Dirty Cheating is horrible, not for the calories but the habit it forms

[skelooth]

I'm so accustomed to "cheating" on saturdays, that I honestly want to get a pizza tomorrow. And that is SO WRONG. And deep down inside, I know the only reason I want one is out of pure HABIT. I'm finally starting to understand what some of the older posters have been saying to me for a long time. It's better to cheat with clean foods. This way at least if it's habit forming, it's not as bad.
Oh well. Not really complaining, not really asking a question, just ranting. I regret all of those cheats I've had. I could feasibley have a 'clean cheat' tomorrow, but it just doesn't sound as fun as BUFFALO CHICKEN PIZZA WITH GREEN PEPPERS

[gutcheck]

Yes. Agreed.

But, come on. Look at your pics. You're making MASSIVE gains. Eat the pizza. Just know its once a week. I honestly think "dirty" cheating is kinda good becuase your body does a wtf and then when you go back on, it burns well... whatever... I want a pizza.

[skelooth]

it burns well... whatever... I want a pizza.

That's exactly what my brain pattern is right now, LOL. It's like I'm saying "Just do a good session of card.... AH I WANT PIZZA"

[The_Animal]

does having one cheat meal a week lets say a burger combo or something from a fast food joint actually make any real difference, i mean its one meal a week, keeps you sane, prevents binge eating when you lose your weight, if anything i think its beneficial.

I'm going to a rap concert this weekend and gonna have a few drinks for sure and maybe a cheat meal after unless i pick up some hot honey's at the concert, in which case I'll be burning the cals from the liquor lol

[skelooth]

one burger would be fine. But when I cheat.... i go NUTS :\

I can't control myself once I start eating something. Despite all of the success I've had so far, I still have a LOT of issues with self control around good food. I'm fine if I don't eat any... but just one bite sends me into an insane feeding frenzy.

[jinkk]

Yo same here'

I just came home, fresh bread n ****- nothing even fancy- but 1 slice later and im like- MORE MORE MORE

but let it subside and it goes away and bingo a new good habit-

but if your cutting- keep it clean- but since your doin so well- its your choice.

also 30 mins afte rhaving the bread, im satsified and even thinking how sickly sweet the date spread on it was...............

better then eating awhole loaf then deciding I dont feel so good and it wasnt that great.

[BluntStatic]

im not cheating till i hit 185 and then im gonna eat a pizza 8D

189lb as of yesterday *yay*

[Colin Gilbert]

I'd keep on eating cheat meals like that. At least you won't be saying "Oh, I didn't have a cheat meal on Saturday, so I can have that donut/plate of fries/beer." every single day of the week. I mean, you're making huge progress as it is, just keep on at it and see the cheat meal as a necessary sacrifice. (Besides, how could it be a cheat meal if it's all clean foods? )

[melon]

Yeah I think any habitual self-justified cheating is a bit of a disaster waiting to happen. Because you continue to think along the lines of "Well I have pushed myself hard this week" or "I need a refeed, I think my calories are too low" and it just goes out of control.

Personally I've stopped massive cheat days for good now and only do occasional cheat meals. I've learnt to enjoy the food more and savour it, rather than ramming it down my throat in a frenzy.

[AGENT ANABOLIC]

You can cheat and still eat benificial foods. My weekly cheat meal is a 10oz filet mignon with a baked pot and some green beans from a place called Tahoe Joe's. The food is still clean but the way they prepare it tastes way better then the normal food I eat all week.

[AmateurWrestler]

just control yourself, and stick with no other cheats but the pizza, you'll be fine bro, one day wont kill ya, especially when youa re bulking

[Clipse]

Your just like me, in the sense when you cheat you make it big not just 1 meal. Cheat and dont worry about it. 1 day wont make that much of a difference.

[saw14]

there is nothing wrong with a cheat whether it is clean or dirty. the only difference between the two is you are less likely to feel guilty after a clean cheat. that said, if you dont like what happens when you cheat, then dont. this is one of those things that people ask alot(and i know you arent skel, you're just stating your opinion), "is eating such and such as a cheat meal ok and i usually feel real guilty afterwards." if you need people to justifiy your cheating for you maybe you shouldnt do it, and if you feel guilty post cheating then i strongly suggest you dont do it. there is no reason to ruin a good cheat by feeling too guilty afterwards. ive been there and done that with the guilt and now have none post cheat, and i dont do just a cheat meal i go all out, grotesque amounts of food. like my bday last month, i had 5 plates of chinese food, 1 big ass plate of mexican food, 6 donuts, .5 a box of lucky charms, 1 beer(21st bday, lol), .25 of my bday cake and 4 scoops of ice cream. was there guilt afterwards? nope, i was glad i did it because i was excited to get back to my real diet and back to training hard. that said i only cheat once a month max, so i am always willing to go all out.

[The Experiment]

I feel the same way. What sucks is that even when dropping nearly 100 lbs, those cravings don't go away. When you have lets say a cherry turnover, you want another, and another. Its a huge fight to prevent myself from getting a second one. Back in the day, cheat days would become cheat meals. Then I'd feel so bad about it, I'd swear to myself never to cheat again. Only to cheat again on Saturday.

[chlaxman]

I don't know, over the last year my desire to cheat has pretty much disappeared. I used to have a decent sized cheat meal (not big) and I would still feel like crap afterwards. I would immediately want to do cardio for a long period of time, so I decided to give up cheating altogether. After about 3 months, I really did not have a desire to cheat anymore. Generally, every 7-10 days on a cut I have a re-feed meal, which basically consists of tons of lean protein and oats/brown rice, and I don't feel bad afterwards. Granted, every once in a while (say for XMas or something), I will eat something unhealthy, but I don't plan it out and it is never big (I also don't have the largest appetite).

