Should I give myself a cheat day?

2

February 5, 2014 by alixrd

Today’s blog is about dieting and whether having a cheat day is a good idea or not

Let’s look at the pros and cons here:

Pros:

-you get a break from dieting
-it serves as a reward for all of your hard work
-several dieting gurus have stated that increasing your caloric intake once a week is actually helpful as it let’s your metabolism know that you are not going into starvation mode

Cons:

-You tend to eat so much food because you’re normally not “allowed” to eat that food so you put back on all the weight you lost over the week
-Your stomach has gotten used to a reduced amount of food and then you eat large amounts of food all day so you have to start all over again the next day and you feel more hungry for the first few days again while your stomach re-adapts
-You’re using food as a reward system, thus not really helping you to get a handle on your issues with food.

Conclusions

What I conclude from all of this is that the cons outweigh the pros. However, that being said, I think you could allow yourself to have a treat that is small in quantity so as to allow yourself to eat something you really enjoy without it completely destroying all of the work you’ve accomplished. Jillian Michaels suggests following what she calls the 80/20 rule. This means you eat healthy, low calorie foods 80% of the time and 20% of the time you let yourself indulge. The important thing to note here is that she sticks to a precisely calculated caloric amount per day so you’d have to ensure that your “treat” still leaves you within your daily allowed caloric intake. If however, you are not keeping track of your calories, I think that if you allow yourself a small treat once in a while it will have the same effect.

Dieting is hard and if we don’t allow ourselves to have the foods we love once in a while, we will inevitably binge. Trust me, I’ve done it! So don’t cut out the things you love, I suppose the old saying “Everything in moderation” really is true in this case. But remember, moderation does not mean a tub of ice cream or a large pizza you eat all by yourself!

Please note, I am not a dietician, nor a fitness expert, I am just someone who has read a LOT of dieting and fitness information and have found there is a lot of conflicting data and I’m giving my ideas about it so that maybe it can help someone else.