It's Cheat Day
Do you include a cheat day in your diet plan? Could this cheat day actually be sabotaging your diet? In most cases I would say yes!
Find out why a cheat day isn’t working for you, and how you can fit in less-than-healthy-treats without sabotaging your diet or feeling guilty.
Lately I’ve been hearing people gush about their “cheat day” indulgences. For those of you that don’t know what a cheat day is, it typically refers to one day during the week where you eat foods that you avoid other days of the week while following a diet.
For many, this means a full-scale binge of foods that are highly refined and packed with plenty of sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats. After this day is over, you return to following the diet plan you were on before.
Do you include a cheat day in your diet plan? Could this cheat day actually be sabotaging your diet? In most cases I would say yes! Find out why a cheat day isn’t working for you, and how you can fit in less-than-healthy-treats without sabotaging your diet or feeling guilty.
1. Cheat meals create a negative attitude toward food
The term cheating is defined as deceiving by trickery, practicing fraud, or violating rules deliberately. Associating these negative connotations with food only perpetuates an unhealthy relationship with food, which is what led most people to need a diet in the first place.
The notion that dietary perfection during the week is required in order to achieve health benefits, weight loss goals, or improve performance is untrue and frankly makes you feel like food is the enemy. Eating healthy is about finding a balanced, healthy relationship with food.
If food is your enemy and you are forced to constantly fight the urges to succumb to your cravings, you will struggle with food, your weight, and your health the rest of your life. Any diet that strictly limits something you enjoy is not sustainable. A truly healthy diet is one where all foods, including those that you love, can fit.
2. Cheating prevents your body from adapting to a healthier style of eating
As you change your diet, your body begins to make several adaptations. One of the most important adaptations is taste. As you begin to eat fresh, healthy, whole foods, your body will adjust to the tastes of these foods.
For example, it takes about 2-3 weeks for your taste buds to adjust to eating a lower sodium diet. If a cheat day comes along every week and you binge on 5,000 mg of sodium or more in a day, you aren’t affording your taste buds the opportunity to adapt to tasting the natural flavors in the food. Instead your taste buds will continue to seek the flavor of salt.
3. Cheat meals = Calorie overload
A gluttonous cheat day can sabotage your weight loss. The basic premise of weight loss is to take in less calories from food than calories you expend living, breathing and being active. In order to lose a pound each week, you need to cut 3,500 calories from food intake and/or increase physical activity to burn those extra calories.
While a cheat day encourages you to strictly adhere to your diet all week, when you get to the seventh day, it’s often a full-scale binge because you’ve been depriving yourself the previous six days. Each time that brownie called your name Monday through Saturday, you denied yourself. While you fought your urge to eat that bite of brownie all week, the brownies eventually got the best of you on Sunday when you decided it was okay to eat the whole plate.
I mean you earned it, right? You didn’t eat them all week and it’s your cheat day!
While you might have worked hard all week to trim 500 calories each day, you can quickly and easily displace all of the cut calories over the course of the cheat day with desserts, alcohol, second helpings, and so on. When your cheat day is said and done, you probably feel guilty, sluggish, and worst of all you won’t lose any weight because you just consumed all of the calories you worked so hard to cut all week.
Worst of all, a cheat day binge can create a lack of confidence in your new diet and your ability to be successful. Before you know it, you are back at square one feeling like a hopeless failure. FYI, you aren’t the failure, the diet isn’t a failure, it was actually the cheat day.
Finding Balance and Peace With Food
So, how can you find balance with your diet while still enjoying the foods you love? I recommend choosing one of the two options.
1. Allow yourself the opportunity to enjoy your “cheat foods,” which I prefer to call “treat foods,” throughout the week.
Any food that you crave on your cheat day should be a part of your regular diet. Welcome chocolate, ice cream, and wine with open arms!
Of course, there is a catch. Portion control and frequency are key. When you indulge in a treat food, limit yourself to a small amount and eat slowly.
By including the treats you love, in small portions, you will satisfy cravings throughout the week. This type of mini treat will reduce the uncontrollable cravings that you might usually battle when cheat day rolls around. Taming big cravings = avoid uncontrolled binge! If you do it right, small treats will have a much lower total caloric impact on your nutrition plan than a full-day binge.
2. If you really struggle with having treats nearby or portion control, frequent small treats may not be the best plan for you.
You can still try setting a day where you allow yourself to have treats, but you need to set parameters for how much you are going to allow yourself to eat on that day. Try reshaping your “cheat day’ into a “treat day”.
The goal here is to never forget that calories are never free, even on Saturday and Sunday. Plan to indulge in moderation by eating in groups, sharing the treat foods, and setting a limit to your intake before you begin. For example, if French Fries are your treat, place an order at a restaurant and share them with friends instead of eating the entire order yourself.
Over the last several years, I have counseled clients struggling to lose weight using an all-or-nothing approach. They can’t seem to understand why the strict-binge-strict-binge-abort program isn’t working for them. In order to be successful you need to find a balance between healthy, nourishing foods and treats. If you haven’t given the small treats every-now-and-then a try, I would suggest giving it a go! Your body and mind will thank you for it!
