How to Prevent Cheating on Your Diet

I’ve heard it so many times: “I stick to my diet perfectly during the week, but when the weekend comes…”

It’s natural to want to relax over the weekend and eat out with your family, friends, or partner. Eating out is not an automatic obstacle to sticking to your diet. However, it doesn’t take much to offset the weekly caloric deficit you created with some additional calories on the weekend, especially since many restaurants add oil to their food to make it tastier.

How much damage does it really do?

Think about it this way: let’s say we created a 500-calorie deficit per day, which would equate to one pound of fat lost per week (3,500 calories = 1lb of fat). Your maintenance calories are 2,500, so you are dieting at 2,000 calories. You usually eat 3 meals per day with about 800 calories allocated to dinner.

You stuck to that deficit Monday through Friday, which means you are in a current deficit of -2,500 calories in total for the week.

On Saturday, you go out to eat a burger and fries at a restaurant, and the total number of calories for that meal is 1,100. On Sunday, you order in some pizza to celebrate the football game on TV, and you eat 4 slices of pizza, which totals 1,200 calories.

1,200 + 1,100 = 2,300 calories for the dinners over the weekend

Your hypothetical goal was 1,600 calories for the weekend’s dinners (2 meals at 800 calories each). This puts you 700 calories above your diet goal, but not only that — you are actually in a caloric surplus by the end of the week!

If you didn’t follow the math, the bottom line is this: small caloric surpluses add up, and those surpluses can throw off your weekly caloric deficit. When it comes to dieting, it is the weekly caloric intake that matters. If you stick to your diet perfectly for 5 days and go “off” your diet for the weekend, your diet is not set up for success.

How to avoid the “cheating” problem

Before jumping into techniques to eat cleaner when ordering in or eating out, it’s important to address why we actually want to cheat in the first place.

Cheating on a diet is caused by over-restriction.

If you’re cutting out carbs, only eating salads, and saying “no” to the foods that you enjoy on a daily basis, the more likely you are to cheat. Diets such as these are not sustainable! Are you really willing to eat salads and chicken breast for the rest of your life?

Your diet should not be radically different from the way that you eat off of a diet — it should still include many of the same foods, just in moderated portions, more fruits and vegetables, and with less calorie-dense food swaps. For example, choosing fat free yogurt over regular yogurt, diet soda as opposed to regular soda, and lower-calorie wraps instead of higher-calorie wraps.

By eating a diet that you genuinely enjoy, you will have fewer reasons to cheat. For example, I haven’t eaten “real” pizza in about two years. But I don’t miss it at all! I make my own pizzas with low-calorie pitas, sauce, cheese, and ground turkey.

Finding ways to replicate the dishes that I love as lower-calorie alternatives has been the main reason I’ve seen so much success.

Tips to eat healthier when ordering food

Diners and many restaurants are usually willing to make accommodations for your preferences. Here are just a few tips that I’ve used when eating out with my family:

• The restaurant may have calories listed online, especially if they are a part of a national brand. Just doing a quick Google search of “McDonald’s nutritional information” will yield you the information to make an informed decision.
• If you track your calories and do not see nutritional information for the restaurant, look up similar foods on My Fitness Pal and get a general estimate of the food you’re going to order. It also helps to track when not eating out, to get a good ballpark estimate of portion sizes and calories.
• Instead of fries, get a baked potato.
• If your order comes with 1–2 sides, always get a side of vegetables. They will help to fill you up, and they are not calorically dense.
• If you’re ordering something that will come with butter (most things inevitably will when eating out), ask for no butter. For example, mashed potatoes will usually have butter within them unless you specify otherwise.
• Ask for light or no oil if possible.
• Ask for any seasonings and dressings on the side.
• Always get steamed and grilled food, rather than sauteed and marinated.
• Opt for leaner cuts of meat. Sirloin steaks are often a safe bet, since they are less fatty. I also recommend ordering chicken and turkey as opposed to beef and pork, since these meats have less calories.
• Order a side salad first, without dressing or nuts. It will help to fill you up a bit before eating.
• Eat slower and more mindfully. This will help increase satiety — it actually takes about 10 minutes for satiety signals to reach the brain!
• Remember that you are not obligated to eat everything, and that you can always take home the portion you don’t eat.

Accounting for weekly calories

If you genuinely want to eat higher-calorie meals, that’s okay too! One meal (as long as it’s not extreme) once in a while is okay.

However, if you’re more serious about dieting, a strategy that I recommend is to account for weekly calories. Again, let’s say that your deficit is 500 per day with a weekly total of -3,500 calories. If you know you’ll be eating about 1,200 calories worth of pizza on Sunday, you can choose another day(s) in the week to make up for that surplus. If you typically eat 2,000 calories on your diet, you can choose to offset the weekly surplus by deducting calories on Monday and Wednesday to 1,800 (or whatever total would allow you to offset the surplus).

Again, remember that weekly totals are more important in the long run than daily totals!

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