If Your Diet Needs a Cheat Meal, Is It Really Working?
Have you ever been on a diet where you basically spent the entire week waiting for the day you were finally allowed to eat what you actually wanted?
Monday through Friday, you're following the plan.
You're being “good.”
You're eating what you're supposed to eat.
You're avoiding all the things you're not supposed to eat.
And somewhere in the back of your mind you're thinking:
It's okay. Saturday is my cheat day.
That's when I'll have the pizza.
That's when I'll go out to dinner.
That's when I'll have dessert.
That's when I can finally loosen up a little bit.
And listen, I'm not here to tell you that a diet like that can't help you lose weight.
It might.
But I think we're often asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking:
“Does this diet work?”
I think we need to start asking:
“What result am I actually looking for?”
Because those are two very different questions.
When a Diet “Works” But You’re Miserable
I started thinking about this recently while I was sitting with some friends who were talking about diets they were following.
And because this is what I do for a living, of course my health-coach brain immediately kicked in.
But I wasn't trying to coach anyone.
Sometimes I do know how to mind my own business. 😂
So I just listened.
And what struck me wasn't really the particular diets they were doing.
It was the way they were talking about them.
They sounded miserable.
They were talking about what they weren't allowed to eat.
What they couldn't have.
What they were waiting to eat later.
And eventually, the conversation turned to cheat days and cheat meals.
I remember sitting there thinking:
This right here is exactly why so many diets can work for a little while but don't actually last.
Not because you aren't disciplined enough.
Not because you followed the plan incorrectly.
And not because you somehow failed.
At some point, you simply have to ask:
Do I actually want to live like this?
Because if the answer is no...
what's the end game?
What Does It Actually Mean for a Diet to “Work”?
Let's say you follow a diet for eight weeks and lose 15 pounds.
Did it work?
Maybe.
If your goal was simply:
“I want the number on the scale to go down over the next eight weeks.”
Then sure. You could say the diet worked.
But what if your goal is:
“I want to lose weight and still be able to live this way two years from now.”
Now we need a different definition of success.
Because maybe you lost those 15 pounds.
But during those eight weeks, you were constantly thinking about food.
You couldn't wait for your cheat day.
You avoided going out because you didn't know what you could order.
You felt guilty when you ate something that wasn't on your plan.
You couldn't imagine eating that way on vacation.
And the second the diet ended, you couldn't wait to “eat normally” again.
Did the diet work?
That's a much harder question.
And if you've been dieting for years, I think this question becomes even more important.
Because you may have already proven that you can lose weight.
Maybe you've done it several times.
The harder part has been figuring out:
How do I lose weight without eventually needing to escape from the way I'm eating?
That's different.
Your Cheat Day Might Be Telling You Something
Let me be really clear here.
I'm not saying that eating pizza on Saturday means your diet is terrible.
I'm not saying you can never plan a bigger meal.
I'm not saying there's something morally wrong with having a cheat meal.
Honestly, I don't love the word “cheat” because it makes it sound like you did something bad.
But that's not really my point.
The question I want you to ask is:
Why do I need the cheat day?
Because sometimes that tells us something.
If you're spending Monday through Friday thinking:
“I just have to make it until Saturday...”
pay attention to that.
You're basically enduring your way of eating until you're finally allowed to take a break from it.
And then we expect ourselves to maintain that forever.
That's where we run into problems.
Imagine someone told you:
“I found the perfect workout program. I hate every workout. I'm miserable the entire time. And I spend all week waiting for the day I don't have to do it.”
Would you think:
Yep. She's definitely going to do that for the rest of her life.
Probably not.
But we do this with food all the time.
We tell ourselves:
It's okay if I hate this because it's working.
Maybe it is working for the result you're measuring today.
But is it helping create the life you want six months from now?
A year from now?
Five years from now?
That's what I want you to start thinking about.
Maybe the Goal Isn’t Just Losing Weight
When you say:
“I want to lose weight,”
what do you actually mean?
Do you mean:
“I want to see a smaller number on the scale as quickly as possible”?
Or do you mean:
“I want to lose weight and not spend the rest of my life fighting food.”
Because those goals may require very different approaches.
When I'm working with women, I'm not only thinking:
Can this help her lose weight?
I'm also thinking:
Can she do this when school starts?
Can she do this when her kids have practice three nights this week?
Can she do this when she goes to a friend's birthday dinner?
Can she do this on vacation?
Can she have dessert sometimes without deciding the entire week is ruined?
Can she have an incredibly busy week and still do enough to take care of herself?
Because that's real life.
You're not trying to win a 30-day dieting competition.
You're trying to figure out how to take care of your body while still being a person who has a family, work, vacations, birthday cake and stressful Tuesdays.
