or you are very strict with what you eat?
Never, but food in general has become a lot less appealing. I currently have nothing in mind as a treat for my upcoming birthday; there is nothing that is worth raising my blood sugar for. It’s such a momentary pleasure compared to the long term goal of keeping my body healthy.
As long as its not processed food (by the way, anything with flour or ADDED sugar is processed) you are not cheating…moratorium on processed food which really isn’t food…stick to perimeter of grocery store, avoid inner aisles…fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry and fish, beans, dairy, nuts and seeds…outer perimeter! 😁
I do not have cheat meals because Indo not follow a diet, I only do IF. I do occassionally stray from my eating window for special social events. But my eating window is 8 hours so I dont have to stray from it much at all. When I was doing 20:4, I did have to stray a lil more often to accomodate my social life.
I allow myself to eat sweets every eating window if I wish too. For me I’ve found with sweets, restriction isnt helpful as I dont feel like I’m done eating if I dont (I’m not hungry, but I’m not satisfied, it would make IF impossible for me, as well maintain a calorie deficit as I’d be eating to feel satisfied, when I cant do that without a lil sweets). I find if I eat sweets often, I actually consume less of them. I’m not a fan of fatty foods anyways so I rarely eat those as I just dont like them. And I always eat sweets last in my eating window.
During my early months of OMAD I used to have one such weekly meal in the sense that you mean, i.e. as a treat / reward / something to look forward to.
While I occasionally still eat things like pizza or cake to this day, it has long ceased having anything to do with reward and everything to do with either a) (typically) appeasing someone else or b) (infrequently) precautionarily keeping my proneness to rigid thinking in check (ending up yet another “nutrition zealot” unbearable to sit next to at a social meal is the last thing I want). If it were solely up to me to choose though, I’d probably stick with a minimalistic veggie-friendly “carnivore-lite” variant indefinitely, simply because that’s what my body seems to function optimally on (and as for my dumb brain’s dopamine requirements, plenty less harmful poisons out there to pick from).
With my history of EDs (including binge eating), I just can’t. I will allow *occasional* treats (such as a slice of cheesecake on my birthday) but never, ever a full-out meal. Once in a blue moon I will go to a buffet place with high quality meat and absolutely pig out on fatty meat, but that’s like once every 3 months. So I guess my answer is a semi-cheat every 3 months.
that stuff is going to find you. If you plan to “treat yourself” while you’re on a diet, you’re actually doing the undermining all on your own. If you plan to be strict and a cookie ends up in your mouth every once in a while, you can manage with that.
Food is food, but if you plan to eat 1000 calories right before bed, that’s not great. That’s cheating the clock, the lifestyle. Undoing 2 days worth of work
If you plan to eat an entire pizza because you “deserve” it, then you also deserve the aftermath of it. That’s cheating on the diet. That’s not going to help you lose weight.
I treat myself with well prepared and cooked meals that take sustsined effort. Such as smoked pork/chicken, a reverse sear steak, etc. But I don’t treat myself with Philly cheesesteaks Taco Bell or Fazolis. For me it’s been a slippery slope in the past and I fall back into bad habits.
Depends on what you mean by “cheat meal” …I don’t really deprive myself, so I don’t really feel like I have to “cheat”. I typically eat whatever I want, but I never eat more than about 2 meals per day and I typically don’t eat outside my feeding window