It’s cheat day – excuses we make so we can cheat on healthy eating

Starting a new diet is easy.  It’s Monday morning. For the first couple of hours you feel totally confident, you become motivated by the thought of how great you will look when bikini season comes around and how toned you will be. You are definitely keeping up the diet this time. No slacking off. It’s all protein and vegies from now on.
Precisely half an hour later, you are hungry. That apple you packed for morning tea just isn’t going to cut it. You worked out this morning so you basically have a couple of hundred “free calories” in which you can use for extra eating. You starting thinking about food, scrolling through instagram people are posting photos of their lunch and you want it all. You start thinking about that time when you read an article on how cheating on your diet is actually the best thing you can do, doesn’t it boost your metabolism? And this treat will definitely get you through the rest of the diet so it’s completely fine...

Oh the dilemmas! As we all know, dieting is hard, boring and sadly it’s often pointless and it doesn’t work. We always find ways to ‘cheat’ on our diets;
I already ate badly today at lunch so I’ll just keep going and start tomorrow – We’re all guilty of this, but the logic is questionable. I bet you then think you may as well keep going that night because you already ate some bad food at lunch. If you cheat on your diet like this every time you slip up for that mid morning chocolate muffin it’s not cheating, it’s simply not dieting. What messes you up more is throwing in the towel and eating crap for the rest of the day.

I’ll be good this weekend – Hahahaa excuse me while I laugh out loud at this one. No one, in the history of forever has ever been better with their healthy eating on a weekend than they are during the week. During the week we have a routine and you can plan more. The weekend comes and you will find the excuse to go out and have that pizza after a night out, or date night consists of ribs and icecream. Good luck with being completely healthy over the weekend!

I’ll work it off in the gym – Seriously? You have more stamina than I do if that’s the case. Did you know that it would take 524 burpees to burn off a large French fries? If you think you’re going to do that many burpees for a few minutes of pleasurable eating then that’s fine. But in reality you probably won’t.

Theres no point starting on a Wednesday – So what? Youre going to start next Monday and then you have a cheat so you may as well start the following Monday? Don’t wait for a Monday to come around – you’re just setting yourself up for failure and another wasted week. Start in the moment.

I’m having a bad week – That sucks for you and I’m sorry. Go for the chocolate as a stress reliever but it’s not going to make your week any better or any less stressful. It will however give you massive food guilt because you ate the whole block and then the next week you will feel even worse trying to make up for it.

I always wonder what the big deal about a cheat meal or day is. Whenever I try to do this I end up going backwards, try out one of these excuses and it makes the problem even worse. Restricting yourself to a bland and monotonous diet during the week depriving yourself of food and being miserable during the week to go full on binge crazy one day a week isn’t really the best thing you can do. Eat in moderation. If you want some chocolate – have it. Don’t wait until Saturday to allow yourself to have it. Just don’t eat a whole block in one sitting.

 

I’d like to know your thoughts on cheat days and how it works for you. Leave a comment below or email me lyndalthorsby@hotmail.com or through the contact page.