Saturdays Are Made for Cheating

Photo by jouste.  I thought this was a very clever Five of Swords tarot reference.

On this new eating style of mine, the rule is, I get to cheat once a week.  I suppose that’s a bit bizarre but there are two reasons for it:

1. I would rebel too much against a diet that said NO MORE OF THIS  food ever again.  Psychologically, that would be difficult for me.  Also, when I crave something during the week, I know that I can wait and have it on my Cheat Day, which I usually schedule for a day I have a date or a special occasion when I’d like to indulge in something a little different.  That makes it easier than thinking it’s gone forever.
2. My metabolism doesn’t plateau if I have one day that’s different from the rest.  My body doesn’t “re-baseline to accommodate the new style of eating and I’m getting full benefits 6 days a week.

So how’s it going thus far?  Interesting.  I’ve now had 3 cheat days.

– Cheat day #1 was a Saturday at my mom’s, which meant a couple of slices of cake and sweet potato fries.           That was about 3 days into this eating style, so I didn’t really notice any differences.  Technically, the sweet potatoes were okay because I’d had quite a workout before dinner.

– Cheat day #2 was the Saturday my date was in a car accident, so the date and dinner plans were cancelled.  I went off my diet that night but not in a particularly fun or enjoyable way.  It was a big disappointment. I deliberately sought out cheese biscuits to make up for a horrid day because, damn it, it was my Cheat Day and I wanted a treat!

– Cheat day #3 was the following Saturday.  I decided I’d definitely indulge!  I was out of town at lunch time so I (and my companion for the afternoon) stopped at at buffet-style restaurant.   Most of my lunch was similar to an okay-for-the-diet meal–a small portion of roast beef, carrots, roll, mashed potatoes, and corn–provided I had a workout planned within a 1.5 hour window of before or after to handle the starches.  Though I worked all day on physical projects, I didn’t have a workout planned for the day.  That said, I still ate only a few forkfuls of the potatoes and half a roll.

When it came to dessert, this place had at least 20 choices:  chocolate cake, ice cream, cookies of all sorts, key lime pie, creme de menthe pie, all types of cobbler, brownies, etc, etc, etc.  But…none of it looked particularly good.  Amazing, that.  It’s always looked good before!  I finally resorted to three small chocolate chip cookies and a few tablespoons of soft serve ice cream.  It was…okay.

For dinner, we went to a local restaurant and I discovered that I could have had a completely diet worthy meal there.  Since it was my Cheat Day, I had an old favorite but ate only half of it. No dessert. I actually left thinking that my new diet food would have made me happier with the taste.

The one thing that was a treat?  On the way home, we drove through Jim and Nick’s for some cheese biscuits.  They weren’t quite as good as they were the week before.

Even though I can cheat once a week, I taking less advantage of it.