cheat days

[u/iheartkarljacobs]

okay guys i know this might sound stupid. i know cheat days where you eat a surplus, might erase your entire deficit for the week if you’re not careful. and i’ve heard the “cheat meal” argument as well compared to cheat days. if your cheat day, while on an extreme cut is just your maintenance calories, will that erase your progress for the week and lead to weight gain instead of loss over time? if one day a week i am setting aside as a maintenance day, will that slow weight loss drastically? or make your deficit for the week leading up kind of unnecessary?

[u/shrimpynut]

it would be so negligible if you eat at maintenance for one day of the week. It won’t slow your weight loss barely at all to notice.

I personally do a cheat day every two weeks on a Sunday and I kinda go all out but my goal is to meet my weight by May or June so I have a lot of time. But it’s different for everyone and what your goal is in regards to your weight and cheat days.

[u/handlit33]

I have five pounds left until my goal and I’m doing one maintenance day a week on my rest day otherwise I won’t truly rest. My first one was yesterday and I was up two pounds (glycogen store replenishment) this morning but it’ll likely be right back to normal tomorrow.

[u/Silly_Yak56012 → u/handlit33]

This is an important point, it is pretty easy to eat more carbs or more salt on any given day, and more common when you eat more food.

I've talked a few people on keto off the ledge when they ate a dinner roll when out with friends and gained 2 pounds overnight.

Water weight comes and goes for a lot of reasons and isn't an indication you found the perfect diet after a couple of days or that some foods put on pounds of fat by magic.

[u/callmejamesx]

it's all just math, what does the avg end up as? and you will have your answer

I feel like attaching random definitions and etc just makes it more complicated than it is

[u/Strategic_Sage]

First up, I would advise not doing an extreme cut period. But as others have said, it would have a minor impact if one day of the week is maintenance. The million-dollar question is how you are going to know what that maintenance amount is.

[u/Smart-Intern-4007]

I dont think cheat days are really something many of us do on purpose. They will just destroy a diet. If you just got to have something then have it but having some planned day where you eat whatever seems crazy. Every time I do it it sets me back weeks by the time all the water and system weight are gone and I am actually back to the before weight and then I often stall for a week after that. I seldom am losing any weight during this recovery time either.

[u/eddie_pesos_dvg]

The studies I’ve seen say a maintenance week to two weeks after 8-12 weeks of a deficit work best

[u/Hope-To-Retire]

One: don’t do extreme cuts. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast (and lasts much longer).

Two: there are no such things as cheat meals. There may be times where you make a calculated decision to eat higher on a given day, either making up for it elsewhere in the budget or just accepting that you won’t lose on that day. But, it is a conscious choice… it isn’t cheating.

[u/jacobdevhq]

math: say ur deficit is 500/day, thats 3500 a week. a maintenance day gives back 500 of it, so u lose about 1/7 slower, not nothing. a day 1000 over maintenance takes out roughly 40% of the week, thats the one that hurts. so a planned maintenance day is fine, just log it 💯

[u/Jolan]

If you eat maintenance you won't lose weight that day. If you do it once a week you'll go 6/7ths as fast as you would without the cheat day.

You seem to be thinking of this like a test with weight loss as a reward, where you need perfectionto pass. It's not, it's a game of long term averages.

Think about this from the other side, if you overate every day, but had a health day where you had a deficit would you expect that to prevent the weight gain. 

[u/main--core]

Cheat days are the days you cheat on yourself. They reinforce bad eating habbits. Wiping a week of progress is not okay, you should learn to eat normally and normal portions.

[u/Silly_Yak56012]

If your weekly total is a deficit you are in a deficit for that week. Weight is not a day by day thing, but an over time thing. One meal on one occasion does not reverse weeks or months of effort, or make it so you can never lose another pound ever again.

Usually the problem isn't that someone eats at maintenance or at a much smaller deficit on the cheat day or meal. It is that often it becomes an eating free for all and you canceled out several days worth of deficit all at once so for the whole week you are at maintenance. When a lot of restaurant meals have more calories than most people need in a whole day it is pretty easy to go overboard.

Or people have multiple cheat meals or days during the week. The calories you eat when you are locked in 3-4 days a week is not the calories you are eating every day if you eat in a surpluse 2-3 days a week.

Why sometimes you hear "I only lost weight when I ate more calories". Sometimes eating (to pick numbers, your needs may differ) 1800 calories a day (a smaller deficit) means you are much less likely to overeat as frequently as when you only eat 1200 (an agressive deficit) and your aren't getting enough calories or nutrition for your body.

[u/General_Ship3097]

Not a stupid question, plenty of people wonder about it. What matters is your weekly average, not any single day, so one maintenance day a week barely dents the deficit and can make the other days easier to follow. If you do it, expect the scale to jump a pound or two the next morning from water and extra food in your system. That’s normal and goes away within a few days, so judge your progress by the week’s trend, not the day after. And you can probably ease the deficit a little on the other six days, because you don’t need an extreme cut to keep losing.