5 Reasons Why I Don’t Believe in “Cheat Meals” + 5 Things to Do Instead
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When we are striving to build the body we want, many of us love to label foods as good or bad, and we drastically restrict ourselves to only eating those "bad" foods once a week as a part of our "cheat meal".
I don't believe there is anything coherently bad about the foods you are eating during your cheat meal, what I think is wrong is the fact that you need to label it as a cheat meal and that you only allow yourself to eat the food you actually want to eat once a week.
This mentality is toxic when it comes to developing a healthy relationship with food and your body.
So in this episode of Embrace Your Real, I share five reasons why I don't believe in a cheat meal in hopes of opening your eyes to how your cheat meal is impacting you. Plus, I share five things you can do instead.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hello and welcome back to the Embrace Your Real podcast. I am so grateful that you are showing up, choosing to prioritize yourself. You are here doing the dang thing wherever you are tuning in, all over the world, we have over a hundred countries strong. Whether you're walking, you're jogging, you're cooking, you're cleaning, you are working out, you're doing the dang thing. You're choosing to show up and prioritize yourself to become the best possible version of yourself so that you can serve others in your best self.
Today, I want to talk to you about cheat meals. Let me tell you, I used to be all about a good cheat meal. But honestly, cheat meals can be extremely toxic for so many women. That's why today I want to share five reasons why I don't believe in them, plus five things that you can do instead.
But before I do, I need to share the super sweet review of the day. Comes from mountaingirl00, she says, "If you're looking to create a sustainable, healthy lifestyle, she is an amazing mentor through this podcast. I have been listening to Julie for a while now, and she's constantly upfront with her past struggles and you can hear the work she has done to move through unhealthy mindsets in regards to diet and body image. She gives it to us straight, and her heart for women to be free from not living as their authentic selves is so apparent. Thank you, Julie."
Thank you so much for the review. I seriously love reviews. The other day, I was literally up at almost 11:00 PM at night just reading the reviews and just had tears in my eyes because I am so grateful for this community. To think that I almost stopped myself from doing this because I was scared of what other people would think is just such an apparent reason that, girl, if you have a vision, if you have a dream, please do it. Follow your heart. Do it anyways. Do it with fear, do it with doubt, do it with insecurity because when you choose to show up and when you choose to take action, you actually cure your fear and you gain confidence. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you haven't already rated and reviewed the podcast, it really does mean the world. I read every single one of them and I'm so grateful for you taking the time to do so.
If you already left a review, you can absolutely leave another review based on a specific episode, that way I can hear your feedback on how you're loving each episode. So feel free to do that. Thank you again. You guys are amazing.
Okay, so back to sharing the five reasons why I don't believe in cheat meals. Reason number one, it creates an all or nothing mentality. I've talked about this all or nothing mentality before on the podcast. Many times I specifically go into detail with it in episode 36, 10 ways to stay on track on the weekends, but I want to dive into it again today because I know that this mentality is one that so many of us struggle with because cheat meals not only strengthen this mentality, and I don't believe that it's a healthy mindset to live in. Most often when people have this cheat meal, it results in a cheat day and then it results in a cheat weekend. I know how easy it is to eat one "bad meal" and think, "Well, it was already bad so I must just keep eating bad foods for the rest of the day" or for the rest of the weekend. Or you think, "I'll just keep eating bad and then I'll be "super good" for the next five days to make up for it." This mentality is so toxic.
When you say things like I'm just going to eat super good, what you actually mean is you're going to ridiculously deprive yourself of the food and nutrients and start to over-exercise, and then it's going to be this vicious cycle. What happens when you do that? The weekend comes around again and you've been depriving yourself for another five days, you have tried to be super good, so then you designate a cheat meal that turns into a cheat day and then a cheat weekend. And again and again, and you deprive yourself for another five days and the cycle continues. It is a horrible, horrible trap to be caught in. I know firsthand what it's like. It is deep, and it is dark, and it is so frustrating, and it is so life-sucking, and it can literally consume so many aspects of your life, but it begins with breaking this all or nothing mentality. When we have that all or nothing mentality, it leads us to, typically, over-indulge, which is my second point.
