A Cheat Day

For some of you, this may be the very beginning of a new health and nutrition program For others, you may have been at this for months, or even years. And yet, we all trip up sometimes. Yes, we feel guilty about this. Sometimes we trip up once and decide the day is already ruined so might as well just keep going, right? Have you ever thought that? Well, I have an idea for you that, as a beginner in changing your health and nutrition habits, it will help you stay on task. At first you may think it odd, but I've seen research that shows it works and helps you stick to your goals.

What is this day? Well, obviously, its the title of this blog. A cheat day. What is a cheat day, you ask? A cheat day is where you allow yourself that one thing you've been craving all week. It could be a chocolate bar, a chocolate cake, a cheesecake, a piece of pie, a meal at McDonald's, whatever it is, you can pick one day out of the week where you can eat that one thing you've been wanting to have all week long. But, there is a catch. You can't have a cheat day every day of the week - it completely defeats the purpose of having a designated cheat day! So, pick a day - I prefer to use a day on the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday - and on this day tell yourself you can have that one thing you keep thinking about all week that you know you shouldn't eat. For me, it will definitely be a bar of dark chocolate or perhaps a piece of lemon meringue pie, or maybe one or two chocolate chip cookies, or some almond dream vanilla almond bites. Obviously, I have a lot of sweet things I crave - in fact, I've said often that I have an insatiable sweet tooth. However, I've found that on days not my cheat day, I can have a cupful of green grapes and that sweet craving starts to go away because fruit has all of that natural sugar in it! If you don't crave anything unhealthy - well, I may not believe you if you tell me you don't crave anything unhealthy with how much those foods have saturated our nation and most of the world actually.

So, moral of the story, create your designated cheat day and only cheat on that day. For me, it will be either Saturday or Sunday, but definitely not both! That being said, my nutrition accountability for today is as follows:

Breakfast and Lunch: Chocolate Vegan Shakeology with unsweetened almond milk
Snacks: Banana, piece of sara lee wheat bread, and half a bar of 70% pure dark chocolate
Dinner: Olive Garden (I'm thinking of doing just soup and salad?) - and we're only going because we have a gift card!

I also did get my workout in today - Day 6 of RevAbs, Power Intervals, another 400 calories scorched off of me! Feels great! Tomorrow is considered a rest day so I'm thinking of doing P90X X Stretch or a 10 Minute Trainer DVD, we'll see what I feel up to in the morning!

Feel free to leave comments, questions or suggestions, I would love to hear from you guys!!