Cheat days have a bad connotation.

I hear the terms “cheat day,” “cheat meal,” and “reward meal” get thrown around for years. I used to use these terms myself. If I ate clean all week, I could “reward” myself or “cheat” on my diet on the weekend. Like if I was a prisoner. But in actuality, I did become a prisoner of my diet. I created a bad relationship with food. I would punish myself when having some of my favorite snacks, whether I do extra time on the cardio machine, an hour more in the gym, or cut out carbs completely. It also created an eating disorder that took me a long time to recover from.

After feeling like shit for a long time, I had enough and started to train smarter and create better eating habits. I didn’t care about how I looked. All I wanted to do was feel better. Once I started to shift my focus on my patterns, I was building muscle, losing weight, and feeling terrific, most importantly.

If you fall off, get up and get back on track. Instead of punishing yourself, use the extra calories as fuel in the gym, create new PRs or forget about it and continue to move forward. We get to live this life once and let’s make the best of it.