness is wine and good cheese though...an expensive habit that my waist and my wallet are happy to see less of.

I don't do a cheat day. If I'm craving something, I eat it, and just incorporate it into my day. That being said, I don't do it all the time. It's also about portion control. Sometimes, I'm fine with two bites of ice cream. I don't need the whole pint. Or, a happy meal instead of a huge adult meal. That seems to work for me....

I don't believe in cheat days. Once a month I allow myself to have one cookie from Timmies, a slice of cake and some ice cream on my birthday and Christmas Day is a free for all. Anything else I incorporate it into my calories. For instance, if I want fries I will make some from a real potato and I avoid eating anything that will make me feel ill after eating it (like potato chips or too many sugary foods) and I don't eat anything nutritionally void.

I don't do "cheat days" the way I always thought of them - where you go off your diet, whatever that diet may be, and then get back on the next day. I never could just get back on the wagon the next day, and cheat days turned into week, and I failed. A lot of times.

Since this is the calorie counting section, and calorie counting is how I succeeded, I just focus on that. I do think that eating at maintenance occasionally is a good idea, and that can serve as a "cheat day" in the sense that you can fit in party food or a restaurant meal that you probably cannot fit in to your 1400 calories (or whatever.) This serves as a safeguard on days that you screw up, too - I target 1400, my maintenance is 1800, so if I eat 4 extra cookies one day for 300 extra calories over my planned meals, I'm still only at 1700. I can now call it a maintenance day and know with absolute certainty that I haven't undone any progress. Just paused for a single day.

It is all about the mental games, and finding a pattern that we can repeat without going off track. No substitute for trying stuff out for ourselves, since while our bodies are more similar than people think, our minds and our baggage around food surely isn't!

I really don't like using terms like "cheat", they foster an unhealthy attitude towards eating and food, and in particular encourage a binge/starve cycle. When people say, "Every now and then I have a day where I eat at maintenance calories," that sounds like a much healthier mindset.

I dieted for ten months five years ago and peaceably lost 1lb/week without difficulty. I don't think I had issues with this, partly because my then-partner almost never cooked with me so I was doing it all independently, and I wasn't getting enough of a social life for it to make a difference to my eating habits.

I'm now at a slightly different place in my life, and in a different (and much happier) relationship. My health is worse so that I'm no longer able to cook and rarely able to help, and my partner's health means that he's not always up for cooking either. So we get a takeaway every week or so, and it makes a big difference to being able to manage our lives and in particular mental health. We also have friends round most weekends for board games, and traditionally I make a batch of biscuits (cookies) for that.

I've only restarted dieting a few days ago, and I am pondering how to incorporate these things. The biscuits are easy, weigh everything and figure out the calories per biscuit, and limit myself sensibly - which I need to do anyway, as I can't handle much sugar. The takeaway is usually rice noodles with veg and tofu from a local Chinese place, and I tend to go for just soy sauce on top, so I don't think it's likely to be more than a hundred calories or so more than one of our usual meals, though I will try to figure it out. We get pizza less often, and I get a smaller one and don't eat all of it anyway. It's vegan, which will reduce calories a lot, although they now know my favourite veg so well that even if I ask for different ones, the oilier foods like the aubergine and the olives faithfully appear! Probably more calories for that one, but hey, it's about once a month, I don't think it's going to be a big deal. I'll log it all faithfully and see what happens.

Unfortunately in my life every week is a cheat week :dizzy:. I have my boyfriend I eat out with 2 times a week at least, cooks me dinner another 2 nights a week, my mom who cooks me fabulous dinners monday night, and my rampant social life where people have birthday parties like every 2 weeks it seems. It's a good life, but I don't have a lot of control.

I just can't do cheat days on top of that because realistically I'm lucky if I can lose weight at all with my current lifestyle!

If I spent a lot more time at home and made my own meals, you bet I'd have a cheat meal every once in a while.