The 21 Extra Cheat Days Paradigm

You’re probably familiar with the normal concept of a cheat day. You get six days on your diet, one day off every week, week after week.

 

The Slow-Carb diet (which I am on and recommend) implements this strategy and as I’ve written before, I think it’s a critical component of a diet that you are able to stick to long term.

 

There are, however, some conflicts that inevitably come up with a normal American lifestyle. What do you do about holidays? Vacation?  The Super Bowl? Are you really going to stick to some restrictive diet while everyone else is feasting and having fun?

 

Depending on your own personal situation, the answer could be yes, no, or maybe.

 

And as humans we are pretty uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.

 

Is cheating on Thanksgiving going to derail your progress because Thursday is not a normal cheat day? What if you move cheat day? What if you only cheat a little?

 

I don’t think there are any “right” answers here, but I do think that you should think about these things beforehand and come up with a game plan. I’m convinced that it’s incredibly important that the positive lifestyle changes you want to make should involve as few battles and uncomfortable situations as possible and that you should have a black and white dichotomy between cheat days and non-cheat days. Non cheat days you are giving 100% commitment to stick to your guns, cheat days are 100% guilt free and you don’t even bother to question if it’s a healthy decision to eat another slice of key-lime pie.

 

So perhaps the better way to approach the issue of a healthy lifestyle versus an average American lifestyle is to ask the question, what is a reasonable amount of cheat days for an entire year?

 

The 21 Extra Cheat Days a Year Paradigm

 

As far as I can tell, if you make healthy decisions 80% of the time, it’s pretty safe to say that you have a healthy lifestyle. Is that a scientifically precise calculation? No, but such a calculation doesn’t really exist. I just think that most people would agree if you develop a lifestyle where you are making healthy choices 80% of the time you are going to do fine.

 

I think that when it comes to diet, the risks are relatively low and the psychological benefit of getting to enjoy the holidays guilt-free is definitely worth the trade off.

 

If you accept the notion that 80% is a good benchmark to shoot for, I have good news for you, sticking to a healthy diet six out of seven days means you are eating healthy 85.7% of the week.

 

So how many extra cheat days can you throw in there and still stay over 80% over the course of a year?

 

Well, 80% of 365 is 292, so our target is 292 days. If you limited yourself to one cheat day a week for the whole year, you would have accumulated 313 days on your diet.

 

(For the sake of accuracy, that last number can actually range between 312 and 314. A normal year has 52 full weeks and one “extra” day, so most years have 52 Saturday cheat days and 313 days on the diet, but every now and then the “extra” day is a Saturday and you get 53 Saturdays and 312 days on the diet. A leap year has 52 full weeks and two “extra” days, and if neither of them are Saturday you would have 52 Saturday cheat days and 314 days on the diet).

 

This means that if one cheat day a week puts you on pace for 313 days on the diet a year but you only need 292, you have 21 extra cheat days a year to allocate as you see fit.

 

Want to cheat on your birthday? Go ahead.  In fact, why don’t you cheat on your spouse’s birthday too?

 

How about the major holidays, Easter, the fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s? It would be a shame not to.

 

Have a two week vacation that you want to turn into a vacation from your diet? Why not? You have just enough spare cheat days left over to cover it (actually, you would still have at least two days left over, since two of the days of your two week vacation were already designated “cheat days” and there’s a chance that any of the Holidays except Easter and Thanksgiving might have been as well).

 

It could very well be the case for some of you that you know that you can power through the holidays and would rather abstain from full participation than potentially slow your progress.

 

I totally respect that. More power to you.

 

The reason for this post is that I think for most people who want to go on a diet, the question of how much leeway they can have with special occassions before they just end up going in reverse is one that just kind of hangs in the back of their head and they never feel like they get a good answer to.

 

If that’s you, then this post is for you. I wanted to come up with a paradigm that was reasonable, accommodating, and had clear unambiguous boundaries.

 

I ultimately think that you will be more successful if you have a solid, well-defined plan and stick to it.

 

For those of you who like the idea of a 21 extra cheat day paradigm, I recommend that you sit down with your planner toward the end of the year and mark out the days that you want to use your extra cheat days are. Remember, you are the master of your calendar, so if you want to change it later you can, but having it planned out will keep you from getting to Thanksgiving and realizing you have no extra cheat days left for the year.

 

If this post was useful to you, I have a favor to ask of you, please share it on social media or directly with anyone that you think might benefit from it.

 

Thanks for reading!