I lost 70 lbs while cheating 1-2 meals a week.

I then had a baby and now need to lose another 50 lbs. My cheating has turned into an entire weekend so I'm trying to get that under control because that is resulting in me just maintaining my weight.

How much do you "cheat" and still lose? Is it a specific meal, and certain number of cals a week/weekend.

I haven't cheated, but I'd imagine once or twice a month isn't going to hurt.

Also it depends how much you cheat. If you're eating big macs every weekend then you can expect not to loose weight. If you're going 10-20 points over your cals a day, it probably won't hurt.

I figure there's always things that I'm not counting properly, like precise volumes of meat, or quantity of frying oil used.... I don't often actually measure it out, I just eyeball it. I'm sure that often I underestimate, and therein is my "cheating".

Different for everyone, for sure!

I usually do good having a treat about once a week. It's not just the extra calories, it's also whether it pulls you off track.

Also take your weekly averages into account as well. I have planned splurges with my weekly goal met. I want to lose weight more than anything I want to eat.

I can have one splurge day a week and still lose OVERALL for the week. It's all about the average. At the end of the week I average out my calories that I ate and average out my weight (I weigh every day so I can get the weekly average) and I can totally see the correlation between average calories and average weight. So, if the one splurge doesn't throw off the average very much, I'm good. AND happy, which is part of the point, right? If I can't go out and have dinner with my boyfriend and have some drinks at a concert, well ****, who cares how thin I am. Not me.

usually once per week! I have to. Otherwise I would feel deprived and binge. Usually its a planned meal or a dessert that I only eat half of (when I am on plan of course).

Normally my cheat meal is pizza with cinnamon bread sticks or a brownie with the works

Its only a meal though. I cant allow myself to eat more or choose a day etc because its a dangerous slope and I will eat back all the calories i have burned/not eaten during the week.

My advice is to pick a meal each week and just eat until you are satisfied but not so much you wanna puke!

I don't do it every week, but I certainly have had planned slurges throughout my weight loss. I think it's been about every other week or so. Sometimes it's just a meal, and honestly sometimes I'm "bad" for the day. On those days, I often go for pizza. LOL. It has not derailed my weight loss. But I jump back on plan the very next day, no exceptions. As I get smaller though, I think I need to be a little more careful with these splurges if I want to continue to lose.

It depends on what you consider cheating. Cheating as in going over your calories or cheating as in eating fast food/junk food and staying within your calorie range or going over your calories while eating junk. Theres a lot of definitions for that question.

If I drink alcohol I go way over my calorie limit, I dont beat myself up to bad over it. I tend to live in the present and not the past, learn from the past and keep moving forward. Sorry for rambling lol. I went over my calories big time on Saturday because I drank alcohol but honestly speaking this week was way better then last week and I managed to stay within my calories all the other days. I eat what I want as long as I stay within my calorie range so if I want to eat a cheeseburger or fries (which I don't eat often) as long as Im within my calorie range then Im happy and see results. For me personally I eat healthy and rarely eat fast food or junk food but I don't make myself eat stuff that I don't like. My diet has to fit into my lifestyle so the food I cook for my kids and husband is the same food I eat. theres no different meals for them and me. I just measure and stay within my calorie range, there are no foods that are off limits. Moderation is my motto. Sorry for the long post, Im feeling very long winded tonight lol Take care and I wish you luck

I have a cheat meal every other month or so. Usually involves a restraunt and is usually the result of someone's birthday or other special event like a holiday. I really look forward to those meals, but they do cause havoc with the scale. The scale tends to hate me for days after. Seeing how much the scale reacts from those infrequent events pretty much keeps me from cheating more often. I am too scared of what the result will be. But overall, I have kept losing.

Little cheats though (a hundred calories here and there) can be balanced with some calorie shifting. I guess it's really a matter of how much of a cheat one is considering.

I can't share from my experience yet. But my husband lost 110 pounds a few years ago... (Now, he's a guy... so that does make a difference. )

He looked at calorie intake as a weekly thing. As long as he "averaged" x calories a day over a week, he considered it fine. He would eat 1200 calories most days, and then one day he would have a "Cheat Day" (typically Thursday, due to his work schedule.) And eat pretty much whatever he wanted. (Which equates to drinking lots of beer, and eating nachos. )

For me? If I cheat once, I am worried I'll blow the whole day. Which will turn into the whole week. So I'm trying to avoid cheating except for special occasions.

My trainer let me "cheat" two days a week....but by cheating he meant that I don't have to exercise and I don't need to have a calorie deficit ( so if I ate 1400 calories I needed to burn 1400 calories rather than 2400 for my 1000 calorie deficit...does that make sense?) I found that if I cheated by eating whatever whenever I fell off the wagon and felt like crap afterward. This really worked well for me

I feel like there are plenty of people in the world that would cheat me if I let them, so I never cheat me. Having said that I think that it is the weekly average that matters. I have been counting for three weeks and I have lost ten pounds and my weekly calorie average is 1600. But that is just me. And I am real new to all of this.

I also don't cheat, but if I go over my calorie allotment by 100-200 calories, I don't beat my self up either. My calorie allotment is low and I use it as an average to aim for and it's a floor for my diet, not a ceiling.

"Cheating" is a very broad term when it comes to dieting.

Obviously someone could cheat by eating two really big meals per week and totally wipe out any loss they may have achieved by dieting the rest of the week.

Personally, I don't think the idea of "cheating" is a good one. If you want to not feel deprived, then make one "high-calorie" meal each week part of your plan, and don't call it cheating. Cheating means doing something bad for you.