The Importance of an Unrestricted Cheat Day

One of the refrains of the health section of this blog is that Psychology is more important than Biology when it comes to dieting.

 

The idea is simple: we all know enough of the science behind it that we really don’t need any more information. No one out there thinks that if they want to lose weight then more donuts and less vegetables is the way to go.

 

The reason diets fail is not because there’s something wrong with the biological mechanism of how they are designed to cause you to lose weight. Diets fail because they are hard to stick to.

 

In order to set yourself up for success, you need to be diligent about putting systems in place that ensure that you are able to stick with the diet over the long term.

 

One of the most important systems that will help you be successful is an unrestricted cheat day.

 

That’s right, I’m making the argument that binging on junk food once a week is the best way to have a healthy diet and even to lose weight.

 

Here’s the punch line: if you start a diet like the slow carb diet and stick to the restrictive aspects of it six out of every seven days, you’re eating healthy over 85% of the time. What you do 85% of the time is way more important than what you do the other 15% of the time.

 

Think about it this way, in the world of baseball no team ever dominated the league like the 1906 Chicago Cubs did. Their winning % that year was .763, meaning they won 76.3% of all games they played. That’s the best anyone has ever done in 115 years of baseball. 76.3% is domination, 85% is mega domination. If you succeed in your diet six out of seven days, you’re dominating your diet more than the Cubs dominated the majors.

 

But what if the damage you do in one day erases the progress you made the other six days?

 

Chances are you won’t be able to do that. After nearly a week of eating clean you will feel disgustingly bloated before you get anywhere near the point where you can cause real damage. You’ll gain weight on cheat day, no doubt about it, but your net weight loss on the week will still be what you would expect out of a strict diet.

 

But the unrestricted cheat day is not primarily about the short term, it’s about the long term. It’s about being able to make healthy lifestyle choices stick.

 

Imagine if I told you that in order to achieve your goals of weight loss and maintaining a lean, healthy body, you would never be able to have cake, donuts, ice cream, pizza, pasta, french fries, potato chips, or soda ever again. You would probably think: “that’s too hard I can’t do that.” Chances are you’d be right. Imagine on the other hand that I said that you’ll be able to achieve your goals and not cut any of your favorite foods out of your diet, you just need to pick a day of the week that you will indulge in them.

 

Which one sounds easier?

 

One of the realities that we have to deal with is the fact that we all have a huge emotional connection with food. We have favorite foods that are more than just indulgent treats, they’re treasured parts of our life. We have foods that represent traditions that we share with people (I do beef stew, garlic cheddar biscuits, and Coca-Cola out of a glass bottle with my family every Christmas Eve). Food can remind us of good times and happy memories. Telling someone to cut some of their favorite foods out of their diet feels like asking them to cut their fingers off.

 

So what happens when you enter into a diet that says you can’t have these foods or can only have sugar free versions or can only have a microscopic serving size is that you set the diet up as being a miserable, unsustainable experience.

 

People end up cheating, and then feeling guilty, leading them to cheat some more, leading them to conclude that the diet is just too hard and not worth the effort.

 

With an unrestricted cheat day, people can enjoy all the tastiest, greasiest, sugar infused, calorie-dense foods they want guilt free and still lose weight.

 

This also helps with cravings that happen when people are dieting. If you are craving chocolate chip cookies, you don’t tell yourself “I can’t have chocolate chip cookies, I’m on a diet,” that’s a sad, de-motivating thought. Instead you tell yourself “I’ll have cookies on Saturday (I recommend Saturday as a cheat day, but you can pick whatever day you want).” That’s a much happier thought.

 

Also what you’ll find is that sometimes the thought of cheat day will help you power through the craving and you’ll forget about it by the time cheat day comes around. This has happened to me more times than I can count. Sometime during the week Taco Bell pops into my head. I start craving Taco Bell. I tell myself I’ll have it on Saturday. Saturday rolls around and I’ve forgotten about it. I move on.

 

I truly believe that an unrestricted cheat day is absolutely critical for eating healthy in the 21st century. There is so much access to so much delicious food that you would feel like you were missing out if you were forced to stick to a strict diet 24/7. Forget 24/7, 24/6 allows you to live healthy AND have fun.

 

I’m all about eating clean 24/6.

 

Eat clean 24/6, have fun 24/1.