Some background: as you can see from my flair, I'm a 21 year old guy down about 25 pounds. I weighed in at 229 in late May and just hit 204 a couple days ago. I did this with diet alone- simply sticking to my MFP's calorie goal for 1 pound a week, with no additional exercise outside of my summer job at an Amazon warehouse, which no doubt contributed a bit. I've done CICO for a few months a handful of times over the past few years. It feels like I'm really sticking with it this time, I'm not shortcutting or lying to myself. Yay!
During the summer my stepdad asked for help with MFP, so I gave him the rundown of the basics and got him started. A couple weeks in I heard him mention his "cheat day" to my mom, and while I wanted to say something, I didn't. His relationship with food is much deeper than mine ever was, and it still took me a while to stop trying to shortcut the process or give myself passes.
My outlook on "cheating" is this: If you need a cheat day, that means you don't like what you're doing, so you need to change your process. I do have what I like to call "permission to fail", because this summer it finally clicked for me, and I believe that I've gained the discipline to know that I'm not going to eat over my goal just because. And so I have permission from myself to fail, to go over my calorie goal, but only for a good reason. If I came home from work, ate my usual but found I was still hungry before bed, I had permission to eat until I was satiated. I went on an out-of-state trip with some friends for an extended weekend, and the social nature of the trip was enough that I had permission to eat above my goal. That's not permission to go crazy; I usually went 200-300 over and I never ended up more than 600 calories above my goal on any of these "permission to fail" days. That's barely above maintenance! Such days probably made up about 10-12% of the summer for me, and I still got down 25 pounds and felt very little guilt along the way. Being hungry is okay. Social eating is okay. It was a matter of being honest with myself about my intentions. Hold yourself to a high standard, and you'll have a nice cushion when you need one.
And then last weekend I came back to my college campus, where I'm on the meal plan. Buffet-style dining halls.... yay? Because I'm being honest with myself, I accepted that my willpower isn't always what I'd like it to be. I've had a good week, at or near my goal every day until last night. My goal is 1900 calories, I had about 850 for lunch leaving me 1050 for dinner. Looking at the menu for tonight, I liked a lot of tonight's selection. I decided this was my chance to get out ahead of whatever mental health disaster will strike me this semester and have me spiral down into daily binges. And so, I had my first cheat meal since starting this thing for real back in May. I ate like I've eaten for the past three years here. Once I left the dining hall, I went back on my school's dining app (which conveniently has nutrition info for most items) and counted the night's caloric conquest up.
2800, conservatively.
I was fuller than I've been in months. Shortly after the last bite went down, my stomach hurt a little bit from fullness. That bad boy has definitely shrunk, because I used to down this much twice a day. If dealing with the weird pain of a stuffed stomach all night wasn't enough of a deterrent, the real reason I did this was to give myself the numbers so I could know just how bad a cheat meal was. 2800 calories, plus the 850 I already had, gives me 3650. My daily goal is 1900 calories. That's a 1750-cal deficit from my goal, a 1250-cal deficit from maintenance. If I had one cheat meal a week, it erases 2.5 days of work assuming I'm at or around my calorie goal every day. One meal, 2.5 days. I know it's not always that linear, but that number is huge.
Once my body is rid of all this grossness, I think I'll be happy with my decision. I've made great improvements on my mental health, but part of that is knowing I won't always be perfect in that domain. I'm a rational person, I like to make fact-based decisions over feelings-based ones when possible. This exercise gave me the emotionless numbers I need to rationalize to myself why I can't fall off the weight loss wagon even if I've already fallen off the mental health wagon. It strengthened my belief that if I felt like I needed a cheat meal, I must be doing something wrong, because I don't feel so good right now (physically) and I'd have to be really unhappy with what I was doing to actively choose to feel like this weekly.
I don't really know if this little anecdote will be useful to anyone. It's just some bored ramblings, but I felt like sharing. I know I can be pretty wordy, so if anyone read the whole thing, thanks for sticking around. This sub is fantastic inspiration and support. Let's all keep working, everyone!
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