Reason number two, cheat meals trigger you to over-indulge. It's like you try to cram all of your cravings into one meal or you need to eat so much of the food you're craving to make sure you satisfy the craving for the entire week until you're allowed to eat it again. So let's say you're craving ice cream on a Monday or Tuesday, and you crave French fries on Wednesday, and you crave pizza on Thursday, you keep having all of these cravings. So when your "cheat meal" comes around, you try to cram all of those foods into one single meal. You know what I'm talking about because I remember this so clearly, and I know so many women, just from being on the inside of my community, speaking with them, I know that this is a struggle.
Let's say you crave tortilla chips on Monday, and the craving just continued to build every single day until your cheat meal rolled around on Saturday to go out for Mexican and you eat five baskets of chips all to yourself. I don't say this as a hypothetical. I say this because I have experienced this. I have been in your shoes. If you're listening to this and you're like, "You are speaking to my soul", trust me, I'm speaking to your soul because I'm also speaking from experience. There are so many of us that are struggling with this that we might not even know about because we're too scared to open up about the struggle to even know that, "Oh my gosh, I'm not alone in this." In both scenarios, after your cheat meal, you feel so gross, you feel so uncomfortable and you're not even enjoying it, so what is the point?
What if you crave pizza on a Monday and you just had one piece, or you craved ice cream on a Tuesday and you just ate one scoop, or you craved chips on a Wednesday and you had a couple of handfuls? I know that that would make you feel guilty for "eating bad foods" three days in a row. Well, I want you to look at it this way, when you eat the food you are craving in the moment, it takes less of it to satisfy your craving than it does if you wait until your cheat meal, because you know what I'm talking about. It's just like when you're a little kid and your mom says, "Don't touch the hot stove. Don't touch that stove." What do you want to do? The first thing and the only thing that consumes your brain is to touch the hot stove. It's the same concept when it comes to restricting yourself or limiting yourself from not wanting or allowing yourself to have the foods that you want.
If you ate these foods in the moment, it would have resulted in one piece of pizza, or one scoop of ice cream, or a few handfuls of chips. Whereas if you waited, it most likely would have resulted in an entire pizza, an entire pint of ice cream, and five bowls of chips, which leads me to my third point, the calories you eat in your cheat meal still count. Let me repeat that again, the calories that you eat in your cheat meals still count.
There's absolutely nothing magical about the meal that makes these calories or carbs or fats, all of these things, just magically disappear. So waiting until Saturday for your cheat meal to eat an entire pizza, and an entire pint of ice cream, or five bowls of chips, doesn't really matter instead of eating it when you are craving it. Because if you were to sit and you were to allow yourself a cheat meal, which turns into a cheat day, which turns into a cheat weekend, that could easily be 3,500 calories right there. 3,500 calories, you know what that equals, one pound. So if you're having a huge cheat meal every single weekend or a huge cheat day, that could easily trigger yourself to gain one pound a week and keep you from reaching your goals no matter what you're doing the other days of the week. You're working against yourself. You're walking up an escalator that is going down. You're making it so much more difficult for yourself.
I'm not saying that you can't have these delicious foods. What I am saying is that you have to be super mindful. This is where a lot of women struggle because they get so frustrated because they don't understand the science behind why they're not reaching their goals. It's because they're not being mindful about what they're eating or they're just trying to "cancel things out", and it doesn't work like that. Instead of just learning to eat foods in moderation and making the decision and saying, "I'm going to have this. I want to eat this", making a decision, you're letting all of these things just happen to you and then you feel so out of control, which leads me to my next point, reason number four, judgment.
Having a designated meal where you cheat means you're labeling foods as good and bad, and if you've been following me for awhile you know that I don't believe in good foods and I don't believe in bad foods. I believe there are some foods that make you feel better, more energized, more full than others, but I don't believe that any food is inherently bad because all food should be eaten in moderation. The problem with placing judgment on food is that it leads to restriction. And if you've ever noticed the correlation between the foods you restrict and the foods you crave, think about that one. I'm guessing the foods that you crave the most are the foods that you typically label bad, and those cravings control you.
So what if we stopped judging food as good or bad? We wouldn't feel restricted and we wouldn't feel the need to overindulge. And number two, our food cravings would no longer control us. The more you allow yourself to eat the pizza or eat the ice cream or whatever it is, the less and less you will feel the need to satisfy whatever sort of craving you have, or you won't crave it nearly as much, or you won't even crave it at all because you are allowing yourself to eat that food in moderation.
