Q&A: Is it okay to have a cheat day each week when trying to lose weight?

Is it okay to have a cheat day when trying to lose weight? Now, this, not surprisingly, fairly common question, particularly being a health coach, obviously. But it's a very valid one, you know, because there are a lot of people that want to lose weight and ideally not give up all of the sort of sweets, treats, or snacks that they have and so on. And there's also this idea that you kind of have to punish yourself with food. You've got to give up all of your favorite things. Anything that's healthy for you doesn't taste good. Everything that tastes amazing is bad for you, and so on. There's all these weird and fucked up stories in and around our industry that make it more challenging for us to stick to the goal and to the habits that we know we need to develop. So, there's always this idea, well, can I kind of do some things, have a cheat day, can I still have some of the things that I enjoy whilst I'm on this journey? Now, the simple answer is yes. So, if that's all you wanted to know, then you could leave this video now. Because yeah, you could have a cheat day and you'll still get results. They won't necessarily be as clear or as epic as they could be if you were clean every day, of course, because it depends how crazy you go on this cheat day. But ultimately, yes, you could still get results. Because let's face it, 6 days a week is better than 0 days a week. And you could argue, well, 7 would be even better. But for some people, they just know they won't manage 7. They need to have some kind of treat in between, so therefore the cheat day might help them at least get some results and they'll move towards their goal. The catch with this idea though is the entitlement aspect. It's that part of the mind that says, "Oh, because I'm doing all this stuff and I'm being a good boy for 6 days a week, then I deserve a treat now. I deserve a reward." Now, that's a problem. Now, I'm not saying you do or don't deserve a reward. What I'm saying is having this idea that because I've done something good, I am automatically entitled to a reward. Oh, because I ate well all week, I'm automatically entitled to a treat in terms of food is potentially a bad thing because what it also shows, as well as a level of entitlement— oh, I've done this, so I deserve that— there is also this aspect of us that's going, okay, well, I'm not ready to go all in. I'm not really ready to do this health thing, this health thing fully. I want the result, but I don't really want to live in that way. Even though there's a part of us, of course, that knows that that's what we need to do and that's what we perhaps should do, but there is another part of us that's like, "I'm not ready. I'm not ready to do this. I'm not ready to be the healthy guy, the guy that lives healthy all the time," and so on. And the truth is, to be healthy, to be fit, lean, strong, and so on, you don't actually have to be 100%. But the idea that you want to take a whole day off from this game suggests that you're not ready to go all in. You're not fully committed to the idea. You like the idea, you want the outcome, but you're not fully committed to the idea of being healthy, not fully committed to the idea of eating healthy as a part of you. So that's the catch. It's the fact that you're resisting the requirement for your identity to shift, because the truth is, if you started this game and you were getting results, what would ideally happen is that as that's happening and as you're repeating these new habits, over time they will become part of your identity. It becomes your natural behavior set, and therefore it's easy for you to maintain the habit because now it's just something you do every day. So there's no longer the sense of entitlement, "Oh, well, I need to have this time off because I've been a good boy and eaten well all week." But there's also not this sense of, "Oh, I'm not ready to go all in," because it's a case of, "Well, this is just what I do, and if I choose to have a cheat meal, well, I just do that, but I don't need a whole day off." I'm just having this because it's what I want to eat in the moment. I'm not trying to fulfill any other emotional need that's making me crave this thing, or I feel like I need it because my emotional pendulum has been whacked and it's swinging all over the place. And in order to soothe me and make me feel better again, I now need this bad food or this treat in order to make me feel better and re-neutralize where I'm at in my emotional state. Because the catch is, as we know, Once we do that thing, it's like, oh, your emotions might be all over the place. Now I need something good to pick me up and make me feel better. So I have the thing, but then there is a following emotional cascade as a result of that. Often we have it and first off we're like, fuck, shouldn't have really done that. I fancied it in the moment, but I probably shouldn't have eaten that really. So there's the first thing is we try and guilt ourselves on it. It's like, ah, probably shouldn't have. And then we tend to get angry with ourselves. For fuck's sake, why did you fuck up again? Why did you keep messing up? You know what you were trying to do. You know what you were supposed to be doing. But yet you allowed yourself to eat this thing anyway. And then it's a case of, "Oh well, it wasn't actually my fault. It was because it was my friend's birthday, and because I had to go to their birthday, you know, I couldn't not get involved. I had to have a bit of this or that." So we end up going through this kind of guilt, blame, and shame, and anger cycle, which ends up being worse on our physiology and worse on our health than just eating the food and saying, "Oh well, I chose to have it." So if we can get to a point of more emotional maturity where we can have these things and not get knocked off our emotional pendulum or knocked off our emotional podium, so we remain more neutral to it, so then we don't get the negative hormonal and emotional cascade, we can get away with doing these things more frequently should we wish to. Because we're not then going to be like, oh, fuck, blah, blah, blah, I shouldn't have this and that. Because what happens is then the bounce back effect again. It's like, oh, well now because I made myself feel so bad, I'm now entitled to something else to feel good. So it's like you had the thing, you went on the emotional cascade, it made you feel bad, put you in a pit. Oh, well, shit. Then you get back on, but now because you've been feeling so crappy for a while, you now want another treat or reward to re-pick you up and put you back where you were. So we need to be careful because we end up keep triggering ourselves into this cycle. And what happens is We actually get addicted to the emotional cascade, to