Youâve committed to eating healthy. You want to look and feel great, and youâve stuck to your diet an entire week already. You feel good about how youâve done and think you deserve a gold star⊠or that cupcake thatâs calling your name (especially the one with the extra layer of frosting on top). Maybe you even think you deserve a day offâa designated âcheat day.â
But are âcheat daysâ a good idea? Do these special days of indulgence help you reach your health goals? Or do they set you up on a seesaw of destructive eating habits?
The Argument for Cheat Days: Rewarding Yourself
Some say that giving yourself days of indulgence is giving yourself a needed break from your diet. These cheat days are a relief valve that help you stick to healthier foods.
The philosophy behind this basically goes something like this: Healthy eating requires some willpowerâwillpower youâve used to keep yourself from forbidden foodsâso to reward your constraint, it helps to have one scheduled day (or meal) per week where youâre allowed to eat some of the treats youâve been avoiding. When you give yourself a window to enjoy these off-limit foods, itâll satisfy your cravings, replenish your depleted willpower, and, some studies suggest, even increase your production of the hunger-dampening hormone leptin while boosting metabolism.
The Argument Against Cheat Days
So cheat days sound like a good thing, right? Not so fast. The the logic behind these days has more than a few flaws, and itâs due to the psychology and physiology behind them.
The Name Is to Blame
The trouble with cheat days starts with the wording.
âThe very phrase âcheat dayâ sets up enjoying a meal as something forbidden,â says Sondra Kronberg, R.D., executive director of the Eating Disorder Treatment Collaborative. âSeparating foods into âgoodâ and âbadâ categories encourages you to associate eating with guilt and shame.â This means that instead of enjoying everything we eat, we feel bad about ourselves when we eat something we consider âbad.â
Whatâs more, when we deem certain foods âbadâ or âcheating,â the negative name doesnât help us pump the breaks.
âWhen a food is off-limits, it can develop a specific, emotional charge,â explains Melainie Rogers, RD, a nutritionist and eating disorder specialist. âYou begin obsessing over it, fantasizing about, and looking forward to that âindulge dayâ all week. Then, when you finally have access to it, you overeat.â
On the flipside, labeling foods as âgoodâ or âhealthyâ can also backfire. Science shows when we think something is healthy, weâre not concerned with portion control and thus overdo itâwhether itâs a ânormalâ day or a âcheatâ day. Yes, there can be too much of a good thing.
Along these same lines, thinking of a meal or snack as âhealthyâ can have a surprising affect on our hunger. Studies show merely considering items we put in our mouth as âhealthyâ can literally make us feel hungrierâespecially if we select a âgood-for-youâ item out of obligation over something weâre truly hungry for.
Attack of the Calories
Folks who assume they can compensate for giving into temptationsâsay, by holding themselves back on all days except their cheat daysâare actually less likely to reach their dietary goals. This is because theyâre more likely to consume a greater number of calories, not just on their cheat day but on the days following it.
Restricting ourselves throughout the week and then slamming our bodies with sugar and fat once our cheat day rolls around, can have âa massive impact on blood sugar and insulin levels,â Rogers says. âYouâll wake up the next day craving more sugars and simple carbs, and youâll find yourself feeling pretty ragged. And if you repeatedly increase your caloric intake above baseline, you may inadvertently end up gaining more weight over time.â
Cravings serve as a sign that your nutritional approach isnât sound. âMost cravings come from overly restricting your food intake, using food as a drug, or over exercising,â Kronberg says.
Binging Leads to Extra Cheat Days
Thereâs a very fine line between a cheat day and a free-fall into food binging, especially if youâre, âwhite-knuckling it during those other six days of sticking out a meal plan you donât particularly like,â says Ryan Andrews, R.D., author of Drop The Fat Act and Live Lean and coach with Precision Nutrition. Once that day of indulgence comes, itâs not about enjoying the foods you havenât had all week. Instead, youâre approaching it out of a need to consume all you can before the day goes away. âIt feeds into a feast-and-famine cycle,â Andrews says.
We can thank our biology for cheat days turning into these all-out food fests. Weâre wired to chase down food when weâre caught in the feast-and-famine cycle. âPeople will eat beyond satiety when theyâre coming from a fear of scarcity,â Rogers explains.
Binging on a cheat day also makes it challenging to confine cheat-day foods only to that designated 24-hour window. âItâs very hard for people to compartmentalize their diets,â Rogers says. ââIâm only going to have those cookies on Saturdayâ can easily spill over into âIâll only have a few cookies Sunday too.’â
The Solution: Stop Restricting, Start Enjoyingâin Moderation
So if cheat days donât work, are we all better off eating whatever we want, whenever we want?
Well, not quite, says Corby K. Martin, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and food intake researcher at Pennington Biomedical Research Center. âFollowing a healthy diet means including a number of foodsâall of which are consumed in moderation,â he says. âIf weight loss is the goal, this usually means three square meals a day with planned snacks, incorporating treats but in smaller portion sizes.â
Research suggests eating a balance of foodsâwith none of them off-limits or labeled âbadââis the best way to reduce the kinds of cravings that can lead to a binge.
During the first week of a new diet, most people experience an increase in hankerings for coveted foods, but when people stick to a balanced weight loss diet, the tendency to occasionally overeat actually goes down over time, Martin says.
So what does a game plan for a healthy eating with no cheat days look like? Remember these three things:
1. Listen to your appetite.
âIf you want to eat spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, have it!â Andrews says. âDonât find the low-carb version with the fat-free sauce. If you actually eat what you want, youâll likely end up eating a more reasonable amount of it.â Eating in tune with your hunger is a principle of intuitive eating, and itâs shown to have a positive effect on both your weight and your wellbeing.
2. Enjoy treats from time to time.
Research shows (and experts agree) that sprinkling reasonably sized desserts or treats into your daily diet encourages you to find pleasure in meal time againâand that pleasure will help ensure you donât feel the need to go overboard.
So instead of confining your treats to one single day, drop them into places throughout the week. For example, enjoy: âa cookie or a few pieces of chocolate after dinner on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,â Rogers says.
3. Savor every bite.
Once you place any item of food into your mouth, take a moment to: âtaste, smell, and experience it as a whole,â Rogers says. âWhen you take the time to be mindful about what youâre eating, you tap into your satiety cues.â
The Takeaway
Forget about designating a cheat day to reward yourself. Denying yourself most of the week and then indulging like crazy on your one day âoff,â just promotes guilt, anxiety, and shame around eatingâwhich means you wonât likely get to the health outcome youâre looking for. Instead, make every day a great day by listening to your appetite, periodically adding in some of your favorite foods in small portions, and savoring each and every bite of everything you eat. This sustainable approach will help you think of all of your eating as enjoyable, and thatâs what gets you down the road to where you want to be.
Via:Â myfitnesspal