Reason number five, it causes you to have an unhealthy relationship with food. Now, ultimately, everything that I just discussed leads us to having an unhealthy relationship with food, the all or nothing mentality, unhealthy overindulging mentality, unhealthy food judgment, eating until you feel sick. That's not healthy. As long as we have an unhealthy relationship with food, we will have an unhealthy relationship with our bodies, we'll have an unhealthy relationship with ourself, and we'll constantly beat ourself up. So you're like, "Great, you just told me five things that I'm doing or I've struggled with, or these are things that yes, I can totally relate, so what do we do instead?" Well, I want to share five things with you that can help you if you are feeling like you need to have that cheat meal or you're feeling like, "Yes, Julie, I'm putting my hand up. I feel this struggle and this constant cycle."
Number one, you need to allow all foods to fit into your daily intake. Now, I know that this sounds way easier than it is, and so for me, one thing that I've done and when I first started my very first reverse diet, which I talk about in particular in previous episodes, but when I was starting to restore my relationship with food and starting to introduce foods that, for years and years of my life, I didn't allow myself to have, that would be cereal, Pop Tarts, ice cream, I mean... There was so many foods I didn't even realize that I had literally shunned from my mind. They came up and I instantly got anxiety and instantly my neck and my throat started choking up, and I was like, "Oh man, this is something that I need to face."
So one thing that I did that really helped me was introduce a food, and I pick one food, and I would try to eat that food in moderation. I would fit it into my daily intake every day or every few days, at least a couple times that week, and I would do that for as many weeks as I needed until I finally felt like, "Wow, I can have this food in moderation and not feel the need to have the entire box." Perfect example of this Cap'n Crunch peanut butter cereal. I mean, this cereal, you guys, it had so much control over me. It was because, for years and years in my life, I had it growing up, then I struggled with eating and body image disorder. When I was younger, people would call me fat, people called me heifer, I've talked about this before on the podcast, but I had people mooing at me in the hallways of the school. I had so much built up resentment and so much fear around foods like that, that I associated with Cap'n Crunch, AKA, I have no control, I'll eat the entire box, and then I immediately was like, "I can't have this." So for me, what I decided to do was to get the travel cup.
So there's so many different ways to introduce foods into your daily intake, but for me, I decided, "Okay, if I want to conquer this food, I am going to start with travel cups. I'm going to start with cereal that can come in a one-serving thing so that I don't struggle with just eating the entire thing, but I still want to be intentional about conquering this fear food." So I started with that and then over time, I built confidence and I realized, "Oh my gosh, I can have one serving and feel satisfied. I can have one serving and feel like, okay, this is good. I don't fear it anymore." And then slowly over time, I was able to get a box and then I portioned it out. So what I did was I took all of... Literally, if it was 12 portions, I would portion it out into baggies, and then I would put the baggies up and I would allow myself to see one baggy in the pantry. I would take it and I would fit it into my daily allotment of macros. I did this until I slowly but surely gained confidence around this food, and then I did that with all the other foods, so same with Pop tarts.
There's so many ways that you can do this, but I just feel like it's so important to tackle these things head on and recognize that we have to stop letting certain foods have a hold of us. Instead of shying away from it entirely and saying, "I can't have that in my house" say, "Okay, I'm going to tackle this and I'm going to get a single serving." Yes, it might cost a little bit more money to get the single-serving packet of peanut butter if you struggle with an entire jar in your house, but what's more important, that you take the time and you spend one or two bucks more to really conquer that fear food to conquer that mentality or for the rest of your life where you're just never going to have peanut butter in your house? Or the moment that you have kids, or the moment that you go on a vacation and you're with family, and they go grocery shopping and they bring it in the house and then you immediately binge on it and then you go years and years without having it again?
I just think it's so important that you learn to tackle the foods head on and you allow yourself to eat all foods in moderation and learn to slowly fit them into your daily intake. This is not going to be an overnight thing. This is not going to take a week. It's not going to take a month. I would say it's going to take at least a year, if not longer. But think about this, working for one year of your life to really be intentional to conquer those fear foods, to show yourself that you can have one serving and allow yourself that food in moderation, or for the rest of your life are you just going to say, "I'm not going to have that food"?
Number two, eat food whenever you want to eat it. This is something too that I struggled with. For years of my life, I was like, "I can't have carbs after six. I can't have carBS after dark" until I learned I can fit whatever food I want and if I reach my macros, my protein goal, my carb goal, my fat goal within a 24-hour period, that's all that matters. Don't complicate it anymore. Stop telling yourself you can't have a big meal at night if you haven't eaten.
