When do people rest and cheat?
Understanding cheat days and rest days for diet and exercise routines
Introduction
Consistency is crucial for success in any exercise or diet program, but absolute adherence day in and day out is neither feasible nor advisable. Incorporating periodic breaks, whether “rest days” from exercise or “cheat days” from dieting, can promote better long-term sustainability and results.
This concept of strategic recovery is gaining more mainstream attention with the rise of wearable fitness trackers like WHOOP and Oura that advise users when to dial back training based on strain data. Similarly, many modern diet plans emphasize flexibility over rigid restrictions.
Most exercise and diet plans operate on a weekly schedule, which means that there are likely patterns in when people take their rest and cheat days. However, not every day is the same when it comes to taking a break. The ideal timing of these breaks may be influenced by psychological factors. One example is the “fresh start effect” — our tendency to tackle goals with increased motivation at the beginning of new temporal milestones like weeks, months, or years.
A recent large study found regular gym-goers were more likely to stick to their workout routines when exercising on Mondays compared to other days of the week. This raises the question: Do people strategically schedule rest and cheat days later in the week to capitalize on the motivating power of a “fresh start”?
To explore people’s preferences and habits around recovery breaks, I ran a short survey asking about the specifics of rest days and cheat days. Read on below for the findings. I discuss the results of the rest days first, and then the cheat days.
Rest Days
160 out of the 225 respondents reported having an exercise routine.
- The number of days rested
Having two rest days was the most common, with 41% of the respondents reporting so, while 30% reported having just one. Resting was common in general, with only 4% of the respondents, or 7 out of the 160 reporting not resting at all.
2. Most common rest days
For those who rested just one day a week, Sunday was the most common rest day, followed by Saturday and Friday.
This trend continued in those who rested 2 days a week, with the weekend being the most common time to rest.
The breakdown for 3 days a week was a little mixed. The most common strategy was to alternate rest and break days, though taking 3 consecutive days off was also reported by a notable portion of respondents.
Finally, the following figure combines the overall data, revealing the overall distribution of rest days. Again this shows that the weekends (including Friday) were the most likely days to be resting.
3. Discussion
These results indicate that most respondents build a healthy amount of rest into their exercise routines, with only 4% reporting no rest days at all. Among those who do take scheduled breaks, the most common rest days fell on weekends. This tendency is unsurprising given the social and contextual factors that can disrupt workout habits over Saturday and Sunday.
Maintaining a consistent exercise routine relies heavily on environmental cues and contexts remaining stable. For most people, weekday schedules and settings provide more regularity compared to typical weekend changes of routine. As such, it makes sense that weekend days would require the most prioritized recovery time.
Notably, Monday emerged as the least common day for rest days. This may be intentional or is perhaps due to the logistics of the workout program or the gym hours. Regardless, the respondents in this sample do appear to be taking advantage of the potential of a fresh start effect in their exercise routines.
Cheat Days
112 out of 225 of the survey respondents indicated they were dieting or on some type of diet plan
- Number of cheat days
It was most common to have just one cheat day, with 48% of the respondents reporting this option, whereas 32% reported having two. In contrast to the rest day findings, a substantial portion, around 14% reported having no cheat days at all.
2. Most common cheat days
For those who had just one cheat day a week, the most common days were tied between Saturday and Sunday, with Friday being the third most common response.
For those who had 2 cheat days, the weekend was the most common choice. With the second most common being Friday and Saturday.
Finally, when looking at the data overall, the most likely days to be cheat days were Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with none of the weekdays being picked a significant amount of times.
3. Discussion
The results above showed that having just one cheat day was the most common. This may be because dieting, unlike exercise, doesn’t physically fatigue the body to require multiple days of breaks in a weekly period. However, the more likely explanation is probably psychological. Dieting is a behavior where adherence is seen as critical and any misstep is seen as a defect in willpower. Even the name ‘cheat day’ signifies the guilt of breaking away and giving in to your desires. The relatively sizeable proportion reporting zero cheat days suggests the goal for many is strict adherence with minimal built-in flexibility.
When people did take breaks, the most common days were around the weekend. This is again not surprising for the same reasons as when people rest from exercising. Most social gatherings happen over the weekend, and dieting, being naturally restricting, can be difficult to maintain during social gatherings.
Again, weekdays were the least common rest days, excluding Friday. Monday was not the lowest chosen day in this instance, but the differences in the margins were non-significant. So, perhaps the same fresh start phenomenon is at play here.
Implications
We set out to explore how often and when people take breaks from diet and exercise, and whether the fresh start effect influences this. We found that the most common rest and cheat days were over the weekend and that weekdays, especially at the start of the week (Monday/Tuesday) were far less common for taking a break than later in the week (Wednesday onwards).
What are the implications of this for supporting behavior change? The findings here are fairly common sense and should not come as a surprise to anyone in the exercise and diet world. What is surprising, however, is that this knowledge is not widely used to inform the design of exercise and diet apps.
Most apps don’t inquire about when someone is taking a rest or a cheat day. For example, a search of ‘rest days’ for Apple Fitness will only lead you to frustration-filled posts from users, or in other cases, hacks on how to trick the app to allow rest.
However, the fitness world is not entirely behind. Many apps, especially those focused on strength training, allow users to set their workout days in advance. Additionally, companies like WHOOP, OURA, and Garmin have explicitly incorporated rest and recovery into their designs. This integration reflects the fitness community’s understanding of adaptation and periodization, which emphasize the importance of rest.
The story is quite different when it comes to dieting. The guilt-inducing label of a ‘cheat’ day has likely prevented this concept from being integrated into diet apps.
While cheat days are the elephant in the room for most dieting apps, scientific research points to the benefits of including a planned day of indulgence. For example, planned overeating during dieting has been shown to increase leptin levels, which can help curb hunger throughout the week. In another study, it was found that those who took intermittent breaks had greater weight loss during dieting, and managed to keep more of it off after the diet.
The benefits of cheat days are not just physiological. Including a planned day of indulgence was also shown to help with self-regulation, motivation, and mood overall.
What could this look like in production?
At its simplest, users would have the ability to set different goals on different days of the week, allowing them to indulge on a planned day. For example, the calorie tracking app, MyFitnessPal allows you to set custom macro goals, a feature that could be used to build in treat day(s).
Ideally, the app itself provides encouragement and guidance on including a break from dieting, and this sentiment is ingrained into the overall behavioral design. For example, the messaging on a treat day could be different, see the example below.
This explicit acknowledgment is necessary because when diet apps treat every day as the same, users are likely to refrain from logging their meals on the cheat day due to guilt and shame. This is problematic for the individual, but also creates a blind spot for the product team, as they lose crucial information about eating behavior.
Final Thoughts
Breaks from exercise and diet are not only beneficial for physiological reasons but also provide psychological benefits. This survey found that such breaks are common. In contrast, many diet and exercise apps do not commonly incorporate breaks into their design. Incorporating this concept into an app’s design could bring success to both the individual and the product.
Limitations
This was a short survey with a small sample size. However, the trends observed are clear. In the future, additional questions about the type of diet or exercise program an individual is using could help better understand some of the findings.
Lastly, this is self-report data, which may contrast with usage data on diet and exercise apps. If you have such data, send me a message at hassan@nuancebehavior.com!
Additional Notes
- The online testing platform, Prolific was used to recruit the participants. Each participant was paid for their participation.
- As a control, all participants were asked to state when their week ‘starts’. Around 93% reported Monday. Those who reported different start days did not differ in their responses.
- Of those who had both diet and exercise routines, 67% had overlap in their rest and cheat days. This pairing is often recommended by health experts!