that repeated cycle of emotion. That's what we get addicted to. It's not so much the food or the craving and stuff. Yeah, that's a part of it. But a large part of it also is this emotional cycle that we get put on. Because it's only when we experience the highs and lows of emotion that we feel like we're actually living. It might not be living in the way that we want, but compared to the neutral, numb, boring, potential, the emotional highs and lows actually feel like more of a life experience. So we need to be careful because sometimes that emotional cascade, all those peaks and troughs, are not actually serving us. They're not taking us to our goal. They might be keeping us stuck in a sense of living because, "Oh, well, I'm up and I'm down, I'm up and I'm down," so at least we are actually experiencing something. We're not just numb and neutral. But the catch is, for many of us, that cascade doesn't actually move us forward. We're literally just repeating this same circle. What my coach calls it, the karmic cul-de-sac, where you're essentially just in this loop of the same old bullshit over and over again. Because what happens is you keep resetting your emotional state back to the point before the trigger, not beyond it. So that's why we need a process that we use over time to allow you to start resetting your emotional state beyond the trigger, beyond the entitlement, beyond the need for you to do these things and to have cheat days, because if we can reset beyond it, well then that trigger is not going to affect me anymore. It's not going to put me into this place where I feel like I need the treat in order to feel better. Yes, of course, like anything, it takes a bit of time, it takes a bit of practice, and it comes from an ability to learn to understand who we are. How do I operate? How do I show up? What things trigger me? What things piss me off? What things make me sad? What things make me angry or happy or joyful and so on. Like, what things trigger my emotional responses? Because if I can understand what things do that, I can then choose how I respond to those particular emotional states. But the catch is, if we're not willing to actually observe ourselves, what ends up happening is we just become reactive to it. Anytime our emotional state changes, we just react in the moment. Oh, I feel shit, I need food to pick up. Oh, I feel like I'm awesome at the moment, so therefore everything's okay. And that's fine, but we just need to be careful and more conscious of how we're making ourselves feel because often it's not just the world outside of us, it's how we respond to the world outside of us that causes those emotional reactions to be either bigger, smaller, or less and so on. We've got to get very good at understanding how we are, how we show up, how we operate and then it makes things like the weight loss much, much easier. And we don't really care about cheat days. It's, "Oh, do I need a cheat day? Do I want a cheat day?" None of that becomes important anymore because actually maintaining your happiness and the level of results that you're getting becomes more important than, "Can I have a cheat day? Can I make myself feel good through food or through porn or through binging Netflix or through alcohol or through drugs?" and so on. So it's much easier if we allow ourselves to do that and actually get to learn— sorry, get to understand who we are, how we show up, how we operate, how we react emotionally to these things, and then this whole food game becomes much easier. This whole exercise game is much easier because it's not driven from an emotional point. Yes, of course, there is an emotional attachment in the respect, "Oh, once I get to my result, I believe I will feel better," and of course most of us will. We are searching for an emotional outcome. Most of us don't really care so much that we're fat. We care about the fact that we hate being fat. That we feel like shit, that we feel like we're being judged or we're out of shape or people think we're lazy and so on, or we look in the mirror and we're disgusted by ourselves. So we want to move away from that. We want to move away from the emotional state and we think that losing the weight is the way that we'll get there. Oh, that's the method or the route I need to take in order to feel better, to be happier, to be more fulfilled and so on. And of course, that's going to contribute But a lot of people that you see, they will lose weight and then they gain it back, then they lose weight and they gain it back. It's because they're not actually shifting the identity at the same time. They will lose the weight, so the body changes, but they don't actually change how they see themselves. So yes, physically you've shifted. Oh, to the outside world, wow, you look amazing, you've done so well, this is great, how the hell did you do this? But you didn't shift as an individual, you didn't change your emotional state So therefore, it didn't actually provide you with the emotional resolve that you were looking for. The emotional need that you had to get met wasn't met just by losing the weight. That comes from actually learning to understand who we are and how and why we show up and operate the way we do. Why we do or do not have the life that we say that we want and so on. So I'll leave this video here today. So just to simplify it again. Yes, you can have cheat days if you want. You'll still get results. But the key really is to sit with yourself and identify why it is you really need that cheat day. Is it because of a sense of entitlement? Is it because you've got some shit that you're trying to deal with and you serve that through food and you don't want to give that up? Is it just because you don't want to live the healthy lifestyle? Like, there's lots of different reasons why you may not be wanting to fully go all in on the health game. And that's fine, but admit that to yourself. Because once you admit it to yourself, it makes it much easier to decide where or what level you do or do not want to live at in order to get the results that you want. And of course, if you're not necessarily willing to go all in, well then maybe sometimes we need to scale our goal back. Maybe we can't have the amazing body that we want, but perhaps we can have a good one. Perhaps we can't be ripped with a six-pack, but maybe we could actually just be lean and healthy, and so on. So if you're not willing to go all in to get the extreme result, how far are you willing to go in, in order to at least get some result so that you have the potential for feeling better about how you look, how you feel, and how you function? So I'll leave that one there, guys. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below, as I always tell you. And if not, I look forward to seeing you guys in my next video. Take it easy, people.