Cheat days have become popular in the world of health and fitness and seen as something to celebrate every weekend. I’ve fallen into the trap of the shinny cheat day too. In the moment, cheat meals or days feel really good, right? You get to indulge in all of the unhealthy foods you restricted yourself from all week long. Come Monday though, the guilt and regret sets in along with waking up feeling bloated and tired. So what do you do? You restrict again, but only until the weekend of course. The restricting, bingeing, feeling of guilt cycle continues. It’s time to let go of the cheat day mentality and today I am going to tell you how.
Here are 5 ways to quit cheat days and overindulging:
1. Progress, not perfection
There is no such thing as a perfect diet and you most definitely can’t make perfect food choices all of the time. People sure try, though. They follow strict meal plans or count their macros down to the gram Monday through Friday and obsess and stress about making a mistake. Come the weekend, they have reached their max willpower and are so sick of restricting food that they only want to eat foods they love. Que the weekend cheat days and over indulging.
Taking “perfection” off of the table Monday through Friday opens up other options. When there are other options you feel more confident, empowered and ownership over your choices. For many, if they can’t follow their diet perfectly for a meal or a day they toss all healthy choices out the window and go all in on a full binge. A solution, always aim for progress not perfection. Aiming to always progress forward or make the best choice with the situation you are in is better than failing at being perfect. Come up with your own meaning of progress and always aim for that.
2. Let go of food rules
Most people have a pattern when it comes to overeating. Food rules tell you what you can and cannot eat, when you can and cannot, how much or little to eat, and even how you can eat and cannot eat. Read my recent article on Breaking the Chain of Food Rules, Deprivation and Restriction on how to overcome this hurdle.
3. Ditch “cheat days”
Oh cheat day, I am all too familiar with these. I would look forward to Saturdays every weekend because my now husband and I would head to iHop for all the pancakes, sometimes we’d even go out for lunch or dinner and I’d of course get a burger and fries. If it wasn’t burgers and fries it most certainly was a pizza I’d eat myself. Most nights were capped off with ice cream and not the dairy free/lower calorie ice cream. The really good full fat, insane amount of sugar, give me a gut ache kind of ice cream. Many weekends this Saturday cheat day turned into many drinks and snacks on a Friday night and more pancakes on Sunday. Cheat days didn’t work for me because they turned into cheat weekends. So, I dropped the cheat day slowly and eventually allowed myself to eat what I wanted when I wanted.
I went from a cheat weekend, to a cheat day, to a cheat meal, to eventually giving myself the permission to choose freely what I want to eat all week. Cheating has a negative connotation to it which is attached to guilt and negative feelings. When you “cheat” you are telling yourself you are doing something bad and then need to make up for it by restricting again to be good again. When you ditch the cheat days you won’t feel the need or want to cheat because there won’t be anything to cheat on. If you want some dessert after dinner on a Monday night, do it if you are truly hungry. If you are satisfied with your dinner on Monday night, you skip it. You choose when and how much you eat. As long as you follow your hunger cues, eat slowly and until satisfied there is no need for cheat days.
4. Own your choices
Like, really own them. If you choose to eat an entire pizza by yourself and you know you have a lactose intolerance and will be gassy and bloated the rest of the day, either be okay with it or choose not to eat the pizza.
Making good choices Monday through Friday and having the mindset that since you were “good” during the weekend you can let loose on the weekend usually results in stalled progress and a mental mind game that is hard to overcome. Instead, start owning each and every food choice you make and let the outcome you expect guide your decisions. Choose to eat foods that you know will energize you, satisfy you and make you feel good. If and when you choose to foods you know will make you feel ill, anxious, gassy and so forth then be okay with it. You are free to make your own choices, eat what you want and drink what you want. Just remember that certain choices produce certain outcomes.
5. Stop justifying with yourself
This goes hand in hand with owning your own choices. Stop justifying with yourself why you are making certain choices. In other words, stop with the excuses. You’re busy, traveling, stressed, invited out, etc. This said excuses don’t cause overeating. Overeating and indulging happens when you justify why are doing it. Justifying makes us feel good about why we are overeating. You are going to drink a bottle of wine, eat a pizza and follow it up with some ice cream because you had a stressful week. These justifications with yourself are not helping you.
When you find yourself trying to justify your overeating ask yourself why you are truly overeating. Are you stressed, bored, happy, anxious? Knowing why you are overeating will help you make sense of it and how to overcome the behavior. There will be times you will want to eat in abundance and indulge, that’s normal. But instead of creating excuses of why you should continue to overeat and indulge take the time to figure out why you are really wanting to indulge. The more you do this the easier it will be to find patterns leading you to overeating. Once you understand why you are doing it, you will have the opportunity to change the behavior.
What to do next?
Ask yourself, how are cheat days/weekends working for you? If you are happy with the results and loving your junk food filled weekends then by all means keep doing it. But, if your results are stalling and you wake up each Monday with a sense of regret and guilt it is time to move on from this behavior.
For me, cheat days were an opportunity to eat all the foods I craved from over restricting during the week. After too long of not seeing results, battling gut aches all weekend long and getting sick of weekly restriction I knew it was time to change my actions.
Let go of the cheat day mentality by:
- Chasing progress, not perfection
- Letting go of food rules
- Ditching cheat days
- Owning your choices
- Justifying with yourself