Cheat Day

Our diet consists mostly of calorie control and exercise (the little that we force ourselves to do right now). But we also build in a "Cheat Day" on Saturdays. The plan is that we still count calories and we don't eat totally bad-for-you-foods like McDonalds but we get to have a few adult beverages and eat an indulgent sort of dinner. Typically we end up doing about 1000 calories more than a regular day to put us at 2500-3000 calories.

The idea behind building a "Cheat Day" into your diet is that it gives you something to look forward to while you're being good all week and that it will kick start your metabolism a little to help you keep burning calories. Our bodies get complacent and will start to adjust their tasks to suit 1500 calories a day so a cheat day can be a good thing when done right.

I've been struggling this week because I am doing exactly the same things I did last week and haven't lost any weight. The only conclusion I've come up with is that I am not eating enough calories a day - I've been at 1300 to 1500 all week. Just to maintain my weight, I need to eat 2700 calories a day so it should have been melting off. (Try doing your caloric needs - you might be surprised)

Chris and I decided to do an "Ultra Cheat Day" in the hopes of kick starting my metabolism and get a stromboli each. We've gotten them before on cheat days and split one but this week we each got our own for a 1500 calorie gorge-fest. We had 600 calories in the earlier part of the day so this put us at 2100 for the day. Even though it doesn't seem that high, we both feel a bit guilty. We'll see if it worked or if we were just trying to talk ourselves into a bad idea...