Are Cheat Days a Good Idea
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
A lot of top diet plans and even experts suggest that you have a cheat day while on your weight loss plan. Is that really a good idea? Part of the answer depends on you. Will you cheat one day and get back on your plan or will have a snowball effect on you and cause you to revert back to old eating habits?
What are the benefits to a cheat day?
If you think about it, there really aren’t many great benefits to a cheat day. They can keep you from feeling deprived, especially if you’ve made a complete lifestyle eating change and feel the need to indulge once in awhile, but they often set you up for failure.
However, you may find that this self-gratification leaves you feeling like crap. After you eat healthy foods for awhile and grab a quick-fix snack or decadent dessert, you’ll find that it leaves you feeling sluggish and possibly even feel like you’re sick.
Some people do find that having a cheat day is very beneficial to them. It helps with cravings and keeps those feelings of deprivation at bay. If you can have a cheat day with only a small snack and stay on your plan the rest of the time, it may be helpful to you as well. But if you find that this leads to disaster you may have to just deal with those cravings until they go away.
What are the drawbacks of a cheat day?
The main drawbacks were actually covered in the benefits section, they can lead to failure and cause you to feel like crap for a few days. Having one cheat day can also lead to having more cheat days or even into a daily cheat.
A cheat day is likely to end up in consuming way more calories than you’ve been eating and this can definitely slow the progress of your weight loss efforts.
It can be hard to get back on your plan after a cheat day. You’ve just consumed all of your favorite foods and forgotten how good they actually tasted. This can lead you to wanting more of them.
Many people swear by a cheat day and have success with it, but just as many find that it leads them back into old habits and ruins any success they had achieved. Having a successful cheat day really does depend on you. If you are prone to giving up easily in the first place, you may want to stick with a strict diet and skip the cheat days altogether.
If you have the willpower to get right back on your plan, you may have luck with indulging in your favorite foods once in awhile. However, you should skip having any kind of cheat day for the first month of your new weight loss plan. Let your body adjust and your attitude adjust too.