We are currently redoing the bedroom in our house, and when we do renovations, what I've noticed, is that my meals get later and later because we're doing projects, we're running around. I just remember the other night I was eating dinner, and I think it was at 9:30 PM, and I giggled to myself because I was like If this would have happened six or seven or eight years ago, I would have just been like, "Oh, I haven't eaten dinner. I guess I'll just wait until the morning." And then I'd wake up so hungry and I would go crazy. That next day, I would overeat, I would binge. I would try and fit all these foods into my mouth because I did not allow myself to eat before I went to bed because I was scared. But it's so funny because now I have recognized just eat your macros. Eat what your body needs within a 24-hour period and stop over-complicating it.
Number three, stop labeling foods as good or bad. Just going back to number one that I talked about, just really tackling those foods head on. It's so important that you stop labeling these foods as good or bad.
You guys know my story if you've been tuning in for a while, you know that I won my WBFF bikini pro card, which I no longer compete, but I won that show literally eating Reddi-wip every single day all the way up until the stage, and I got stage-lean. I'm not saying that you should do that if you don't want to, but it was one thing that I proved to myself. I followed my macros to a T on my bikini prep, I did all of my cardio, which was three hit sessions a week, I was weight training five to six days a week. It was not sustainable by any means, but I showed myself that if you actually stick to the plan, you can, literally, have Reddi-wip every single day and still reach your goals. It just showed me, "Okay, there is no foods good or bad." Of course, there's more nutrient-dense foods and less nutrient-dense foods, foods that are going to make you feel better and more energized and all of those things, foods that are not going to make you feel as full, they're going to lead you to feel more hungry throughout the day just because they're less nutrient-dense, but there's no food as good or bad.
Number four, eat it and move on with your life. It's so, so important that you allow yourself the opportunity to eat the food. If you want it, eat the food. Make the decision in the moment.
Here's the thing, I think that it's so important that when you are faced with... Let's just say you're going out to dinner and you went over your macros. Maybe you had a meal planned that you initially planned into your macro tracker and then you went out and then someone got an appetizer and you had a few bites of that, or you decided to get a glass of wine or whatever it is. I always go by the motto of what is done is done. The only thing that you can do is keep moving forward. Instead of dwelling on the past, instead of trying to erase mistakes or things that you did, allow yourself to make that decision in the moment and say, "Even though it might not align with my goal right now, I am still making the conscious decision to have this glass of wine and I'm going to enjoy it, and then tomorrow I'm going to keep going. I'm not going to try and erase it. I'm not going to try and do better." You just allow yourself to make decisions because when you allow yourself to make the decision, you own that decision.
I think sometimes it's really important that we just allow ourselves to own a decision. It might not align with our end goal of what we have, maybe you're on a fat-loss goal and it might not align with the macros that are set for your body based on where you're at and what your goal is, but if you allow yourself to make the decision, be okay with that and then know HAT you can just keep moving forward, then you feel a lot more at peace and more in control of your journey instead of just being like, "I don't know what happened. It just happened to me."
So my advice to you is, let's say, for example, you're going out to eat and you have preplanned something, and in the moment maybe your husband or someone was like, "Hey, do you want to get a glass of wine? Do we want to do a cheers?" Or whatever it is, "Do you want to get an appetizer?" Ask yourself. Sometimes that answer is going to be like, "No, I'm good. I can pass on that." And sometimes you ask yourself, "Is this memory worth going over my macros?" I've said this before, but there are so many times on vacation, things like that, I choose memories over macros. That is a conscious decision that I do and I am okay with it. And guess what? I continue to move forward in my progress and in my goals because I allowed myself to own that decision.
Number five, you guys know I'm a huge advocate of counting your macros, consistency trumps perfection every time. So if you know how much your body needs to be fueled properly, and you're allowing yourself fun foods into your daily allotment of macros, it's so much less likely that you're going to feel this need and feel this urge on the weekends to go buck wild because you've only been allowing yourself tilapia, and almonds, and whatever it is that you're eating clean throughout the week. Allow yourself, within your macros, fun foods every day. It could just be a fun way that you dress up a rice cake. There's so many delicious ways to dress up a rice cake, so you could do a dark chocolate rice cake with a little bit Reddi-wip and some chocolate chips on top or some strawberries. I mean, there's so many things that you can fit into your daily allotment of macros that allow you to enjoy what you're eating, but it's so important, consistency over perfection. When you have this conscious and make this conscious decision to count your macros and fuel your body enough for what it needs, that's it. Then you have it and you keep moving forward.