That's the result I'm interested in.
What Happens After the Diet?
This might be one of the most important questions we aren't asking enough.
When we start a diet, we're usually thinking:
How much weight can I lose?
But maybe we should also be asking:
What happens when I'm done?
Think about it.
If the plan is:
Follow the diet.
Lose the weight.
Stop following the diet.
What's step four?
What happens next?
A lot of women honestly don't know.
They'll figure it out when they get there.
But this is where the dieting cycle can start all over again.
You follow the rules.
You lose weight.
You get tired of following the rules.
You go back to eating the way you did before.
The weight starts coming back.
And eventually you think:
I need to get serious again.
So you start another diet.
And we often label that as a motivation or discipline problem.
But sometimes the problem is simpler than that.
You were using a strategy you were never planning to maintain.
And if you're not going to maintain the strategy, it's worth asking whether that's the strategy you want to build your long-term results around.
I Don’t Want You Waiting to Escape Your Own Plan
This is why I talk so much about building meals instead of creating endless food rules.
I don't want you feeling punished Monday through Friday so you can finally live on Saturday.
I don't want you eating foods you hate because someone told you they're “weight-loss foods.”
I don't want you terrified of eating a cookie because it doesn't fit today's plan.
I want you to be able to make choices that support your goals and still live your life.
Sometimes that means making a choice that isn't the choice you'd make if your only goal was to lose as much weight as humanly possible this month.
And I'm okay with that.
Because I care a lot more about where you are a year from now than whether you can white-knuckle your way through the next three weeks.
This Doesn’t Mean “Eat Whatever You Want”
This is important.
When we start talking about getting away from dieting, sometimes people hear:
“Okay, so nothing matters. Eat whatever you want whenever you want.”
That's not what I'm saying.
There is still room for structure.
There is still room for making choices that support your goals.
There is still room for saying:
“I could eat this right now, but that's not really what I want for myself.”
You can make intentional choices without creating a list of forbidden foods.
You can change a behavior without turning it into another rigid rule.
You can want to lose weight without making every meal a test of whether you were “good” or “bad” that day.
There is a middle ground.
And I think that's where sustainable change starts to happen.
Ask Yourself This One Question
So here's something actionable I want you to take from this.
If you're currently following a diet—or even if you've just created your own little list of food rules—ask yourself:
“If I got the result I wanted, would I be willing to keep doing this?”
Not for another week.
Not until vacation.
Not until you lose 10 pounds.
I'm talking about real life.
Could you see yourself eating this way six months from now?
Could you go out with friends?
Could you do this through the holidays?
Could you travel?
Could you have an exhausting week?
Could you live this way without constantly looking forward to the day when you're finally allowed to take a break?
If your immediate response is:
Absolutely not.
That doesn't mean I want you to throw your entire plan away tonight.
Get curious instead.
Ask yourself:
“What part of this feels like something I'm enduring instead of something I'm building?”
Maybe it's not everything.
Maybe your breakfast is working really well.
Maybe eating more protein makes you feel fantastic.
Maybe planning dinner ahead has made your evenings so much easier.
Great.
Keep those things.
We're not burning down the whole house.
Maybe there's just one part that needs to change.
Maybe it's the rule that says you can't eat after 7 PM.
Maybe it's trying to avoid every food you enjoy Monday through Friday.
Maybe it's feeling like you have to be perfect all week just so you can make it to your Saturday cheat meal.
Notice it.
Because the goal isn't to find the diet you can tolerate long enough to lose weight.
The goal is to build a way of taking care of yourself that you don't constantly need a vacation from.
And What If Evening Eating Is Where You Keep Getting Stuck?
This is also one of the reasons I've been talking so much about evening eating lately.
I see women create more and more rules trying to fix it.
“No food after dinner.”
“No sweets in the house.”
“I'll just be stricter tomorrow.”
But if the same thing keeps happening every evening, another rule may not be what you need.
Maybe that specific struggle deserves some attention of its own.
That's exactly why I created my 4-Week Evening Eating Reset.
We're not trying to fix your entire life in four weeks.
We're focusing on one problem.
We're going to look at what's happening with your evening eating, why the pattern keeps showing up and start building something that actually works in your real life.
Because I don't want you joining another four-week plan that you can't wait to finish.
I want you learning things about yourself that you can actually take with you once those four weeks are over.
So if you're the woman who does pretty well during the day but feels like everything changes once evening hits, join the Evening Eating Reset waitlist.
One month.
One problem.
Let's figure out what's actually going on.
And before you go, remember this:
Don't just ask, “Will this help me lose weight?”
Ask:
“Is this helping me build the way I want to live after the weight is gone?”
Because that result matters too.
