Dear readers,
‘12.000 calories cheatday’, ‘ 15.000 cheatday ‘, ‘I ate a dozen donuts from Dunkin’ or ‘I ate everything I craved for a day’. For people who do this as a job on YouTube, well okey they make their bucks with this. If it’s a healthy relationship with food….Well it depends how they deal with it the days after and before the cheat-days. How much calories do they eat to compensate this and how much exercise do they do to compensate it. And maybe most important; do they enjoy what they do and can they keep it up or are they crumbling behind the scenes. Eating until your stomach feels painful is not the way to go in my opinion. Keeping track of your calories the days after, because you want them to be as low as possible to stay the same weight is not the way to go in my opinion.
Eating EVERYTHING you want for a day in high quantities is not the way to go in my opinion. Why? Because you are going too extremes and we do not live in a time that extremes are necessary. We don’t live with a shortage of food (at least I am guessing the persons who reads this, if not, my apologies). We don’t need to eat everything we got and as much as possible, because you do not know when your next meal will be.
Often the titles I have written here above and the behavior that comes with are from RESTRICTION. Nobody want’s to hear ‘no you can’t have that’ and it’s even more difficult if it comes from yourself. At some point you will maybe say ‘I just can have a bite’ or ‘ I have been good for the whole week, so Friday is my cheatday’.
There are some people who can handle cheatdays and have a cheatmeal or the same amount of calories they normally have over the day, but choose not so healthy products. But a lot of people have black or white thoughts, making them go crazy when the product that they want so bad is finally there to eat.
After thousands of calories and not having any structure anymore in your eating (happens often). A lot of people deal with an after-blow for 2 days or so after. So maybe it’s not a week, but it definitely makes an impact
So why do you get a cheatweek or some cheatdays?
- Restriction. Not eating when you want, how you want and how much you want.
- Black and white thoughts. An apple is healthy, but eating a donut that taste like apples is a ‘shitty choice’, but my taste buds still want it (you feel torn in two thoughts).
How can you fix it?
- By eating what you want, how much you want and how you want it.
- Skip the black and white thoughts. It’s hard, but using less/no restriction can help that process. Food is not only fuel, it also has a mental aspect and taste aspect. You should try to feed that as well in healthy portions. For example take one donut a day as a snack, because it taste good and it reminds you of your youth. Not 12 on one day.
*One thing these cheatday binges are often not necessary for the body of healthy people. If you are underweight, have a low bodyfat or have an eating disorder these ‘binges’ might be very useful and your body is trying to tell you something. Go to your GP for help.
Hope this helps,
Queeny
