Cheating is fundamental...if you know how to get away with it.

I should clarify something I wrote in an earlier entry. In a nutshell, I said that dieting, exercising, and losing weight are similar to the purity of marriage. I made it sound like cheating on your diet makes you a failure. This is not exactly what I believe. Cheating can lead to failure. Keeping it in check and under control is the key.

I cheat. Oh believe me, I cheat. But I also don't let it trip me off the wagon and send me back to "Fatslobville". I have an entire day dedicated to cheating: Sunday. In fact, I affectionately refer to the fat I still have around my mid-drift as "Sunday". It's quite possible (although time will tell) that my cheat Sundays will cause me to never completely lose the rest of my abdomen fat. Ultimately, this choice will be up to me. But for someone who doesn't have their heart set on an extraordinary looking beach body, a little cheating now and then is perfectly fine.

We should not deprive ourselves. We love food, that much is evident. It's how we got into this predicament in the first place, right? Ironically, limiting ourselves too much will more than likely lead us to failure on our quest to lose weight. Or drive us insane...

I chose Sunday as my "free day" for several reasons. First, it's the end of the week. I look at it as a reward for staying on track for 6 straight days. And as you can imagine, when you cheat off and on for an entire day like that, well, let's just say your insides don't handle it so well. By the end of the day I'm more than ready to get back on track Monday morning, but I'm also happy to have gotten the cravings out of my system.

Some would say you ruin your progress by eating whatever you want for an entire day. My belief is for the majority of people who are trying to lose weight, this is not the case. Based on my own experience I have found that the more weight/fat you have to lose, the less an entire cheat day will hurt you. Let's use a pretend man as an example. We'll call him Hypothetical John or "HJ" for short.

Let's say HJ is tipping the scales at 285 pounds and one day he decides it's time to lose weight. He begins to diet and exercise religiously for 9 months. During that period he also has one cheat day per week. At the end of 9 months, HJ has lost 85 pounds and thanks to some weight training he is in excellent shape with only 15% body fat. He looks so good these days that he'd like to do some modeling, but to do so he feels he needs to lose another 5% from his body fat. This is where things could get tricky for HJ. Fat comes off our bodies in a frustrating manner - it ultimately has a mind of it's own - and in general you can bet that the less you have to lose, the more difficult it will be to lose it. Contrary to some people's belief, you can't control where the fat comes off. So HJ might discover on his journey to 10% body fat that he needs to limit his cheat eating.

So now you're reading this and thinking to yourself, "but I just want to lose this extra weight, I don't need to be on the cover of a magazine". And to that I say, "yep". This was exactly my point when I stated earlier that for most people trying to lose weight, a cheat day will not slow or halt their progress. In all honesty, I'm not even certain that Hypothetical John will need to eliminate his cheat day. Based on my own body and current situation, my abdomen flab is still slowly disappearing...and I'm still cheating on Sundays. Time will tell. But I'm also not anywhere near 10% body fat. Well, sort of. According to the various formulas, scales, and calipers I've used recently, my body fat right now is somewhere between 13% and 23%. Ugh. Screw that baloney. The mirror, how your clothes fit, and how you feel are really the best ways to measure your progress.

So don't be scared to indulge every once in awhile. If you feel an entire cheat day isn't for you, maybe try a couple of cheat meals throughout the week. Whatever works for you. As long as you stay committed to the task at hand and don't let the occasional treat put you back in that "bad place", all will turn out fine and you will continue to make progress. And if you can have success without cheating, more power to you!