So, what’s the deal with ‘cheat days’? Are they harmless or do they completely undo all your hard work? The concept of a “cheat day” has become deeply embedded in diet culture. You’ve likely heard it, maybe even tried it, countless times – stick rigidly to your diet for six days, then reward yourself with an anything goes feast on day seven.
For some people, having a cheat day feels necessary to maintain sanity whilst on a diet. But what does that mentality really do to your physical progress, your psychological relationship with food, and your long-term weight loss success?
The Truth Behind “Rewarding” Yourself – What’s a Cheat Day?
Imagine this – you stick to your TotalFast plan for six days. You’re in ketosis and your calories are in check. Your complete nutritional needs are fulfilled from your four Foodpacks each day and you’re feeling amazing as the weight has started to fall off.
You then decide to let loose for the seventh day. Surely one day off can’t do any harm, you’ve heard somewhere that it might even help boost your metabolism…
Understanding the Cheat Day Mentality
This one day off reasoning is compelling, and explains why the cheat day concept has remained so popular. However, the science and psychology behind weight loss tell a more complicated story – and one that rarely ends the way you hope it will…
The Physiological Impact: More Than Just Extra Calories
Disrupting Ketosis and Metabolic Adaptation
When following a ketogenic or low-carb approach, your body transitions to burning fat for fuel instead of carbohydrates. This metabolic state, known as ketosis, typically takes 2-4 days to achieve. A single carbohydrate-heavy cheat day doesn’t just add extra calories to your weekly total, it completely disrupts your carefully established metabolic state.
Research shows that after a carbohydrate-heavy cheat day, it can take anywhere from 3-5 days to re-establish ketosis. This means that if you’re having weekly cheat days, you might only be in your optimal fat-burning state for 1-3 days each week. Effectively, you’re spending more time transitioning in and out of ketosis than actually benefiting from it.
Digestive Distress and Inflammation
As your body adapts to smaller, more nutrient-dense meals, your digestive system adjusts accordingly. When you suddenly introduce a large volume of food – particularly processed foods high in fat, sugar, and salt – your digestive system struggles to cope with this dramatic change.
The immediate consequences can include:
- Prolonged digestion time, as your stomach has become accustomed to smaller portions
- Excessive gas production and bloating as your gut bacteria react to the sudden influx of different foods
- Potential intestinal inflammation, especially from processed foods containing ingredients your body hasn’t been exposed to recently
- Water retention due to higher sodium intake, leading to temporary weight gain beyond just the calories consumed
- Blood sugar spikes and crashes that can trigger further cravings and energy fluctuations
Many dieters report waking up the day after a cheat day feeling physically uncomfortable, sluggish, and even experiencing symptoms resembling a hangover – in fact some nutritionists now refer to it as a “food hangover.”
The Psychological Impact: Undermining Your Relationship with Food
Your Mind Matters – the Restriction-Binge Cycle
A cheat day can not only affect the weight you lose each week, it can affect your mindset as well. You’ve effectively discarded all the vital tools you’ve gained through focusing on mindful eating and changing your unhelpful habits, leading to those unhealthy eating behaviours resurfacing. And the cheat day mindset can also create a restriction-binge cycle that:
- Promotes an unhealthy relationship with food: Labelling certain foods as “cheats” frames eating as a moral activity with right and wrong choices, rather than a neutral biological function.
- Encourages disconnection from hunger and satiety cues: Rather than learning to trust your body’s natural signals, the cheat day approach teaches you to override these cues based on the calendar.
- Fosters an all-or-nothing mentality: This rigid thinking pattern makes it difficult to handle small deviations from your plan without turning them into full-blown binges.
- Generates unnecessary guilt and shame: The aftermath of a cheat day often brings feelings of failure, guilt, and shame – emotions that are more than likely to trigger further emotional eating.
The Slippery Slope Effect
What starts as a planned single cheat day can easily get out of control. You might have good intentions to damage limitations by eating a healthy low carb meal – chicken salad or fish and veg. The next thing you know you’ve eaten a huge meal followed by a high calorie dessert.
The most common scenario is you then think, “I’ve already broken my diet, so I might as well continue.” This thinking can extend a single cheat meal into a full cheat day, a cheat weekend, or even a cheat week. Before you know it, you’re struggling to find the motivation to return to your very low calorie diet plan at all.
The Long-Term Consequences
Stalling Weight Loss Progress
From a purely mathematical perspective, a single cheat day can easily undo a caloric deficit created over several days.
For example, if you maintain a daily 600-calorie deficit for six days, you’ve created a 3,600 calorie deficit for the week. However, it’s remarkably easy to consume nearly all those 3,600 calories in a single cheat day through restaurant meals, desserts, alcohol, and snacks. And this effectively neutralises your entire week’s deficit.
Additionally, the physiological disruption to ketosis means you’re constantly restarting the fat burning process rather than maintaining a consistent metabolic state that’s conducive to sustained fat loss.
Preventing Healthier Habits Formation
Successful long-term weight management isn’t about temporary dietary restrictions, it’s about establishing sustainable eating habits. Research in habit formation suggests that consistent behaviour is necessary for new habits to develop and become automatic.
The cheat day approach completely flies in the face of this. Rather than gradually developing a sustainable pattern of eating you can maintain indefinitely, you’re constantly switching between restriction and indulgence, never allowing those new, healthier eating patterns to become fully established habits.
A Better Approach: Sustainable Nutrition
Mindful Inclusion vs. Restriction and Bingeing
Rather than structuring your approach around restriction punctuated by planned binges, try and adopt a more mindful approach to nutrition. This might include:
- Focusing on addition rather than subtraction: Think about what you’re gaining in terms of healthy nutrition rather than focusing on what you’re cutting out.
- Developing mindful eating practices: Eat slowly, savour each bite, and learn to recognise your body’s hunger and fullness cues rather than responding to emotional ones.
- Finding healthier alternatives: Swap your favourite indulgences for one of our yummy Jelly Mixes or Popped Chips to get you through the harder days. And check out some of these creative Foodpack Hacks to tempt your tastebuds without the guilt!
Overcoming Temptation and Reconnecting With Your Motivation
We all have cravings from time to time – but the main focus should be on your end goal. So, when cravings strike, rather than planning a cheat day, try and remember why you’ve started your weight loss transformation journey in the first place. And look at the bigger picture. If indulging in a cheat day will set you back a whole week – or even months – on your weight-loss journey, would you still want to overindulge?
Ask yourself: Is a temporary taste sensation worth delaying your progress toward your larger goals? What are you really seeking when you crave a cheat day – is it the food itself, or perhaps comfort, celebration, freedom, or connection?
Freedom From The Cheat Day Mentality
The most successful long-term weight management approaches rely on developing a healthy, balanced relationship with food that can be maintained indefinitely. Not just physically but mentally as well.
True dietary freedom isn’t found in the temporary release of a cheat day but in a mindful approach to nutrition that supports not only your physical health but psychological wellbeing too. With the bonus that you’ll be eliminating the guilt and shame that so often accompany the cheat day cycle.
So, keep focused, remember your WHY, stay strong, and stick to the programme. You’re worth it and we’re all rooting for you to succeed and start living the life you deserve.
