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The cheat is on: falling off your diet is the best way to stay on it

Men's Fitness, Feb, 1999 by P. Myatt Murphy

Falling off your diet is the best way to stay on it

Remember the flushed-neck, room spinning humiliation you felt in the fourth grade when Sister Torquemada caught you with Amerigo Vespucci scribbled on your palm? It was like telling the world that you lacked the will and skill needed to get the job done (and that ruler really stung, too). Maybe that's why most of us feel as if we've committed a cardinal sin whenever we stray from our diets. Add in the meals that are legitimately out of our control - business lunches, wedding dinners, Aunt Greta's artery-clogging goulash - and even the most dedicated health nut will ask, "Why do I try?"

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Relax. Fighting to stay on the healthy-food wagon remains the one area in a man's life where it's OK to make the occasional mistake. If you've been good, enjoying a "cheat meal" even a few times a week won't put on unneeded pounds. In fact, throwing back a few Big Macs might help you lose weight in the long run - and it can be downright necessary for someone on a hardcore fitness program.

Progress vs. perfection

First off, we can't lie to you. "Being able to stay the course and never cheat is physically better for you than allowing yourself to cheat once in a while," says Stephen T. Sinatra, MD, author of Optimum Health (Bantam Doubleday, $14). "How that discipline affects you psychologically is the real issue."

Giving in now and then, however, can stave off the frustration that comes from depriving yourself of what you want. "What works when dieting is progress, not perfection," says Howard J. Rankin, PhD, founder of the Carolina Wellness Retreat in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and author of 7 Steps to Wellness (Stepwise, $12). "Perfectionists are poor dieters because they inevitably fail to maintain their perfection, and eventually they quit."

The real guilt of the cheat meal comes from the belief that one unthinkable night of gorging on chicken wings and fried cheese balls can negate all your hard work. Not so. "Your body responds to what you eat over time, not what you eat at any specific time," says Ken Goodrick, PhD, an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine and co-author of Living Without Dieting (Warner, $11). It's simply a matter of statistics: Eating poorly two or three times a week out of 21 meals (or more) isn't as harmful as it seems. "That's cheating 10 percent of the time, which means you're adhering to a regimented diet the other 90 percent," says Goodrick. "At this pace, you'll still reach your nutritional goals within relatively the same amount of time, plus you'll be less likely to quit halfway through."

Deviated dieting

How often you can cheat depends upon your situation. If you're close to your goal, you may be able to cheat every day. "It's all about giving in to temptation in moderation," says Goodrick. "You'll continue to eat right if you never feel as if you're starving for the things you really crave."

It's important to realize that you have options. If your goal is to eat anything with an AHA warning label on it, that's your business. But it's possible to deviate from a diet without falling so far off the wagon that you end up too fat to climb back on board. The following tricks can help:

* Plan to cheat. If you schedule a few slips, you won't take a spontaneous free fall. "You'll also have something to look forward to during the times you're forced to eat healthy," says Goodrick.

* Don't rely on snacks. Some dieters cling to the premise that regular snacking is preferable to irregular feasting. "You may feel like you're sparing calories and eating healthier, but most people end up eating more in the long run than they would by allowing themselves one large meal," says Melanie R. Polk, RD, director of nutritional education for the American Institute for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C.

* Don't be prepared. You won't have to look too hard for forbidden foods; they'll find you. "Strip your house of anything that would constitute a cheat meal and plan on purchasing it as the need arises," says Polk.

Cheating in public

Many cheat meals take place in public - the Monday Night Football take-out orgy, the multiple-martini lunch - which is when being born with a Y chromosome can be a problem. Men lack the societal freedom women have about expressing their dietary concerns. We're not allowed to show anxiety over what we eat, even though the people who condemn us for being calorie-conscious are the same ones pointing at our ever-expanding bellies. However, there are a few ways to cushion the blow:

* Veg out. "Opt for plant-based foods first," says Polk. If you must have something deep-fried, choose zucchini sticks over pork rinds. It's hardly good for you, but at least it's less laden in fat.

* Don't get Spammed. "The farther a food strays from its natural state, the worse it generally is for the body," says Goodrick. If your lunch has been sculpted into a familiar shape - and irradiated enough to maintain that shape into the next millennium - you're better off with whatever food it's trying to imitate.

The cheat is on: falling off your diet is the best way to stay on it

Men's Fitness, Feb, 1999 by P. Myatt Murphy

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