5 Reasons A Diet Cheat Day Is Dangerous for Weight Loss and Health

PJ
Thank you for your comment.
The article is about the Diet Cheat Day, NOT the Slow Carb Diet. Diet cheat days are used in numerous diets, and I simply mentioned Tim Ferriss approach to cheat days because I see people raving about how “fun” cheat days can be, when the fact is they are far more risky than they are fun, which my article more than proves in my humble opinion.
You are not the first commenter who has picked on my choice of the work “DANGEROUS”. This does not have to mean life threatening in order to be justified. Let me review why I said Cheat Days are DANGEROUS for WEIGHT LOSS and HEALTH.
1) People have DIED binging — I’m sure it’s rare but it’s happened. That is a danger most other diets do not have.
2) Many people have developed life long health problems while on cheat day diets (I’m one of them with Acid Reflux, but I work with others who now have chronic indigestion, irritiable bowel and chron’s disease they did not have before their cheat day diet) — That is a dangerous risk of a cheat day that is far less risk in other diets.
3) Cheat days are very very hard to sustain — oh sure, you keep your cheat day, but most cannot stay on any diet where you are restricted 6 days a week for any length of time, When you fall off a diet cheat day, most people FALL HARD, because they have deprived and restricted themselves so much the other 6 days that their body overcompensates with additional cravings and a desire to store more fat to protect itself against any further deprivation.
Far more so than someone on say weight watchers who are eating a more balanced level of nutrition each day so their body does not have as strong of a “knee jerk” reaction when the pattern is stopped. Even though weight watchers comes with its own share of problems, but that’s for another article!
I saw no reason to provide case studies for this article (except for DYING which I did–why do you commenters keep ignoring that when you say cheat days shouldn’t be called Dangerous?).
Anyone using a cheat day should acknowledge these above risks and more are clear dangers from a WEIGHT LOSS and health perspective.
And, finally, while I congratulate you on your success for 5 weeks on your diet, most dieters lose a lot of weight from a sound diet plan for some period of weeks or even months. The problem with the slow carb diet, and all other conventional diets, even with a cheat day, is CAN YOU STAY ON THEM!
The standard I use is to be on your diet after 1 year and at or below your goal weight. 98% of dieters fail at this standard. Adding a risky cheat day does not increase the success rate from all available research.
As I told Rob above, I hope you are the exception and prove me completely wrong — I know how hard sustained weight loss is and I am a huge fan of people losing weight and keeping it off so if the cheat day ultimately works for you, that would be great!
But if you are not so fortunate, and you gain all your lost weight back plus another 10 pounds, will you be writing back commenting on how great the slow carb diet is and how the cheat day helped you control yourself after you could no longer sustain the other 6 days?
I only ask because that’s EXACTLY what happened to ME 12 years ago when I succeeded in losing 15 pounds on a protein power/cheat day diet for 6 WEEKS!
Don’t forget I have 5 more reasons cheat days are dangerous too — maybe I’ll write a follow up article because dieters who have been using cheat days for such a short time clearly cannot see just how UNSUSTAINABLE cheat days are for nearly everyone. Starting a diet plan you can’t stay with for the LONG LONG TERM is dangerous enough–Cheat days dangers go much further and dieters should be very cautious of them.