Cheating

This post is about food - cheat meals, cheat days, cheat months, whatever. I frown upon all other forms of cheating, including cheating on your hairdresser. Nothing good ever comes of it.

I think everyone has an opinion on cheating and their diet. (I'm interested in your opinions so please comment and let's get a discussion going.) Some folks go with the cheat meal once a week, others have dessert at one meal every day. One of my favorite coaches and his girlfriend eat incredibly clean except for about once a month when they celebrate that month's holiday. (It's actually pretty cool - you can go through the calendar and actually find a major religious or cultural holiday that warrants sugar cookies and booze each month.) My boyfriend eats like a saint Sunday through Friday and then Saturday is a hedonistic free-for-all of Doritos, ice cream, and whisky. (He has some of the best ab definition I've ever seen so clearly this works for him.) I try to follow his example but I'm a work in progress.

I've been a lot more consistent since I moved to Georgia. I have a protein shake that I split between before and after my morning workout. I eat some bacon after my morning shower. Lunch is Caprese Greek yogurt with a tuna packet or 3 oz of Boar's Head Ovengold roast turkey. For dinner I've been eating 3-5 oz of steak with steam in the bag broccoli and cauliflower with a tablespoon of Kerrygold butter. I might also have another protein shake. But then fun things pop up, like the Professor was in town for work and we had a delicious dinner that involved fried asparagus fries. And yesterday I ended up staying at the office later than I had planned and I picked up some sushi and a packet of Raisinets. I took today off from CrossFit, completely throwing off my autopilot morning routine and forgot my Fage at home. I went to Publix, where I could have purchased a Fage, and instead walked out with 8 pieces of fried chicken, a slice of key lime pie, and a half-gallon of unsweetened iced tea*. Best damn 1,400 calories I've ever had.

Since I've already had two cheat meals this week, I'm in a bit of a predicament this weekend. And even if I had stuck to my original plan, I've begun to think that I eat back my calorie deficit every Saturday anyway, which is why my weight loss has stalled.

I'm thinking about approaching my calories slightly differently. What if I figured out the amount of calories I should eat in a week and then assigned a number to each day?

Let's do a little math based on my current calorie goals. MyFitnessPal is set for me to lose 1/2 a pound a week and it tells me that I should net 1,490 calories to do this. The daily adjustments based on how much I wave my arm around annoy me and I've started ignoring them. My FitBit tells me I burn about 100-150 calories per WOD. Not so sure how much I trust that, but let's use that number. So let's say I should allot 1,600 calories per day.

1,600 * 7 = 11,200
1,500 * 5 = 7,500
11,200 - 7,500 = 3,700
3,700 / 2 = 1,850

I get 11,200 calories for the week and if I reallocate them, I'm getting 1,500 calories on weekdays and then 1,850 each day of the weekend. If I clean up my act on Sunday, that's an additional 350 calories of biscuits and beer for Saturday. Another way to look at this is that 2/3 of the calories I put in my body are going to be from good clean foods and the remaining 1/3 will be the cheats.

In order for this to work, I'm going to have to start tracking cheat days. I think this is the missing piece I need to get myself back on track to reach my goals.

*I understand that sweet tea would have been the more appropriate beverage for this meal. I had my first sweet tea at Chick-fil-a on my drive down here and that stuff is delicious, but there's no way I'm getting in the habit of drinking it. I have no problem downing 1,000 calories of chicken in one sitting, but I balk at drinking calories outside of my protein shakes.