I don't think cheating is a bad thing, it just depends on the person. As long as you can control it, there really isn't anything wrong with cheating.

[skelooth]

i got a small buffalo chicken pizza. Sure it was unproductive in terms of fat loss, but it was worth a million dollars for the mental sanity it bestowed upon me.

Only problem is now I'm tired.

Todays cheat, 7 slices from a small buffalo chicken pizza. at 250 cals each (prolly a lot less than that cos it was a small) total damage is 1750 calories. Which... really isn't too bad considering the size of some of the cheats i've had in the past.



Each slice, honestly, was prolly more around 150 cals... they were tiny.

[chlaxman]

Nothing wrong with that.

[dtrek]

for me its easier for me not to cheat at all kinda scared if i cheat a little bit its goin to lead to cheatin alittle more and more etc.........

[Blown]

I want pizza so F*cking Bad you have no idea. I would kill a man if it would negate the effect the pizza had on my body.

[htxRed]

i think cheating is ok as long as it doesnt go from cheating to second nature. if anything, it helps you make sure you push yourself even harder to work it off. thats how it is for me anywyas.

[TerrenceCA]

When I cheat, I make sure I go to a restaurant with family/friends. That way I get served a certain portion and they take it away when I'm done so the food isn't lingering in my house all day long taunting me. Plus, you get to spend time with the family and friends which is even better.

[marcFE]

one burger would be fine. But when I cheat.... i go NUTS :\

I can't control myself once I start eating something. Despite all of the success I've had so far, I still have a LOT of issues with self control around good food. I'm fine if I don't eat any... but just one bite sends me into an insane feeding frenzy

Werd

[FunkDaddy]

Ah bro, don't worry too much about it. Like you said, it's good for your sanity! You're making incredible progress so you earned it.

Last night we had pizza, I had 5 slices. Felt guilty so I hit the gym extra hard, on the way home from the gym I was tempted really badly to go hit Mickey D's (even in terms of fast food, I HATE Mickey D's but I was craving it soooo hard for some reason) but I knew I'd feel like **** afterwards, not mentally, but physically, it always kills my stomach lol so I skipped it and went home, had some eggs and cottage cheese instead lol.

Dunno why I shared that...just felt like it LOL!

[skelooth]

Dunno why I shared that...just felt like it LOL!

Because we all need to talk about it. If we don't, it will eat us up inside. This board gives us a means to do that.

[Desperado]

Call me crazy, but how exactly can someone have a "clean cheat?" Is that by simply eating clean but eating over maintenance? I'd figured that those two words shouldn't go together, hahaha.

And skelooth, you got a small buffalo chicken pizza, that's not really going to hurt you. I don't know if you were like I used to be, but I could nearly eat a large pizza in one sitting about 80lbs ago. Will I overeat like that now? HELL NO, because I had to cut down before I fell over dead with a heart attack from carrying around so much fat. But will I ever quit eating my favorite food, PIZZA? Another big HELL NO on that one, I will still eat a slice or two every once in a while. I ate a small Reese's Cup Blizzard from Dairy Queen today, haven't had one of those in a while. Yeah I felt a little guilty about having it afterwards but I honestly don't think it would affect me that much.

I cheat about once or twice a month on the average, but no more than that, and I'm still losing weight at the same pace as when I strictly ate clean. I'm at the point where it seems like even if I eat strictly clean or with a cheat once in a while, I'm still losing weight at a very slow pace. It gets real discouraging sometimes because my weight loss is going very very slow, and sometimes I feel like I'd just like to devour an entire pizza. But it was that mindset that got me nearly 400lbs and there's no pizza or food on this earth worth feeling as miserable as I did. And I'll take what weight loss I can get, slow and steady it shall be, if it takes 5-10 years, I'm going to be ripped as hell one of these days.

Look at the progress you've made already, skelooth. You need to change your mindset to correlate with the new body that you have. Think about that progress after a small cheat and ask yourself if you really want to screw up that progress. It's all a matter of taking control of the food and not letting the food take control of you.

[AA1826]

Yo, if you think its hard now wait till you become "slim". I mean once you get to a point where you at least look good in clothes..you will find it SO HARD to stay on a clean diet. YOur mind will always be like, "you look good...go ahead and eat" and you will find that losing the last fat to get ripped will be harder than ANY PREVIOUS PART of the diet.
But of course this is destructive thinking because IMO once you get to that point..you need to go on all 8 cyclinders and a cheat will only hold you back.

[tonypietrini]

Honestly unless you're trying to go pro I wouldn't worry too much about cheats...I cheat once or twice a week and I look forward to it. Last week I had 2 huge ice creams from carvel and an extra bowl of baked ziti...this week it was calzones and they were damn good. I cheat clean all the time, granted my progress has been slowed by it, I've been stuck at 220lbs for the past 3 months but my body fat % has dropped like 2-3%. Sure I felt guilty after, but my theory is that sometimes you start to slack in the gym when you see great gains, cheating pisses me off at myself for cheating and makes me get at it the next day in the gym that much harder.

[Stand Ablaze]

I can't even eat a large pizza anymore, it's as if my stomach has shrunk, I just feel a bit sick.

Usually, in my "fat days" (Still fat but with a different attitude now to life in general), I could put away a large pizza AND the chips that came with it, easily, washing it down with a 2ltr of Pepsi or coke, I'm not joking.
I usually just have a frozen pizza as a cheat, compared to what I use to eat as an average meal, it's nothing.

But I have to ask, what the **** is Buffalo Chicken? Is it like........ Pig Beef? or Horse Tuna? 'int heard of it before, then again our pizza places don't do much.

[SoCalRugger]

But I have to ask, what the **** is Buffalo Chicken?

Basically BBQ chicken.

[Stand Ablaze]

So why not call it BBQ chicken?