cheat days, free days ?

[Nora58]

Getting healthy is the goal of losing weight for most people on the forums and that also includes a lifestyle change to maintain that healthy body. Eating the right foods should be second nature to most people that have been at it 6 months or more and working out or getting exercise that fits your needs should be as well.

I am so confused when I read about a cheat day or a free day and it seems to me that there really hasn't been a total shift yet that will last over time if it is so easy to put unhealthy, or an over abundance of calories in your body and know it is hurting you. Maybe everyone does it and many don't talk about it but it just sounds strange to plan a day to do this.

Maybe someone that does this could explain the reasoning behind it. I'm sure it works in some way for you but I just don't get it for long term success.

[Mukluk4]

I don't follow a strict diet and tend to eat "junk" a few times a week.  On the flipsside, I am a very active person and that tends to balance out some of the bad habits that I do still maintain.

Everyone has their vice and the longer you tend to ignore it the stronger that push is.  In my lifetime, I've quit alchohol, smoking, and regular soda.  I've never done meth, cocaine or crack.  So if I eat a twinkie now and again or have McD's fries, it's my perogative and FU to anyone that wants to be judgemental.

[shipo]

While I never schedule a "cheat day", in fact, I never schedule any type of eating for any given day (errr, except maybe Thanksgiving), I do overindulge every now and again and don't fuss over doing so.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, "I don't excercise so I can have the body of Adonis, I exercise so I can darn well eat whatever I want, whenever I want."  😛

[Stinkyfish97]

For me I guess its something of a habit I am working on. For me its Friday, its usually date night or we get fast food that night. I consider this a cheat day as you would describe because it is a day I just do not feel like cooking and cleaning for my entire family and want something fast. While I realize there are healthy options to fast food, and to some degree I have been working on trying the healthier options, there just are not as many as most want to believe. 

I do not drink soda but on said cheat day I may have a soda with my fast food. The thing is, many suggest there are healthy fast food options out there. While this is true, none of it really tastes better than what I can make at home myself. Veggie burgers taste like they were a little too heavy handed on the salt. Salads, many are wilted lettuce that tastes like it was not properly washed. You can go down the list and there just are no real good options for healthy fast food. That is unless you are willing to spend 2-3x what the price of a good burger costs. 

You may ask why I need a cheat day? Its simple when you are cooking for multiple other mouths and do the cleaning up, work all day to provide the food on the table, and take said mouths to baseball or other activities after work, you will want a day you do not want to do all that too. lol. 

Right now my wife is in grad school which leaves me with much of the burden of the chores.

I work 630-330, pick up our son at school at 5, take him to baseball after school, come home start dinner and by this time its already 8pm most of the time, sometimes if I have time after dinner I actually get to clean the dishes. I think a lot of parents are like myself. The cheat day is more of a day where we get to break the cycle a little. While it might not seem like much time saved, because it really is not, I guess its more of a treat to ourselves for a hard weeks work. 

For myself I usually only cheat that 1 meal, its not like the whole day I am slugging back sodas and pounding down burgers and fries. I probably do overeat those days and sometimes I do feel bad about it. 

[squaid]

*I've noticed that my cheating eating is still healthier than my normal eating from a few years back

*I don't cheat on portions, so it's a scoop of icecream, not a pint

*I cheat when I'm out with friends or on special occasions. It's plain depressing to go out for fun and there's the one sad guy eating rocks or whatever

the point is to be HAPPY and healthy, and (comfortably) flexing on my rules is a way to make that happen

[JohnRi]

I don't believe in free days or cheat days.  It often takes 3 or 4 days to make up for the cheat day.  Leaving you only 2-3 days to lose weight.  I call that madness.  If I'm going to work my butt off and eat right, I'm going to do it every day to maximize my weight loss. 

While I will sometimes have unusual things, I will reduce other calories so that I can have these.  IE I've been eating 1800 calories every day since February.  I don't eat the same things every day, so the variety keeps it interesting. 

I have eaten more than 1800 on a few occasions.  But on those days I burned over 4000 calories, and I needed the extra calories.  I haven't had a day where I ate more than I burned, not since before I changed my diet, and started to exercise 9 months ago.

[shipo]

@JohnRi, yikes, that's scary!  If I wast to eat so few calories I'd shrivel up in a ball and die.  On days when I burn between four and six thousand calories I start feeling faint if I don't rack up at least that many food calories as well.

[FitBeforeFifty]

When I was losing weight and tracking calories consistently, I followed a weekly budget and didn't pay much attention to any particular day. The end result were weekends where I would eat/drink a lot more and typically exceed my budget and week days I would be under budget a couple hundred calories each day.