Now, all five of those things go hand in hand. If you count your macros, you're able to eat any food that you want without shame, without guilt, without regret, because you ate what your body needed for your body.
So for me, I have to have some form of treat every single night. Every single night, it's typically a Yasso bar. You guys are following me on Instagram, you guys know I love my frozen Greek yogurt. It is so delicious, they have these chocolate dipped ones, it's better than ice cream, honestly, you guys. I can't even believe I'm saying that, but it's so, so good. I adjust my macros to account for the treats that I'm going to have, or the pizza that I have. You guys know I love my Domino's Pizza. I literally created a pizza from Domino's that's called Pizza with [Ji 00:00:22:56], and it's a macro friendly option and it's an entire pizza. It's 110 grams of carbs. I allot that into my daily allotment when we have it because it's so delicious. I love it.
Ever since doing this, ever since choosing to fit my favorite foods in moderation in my daily intake, I don't feel the need to overindulge. I don't have food cravings that control my life. Of course, I am human and of course we go to a Mexican restaurant. Do you think I'm really going to measure every single chip that goes into my mouth? No, because, again, I am putting the general picture of consistency over perfection in mind, but I also don't have the urges that I used to have because throughout the week, I'm not restricting myself. Longterm habits create longterm results.
Lastly, if you eat a meal that you previously would have labeled bad or cheat meal, if you're counting macros regularly and you have an untracked meal and you go way over your macros, I need you to stop labeling it as a slip up or as a cheat meal, or as I got off track. Whatever the label is that you put on it, you don't need to label it. You don't need to overthink it. You don't need to do anything about it. You need to acknowledge what happened and then keep moving forward. Don't deprive yourself the next day or the next few days. Move on because that is what we are all about. Keep moving forward. Your body always is deserving of food, no matter what you ate or didn't eat yesterday or today or whatever.
I hope that this episode encouraged you or sparked something in you to let go of your cheat meal mentality and know that you can eat whatever foods you want in moderation. It's so important that you take the time to develop that relationship with food.
If you guys want to learn more, I do have a free macro counting ebook. If you haven't already downloaded it, it's 39 plus pages. I really just go in depth about my personal macro counting journey and also, how you can start counting macros, so how you can figure out how much protein or carbs or fat you need. So feel free to click that in the show notes.
Also, if you guys didn't know, I am launching my four-week Honor Your Body challenge. It starts on September 14th. I am so excited about this. I am going to go ahead and link that in the show notes as well. This is our third time doing it. Literally in the past, we have had hundreds of women, every single time, come together in a community and honor our body with movement, mindset, and macros in community. There's prizes, it's incredible. I am so, so, so excited about it. So be sure to click the link in the show notes so that you can learn more about this challenge, you can sign up. Like I said, it starts on September 14. Grab a girlfriend, grab five girlfriends, it is better to do it in community. It is so much fun. I truly believe that when we are intentional with choosing to honor our body through movement, mindset, and macros for four weeks, it is a ripple effect and you will be amazed at where you will be in six months, or eight months, or a year.
I've had so many women since doing the first Honor Your Body challenge last September of 2019, they have stuck with it and they have literally seen transformation in their life that they've never seen before, mentally, physically, emotionally, relationally. It is incredible what four weeks can do to kickstart you into this lifelong journey of choosing to honor your body, so be sure to check that out. Grab some girlfriend, join the challenge. It's going to be amazing.
Thank you so much for tuning in. If you haven't already, follow us on Embrace Your Real Instagram. Be sure to use that. I know some of you were like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't even know that there was an Instagram." Yes, Embrace Your Real. It's all of the quotes and golden nuggets that you will find each day from the podcast, so be sure to follow that. If you're not already following me, Juliealedbetter, on Instagram, be sure to do so. I would love to have you share this episode with a girlfriend or a few people in your life that you feel like could benefit from this. So feel free to screenshot this post it up on your story, tag me, tag some girlfriends that you would love to listen. I love seeing your aha moments. I love seeing where you're tuning in from. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will talk to you guys in the next episode.