Cheat Day! :D

I'm a big fan of the "cheat day". Every time I've successfully lost weight, I've always used a cheat day. Knowing there is a day coming that I can eat at my favorite restaurant have a mixed drink if I so desire and devour my beloved potatoes, in whichever form I choose to do so, helps me get through the rest of the week were I deny myself all those little luxuries.

Today was my cheat day and I went on a date to TGIF... love that place. I ordered the $16.99 three course meal, but I noticed that even though it was "cheat day" I genuinely wanted to be careful with my choices. I didn't have any desire to simply blow it out and eat every decadent thing on the menu, I wanted to be kind to my body as well as my taste buds.

I had a salad for my appetizer rather than skins or pot stickers, first big difference. It was the classic wedge salad, and if you are unfamiliar, it is a quarter head of iceberg lettuce served to you intact with fresh bacon, blue cheese crumbles, tomatoes and a large helping of blue cheese dressing drooling right down the front. I decided for me, I'd keep the blue cheese crumbles AND the bacon, but I'd put the dressing on the side because I learn this fabulous trick when it comes to dressing... keep in mind I was a mad dressing hoarder. I used to have double the dressing easily on a salad and some days that still didn't feel like enough. This time when I decided to lose weight, I seriously considered putting salad on my no list just because I couldn't control myself with the dressing. Then someone told me about this simple little thing, and as I found it to be life altering for me, I'm going to share. :)

Get your dressing on the side. Dip your fork into the dressing, BEFORE you dip into the salad.

That's it!

Seriously, that simple trick has me going from two helpings of dressing, to about a forth of whatever they bring me on the side. I get as much flavor in every bite as I did when I used to drown my salad, and I take in hundreds of fat calories less, as we know dressing is all fat.

So that was the appetizer course. For the main course I had a sirloin, with mashed potatoes and broccoli. Deciding to do my two sides half healthy and half decadent, but I have to say, my friend got the vegetable medley and it turned out to be a variety of squashes and omg it was delicious! If I went back today, I may take those squashes in place of my mashed potatoes!

Then dessert was up and they have the best cheesecake I think I've ever tasted. Vanilla bean cheesecake served with a chocolate drizzle and a fresh strawberry and you have to blend the flavors, its orgasm worthy. :) But today I asked for a small box with my dessert and I boxed up half before I even took the first bite. I often do that with my main course when I eat in a restaurant as well, because whatever you order, you can almost bet on it being double portion of calories to anything you'd make at home.


You also have to be careful in restaurants, because they'll sneak the fat in on you where you least expect it. One of my favorite steak houses bathes nearly everything in bacon grease. You order something like a plain baked potato because you think you're being smart and if you eat the skin, which I tend to do, bang... bacon grease calories and fat you are completely unaware of. Vegetables are often sprayed with, if not cooked in, butter, and even something as basic as a chicken breast can still be more than you bargained for. Olive garden for instance serves you two breasts in most of their dishes, and you seriously just don't need that much protein in one meal.

The thing about dieting, losing weight, getting healthy, however you want to phrase it, is really to just be aware of what you're putting in your mouth. What you eat, the choices you make do matter. Have fun with life and with food, don't be so rigid in your attempt to lose weight so that you frustrate the process. Your losing weight should honestly be a natural occurrence based on life changes you make to simply be healthier. In other words, your focus should not be on the calories and the number on the scale, but just about the choices you make. What choices support a healthier life for you? Because those are the things that need to change permanently. If you are thinking, well I'll just change what I eat until I lose that seventy five pounds... well, how fast do you think that weight is going to go back on when you finish?

It seriously is a life change, and more, its a perspective change.

Weight takes a long time to put on, it takes a long time to take off... enjoy the process or else you won't see it through to the end. I'm not naive enough to think the few changes I made to my "cheat day" didn't still leave me with a boatload of fat and calories on my plate, but I say any little way you can cut back and still enjoy your dining experience, which was the point to going out in the first place... then brava!

Have your cheat day, make whatever choices you want to make with food, but do it with some knowledge of what you're eating, then give yourself grace and enjoy the choice you made!