It's five o'clock on a Friday afternoon and after a long week of work you and a few friends head out for happy hour. Having meticulously balanced your calories over the week you figure you deserve the treat; and after all, what will one high-calorie meal do to a week's worth of watching calories?
A lot! Despite what you may have heard about the harmlessness (or even the benefits) of splurging one or two days each week, "cheat day" might not be okay for people trying balance calories in with calories out. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently reported findings from a study that followed participants over one year of either decreasing their calories by 20% or increasing their daily exercise to have a comparable calorie deficit. What did they find? Before the study started participants consistently gained weight (due to eating more calories and expending less calories) on the weekends but not on weekdays. Although the weekly weight gain was only about 0.077 kilograms, this rate of weight gain could result in an annual increase of 4.0 kilograms, or almost 9 pounds if continued over a year!
And even after the diet and exercise interventions, researchers found this pattern remained the same. Both intervention groups were in negative calorie balance (i.e., they ate less calories then they expended) during the week but on the weekend the calorie restricting group stopped losing weight and the exercising group gained weight–both due to eating too many calories on the weekends.
Still don’t see how a single meal can sabotage an entire week of balanced calories? Do the math… Say Scott determines his daily calorie needs for weight maintenance to be 2300. He is moderately active during the week and sticks very close to his calorie budget each day. But, on Fridays he frequently goes out for happy hour and orders beef nachos (of which he eats 75%) and three light beers totaling 1635 calories. When he arrives home from happy hour he’s usually a little hungry again and eats a few cookies or bowl of ice cream for another 250 calories. Thus, he replaces his typical 450-calorie dinner with a 1885-calorie splurge. While this is only an excess of 1435 daily calories, if he does this just once a week it could lead to an imbalance of 5740 calories over the course of a month, equating to over 1.5 pounds gained if all other calorie conditions remain the same. If he continues this routine for a year it could lead to an 18-plus pound weight gain!
So, yes, every little calorie counts when you’re dealing with the calorie balance scale. And treating yourself to a “cheat day” each week is hard to recover from. However, it is not realistic to forbid yourself from eating high-calorie foods. Instead, allow yourself small indulgences throughout the week (like a square of dark chocolate for dessert); pay close attention to portion sizes when eating high-calorie foods (check out this download - http://www.standupandeat.org/pdf/portion_size_pitfalls_portion.pdf); and plan ahead for times when you know you’ll be tempted to eat more than you’ll expend. An extra walk or bike ride can help to balance out and evening of overeating.