I never considered those cheat days, I just considered them part of life. I still logged what I ate and drank but I didn't get hung up on sticking to a budget. It isn't cheating if you log it. For example, I might be 200 calories under 4 days during the week (800 calories) and then go over budget by 800 on a saturday night. If it all averages out, it doesn't really matter.

After getting to my goal weight, I continued a similar pattern ... just at a maintenance calorie level. It has served me well for several years because I don't have to get too hung up on trying to follow a specific budget. If an impromptu pizza dinner pops up and I have a few beers, no problem ... maybe I'll just eat a lighter breakfast the next morning.

There are actually some decent reasons to have a higher calorie intake day once or twice per week. It's actually a strategy used in sports nutrition to avoid adaptive thermogenesis http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943438/

[Nora58]

@FitBeforeFiftyI try and eat something I really love  when I go out with the grand kids to Applebee's or some place for dinner. My weakness is carbs, bread mostly so I never have any in the house but may have some with a steak and salad if I go out to eat. I was just trying to figure out this whole day thing and how it works. Do people go overboard all day or just on certain things at meals or gatherings? I am all for enjoying life and eating what you want but it seems so easy to over indulge and ruin some very hard work and feel sick again.

[Nora58]

@squaidDoesn't sound much like cheating , more like living and being aware of what you are eating and doing it right! Awesome job.

[USAF-Larry]

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@JohnRi wrote:

I don't believe in free days or cheat days.  It often takes 3 or 4 days to make up for the cheat day.  Leaving you only 2-3 days to lose weight.  I call that madness.  If I'm going to work my butt off and eat right, I'm going to do it every day to maximize my weight loss. 

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That is my philosophy as well.  A "cheat day" would only cheat me, and I see no reason to cheat myself.  I worked very hard at improving my diet and exercise, and the resulting weight loss, to combat a number of health issues, including Type-2 diabetes. I am now classified as pre-diabetic, which is much better than having the full blown Type-2 diabetes I had for years. And, my heart and cardiovascular system is much stronger now. Why would I want to reverse any of that by cheating?

[Nora58]

@Stinkyfish97 Totally understand as my daughter is in the same situation.  Her whole family is now eating healthy but when they have ball games back to back 2 on Sat and 2 on Sun with her husband coaching  and both kids playing it happens. They eat the burgers and snack on veggies and fruit and hope it evens out during the week. Good for you for managing as well as you do with that schedule.

I know the "healthy" options suck!

[Nora58]

@shipoI guess that's why it's hard to imagine having a day to cheat. Just have what you know is within your limit and won't wreak your hard work and it should be fine for anyone and not considered cheating.

[A_Lurker]

I don't do cheat days, but there are some days (social and/or travelling) where I may come close to my calorie limit or possibly even over (rare).  I'm still at a point where activity and my current weight combine to rack up a lot of calories burned.  Yesterday I knew when out shopping that I was way under on the calories for how active I'd been.  Since it was coming up on 6pm I picked up a frozen thin crust pizza and a roll of dark chocolate mint pastilles.  Even getting some pistachios and dried fruit before bed I was at around a 2000 calorie deficit, which I try not to do more than once in a while.

However, as I go back to lifting weights I will almost certainly try and do a maintenance week every once in a while.  I tend to be an all or nothing kind of dieter.  In the past I've lost a lot of weight very fast (twice) and worked myself into an illness.  I don't listen to my body cues very well, mainly because it's pretty much always saying... just read a book, or go outside and enjoy the weather... from the nice comfy patio set. 

For a maintenance week though I usually try and eat around the same macro (it can be tough, but I don't use it as a total carb fest).  It's a conscious effort to fool my metabolism into not thinking I'm ever going to stop with the dieting.  It will be interesting to see if I can practice what I preach.  Since yesterday I burned 4589 and only ate 2588.  The only good thing is I might not be as active in a maintenance week so I wouldn't have to eat as much.

Interesting point is that I think this is maybe the first time I hit 10000+ steps since having the Charge HR.  I couldn't figure out why it was buzzing last night. 

Oh well, back to shifting more boxes and doing more unpacking of stuff.

[JohnRi]

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@shipo wrote:

@JohnRi, yikes, that's scary!  If I wast to eat so few calories I'd shrivel up in a ball and die.  On days when I burn between four and six thousand calories I start feeling faint if I don't rack up at least that many food calories as well.

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Big difference between our jobs and lives @shipo...  I'm about to go exercise, walk or bike for 90 minutes or so.  Just to burn the my daily calorie deficit of 750.

But as of right now, I've only burned 1594 calories so far today (it's 4:40 PM local time).  My job is very sedentitary.  I've only had 1948 steps so far today (Slow day, usually more like 2500-3000).  My BMR has fall to 1990... 

When I used to eat 3000-4000 calories a day, and I missed a meal, I'd get a headache, and feel awful.  Now I'll eat lunch around 1:00 PM, after work I'll go walking/biking until 8:00 PM.  Sometimes I'll lift weights for 30 minutes after that, and I won't get to dinner until 9:30. I'm in bed by 10:30. 

I don't get faint from lack of food anymore.  Not sure why.  Could be my body had gotten used to being in a caloric deficit now, instead of a calorie surplus I live for so many years. 

My coworkers joke about it...  Two years ago we were setting up a new office location.  They went to get lunch and were going to bring my something back while I dealt with AT&T.  They left around noon.  They didn't come back until after 2:00 PM.  By that time I was sitting in chair, head down on the table, dying. Massive headache, almost passed out from hunger.

I don't miss that.  I can't remember the last time I felt even hint of feeling bad due to lack of food.

Granted even on my most active days, I never burned much more than 4000 calories.  I can't imagine what I would have to do to burn 6000.  I've only hit 25,000 steps once!  And I think I burned 4200 calories that day.

I know eating so late in the day is not a good idea.  But it's the only time I can eat dinner is after I exercise.  From the point I leave work, to the point I get to the park to exercise, is 1 hour.  That leaves me 2 1/2 hours of daily light to exercise.  Longest day of the year is coming up, and the days will start to get shorter.  Since I sometimes walk or bike for 2 hours, I have just enough sun light. 

This fall, I'll have no choice, but to join a gym.  But I prefer to be outside.  And I'll do that until the days get too short... 

I wish I could lose these last 33 lbs before the fall comes, but I doubt that will happen...  But if it did, I could scale back the exercise to 30-60 minutes a day and maintain my weight....  Will see what happens...

[Nora58]

@A_Lurker See, you as well as most others don't go all out and pick a day as a cheat day or a free day as some on the boards I have read post from, many are no longer active. I think most people here now are in this for a better and healthier lifestyle and are making the necessary changes as they come up. I too have days where I just don't have time or energy to fit in enough food to fill the quota for the day. I just try and eat 3 meals the next day so my body knows the score. Sounds like you are having success and keep up the good work!

[Nora58]

@JohnRi Keep at it! You have a plan that's working for you and your health is better so it is great!! Those pesky last pounds seem to take forever compared to the first ones when you are really over weight. I know you will see this through and continue on with a long healthy life because you are focused and determined. It's not always about how much you burn per day, but staying steady and finding what works for you. Go for it!

[Nora58]

@USAF-Larry I agree. My brother is diabetic and even though he understands what needs to be done and how important the macros are, exercise and correct foods at the correct times are unfortunately his wife only thinks like the old timers think--sugar. He is taking the lead on this one,lol. I'm glad you've had so much success and your health is a great improvement, something I'm working on is my b/p so I have a goal still even though the weight is gone it's time to build muscle and tone up.

So happy you are doing so well!

[FitBeforeFifty]

I guess it depends on your definition of a cheat day. I don't think a cheat day is wise if you define a cheat day as designated day where you eat how much and whatever you want. To me, that's not wise unless you are crazy strict on other days. On the other hand, I just don't believe in diets if you define dieting as sticking to a strict calorie count and/or trying to eat only low calorie foods.

I personally think you need to eat and work out during weight loss in a similar way as you plan to work out and eat when you reach your goal. If you do something temporary to lose weight, your weight loss will be temporary.

I've maintained my goal weight +/- 5 lbs for 4 years now. I personally think the key to my success is no food or drink is off limits and my calorie budget for the day is just a guide -- not an ultimatum. If I were to attempt to stick to a strict diet of "health food" long term, it wouldn't work for me. It's much more sustainable for me to eat nutritious and healthy foods most of the time and then some days just go with the flow. If my family wants pizza for dinner, so be it ... I'm going to eat pizza. If pizza day happens on a day that I happen to have a low activity day, I'm going to be over budget. I really don't care. If a couple invites my wife and I out for a nice steak dinner, I'm going to have a really nice steak, wine and probably share a dessert with my wife. I'll probably be over budget that day. I don't care.

I know what really matters is the long term balance of calories in to calories out. As long as I maintain a balance, I'm successful. 

[Gscakes]

I call it a cheat day but in reality I need to rest at least on Sunday and sometime Saturday or else my knees and my hips will be killing me for the rest of the week. I walk an average of 12,000 steps a day most of the time more and if I don't rest my body can't recoup.