Can We Stop Calling It a Cheat Day?

This was breakfast on vacation. I didn't need to label it, earn it, or figure out how I was going to work it off later. It was food, we were hungry, and we ate.

The term “cheat day” makes me cringe.

Every time I hear it, I think about what we're actually saying when we use it. If you cheated, you broke a rule. You did something wrong. You did something you weren't supposed to do. But we're talking about food here. Maybe you ate pizza or ice cream, went out with friends and ordered what you actually wanted, or ate something simply because it tasted fucking amazing and you wanted it.

So what exactly did you cheat on?

We have created so many rules around food that I don't think we even hear ourselves anymore. We're “good” all week and then have a cheat day. We eat “clean,” which apparently means some other food must be dirty. We say we were “bad” because of what we ate over the weekend and promise ourselves we'll “get back on track” Monday.

Back on track to where?

Food has somehow become a measure of whether we're doing things right. Eating a salad can make someone feel like they were “good,” while eating a cookie can make that same person feel like they fucked up. Neither one says anything about who you are as a person, yet we have attached so much morality to food that guilt around eating has become incredibly normalized.

And because I know someone could read this and think I'm saying “cheat days cause eating disorders,” that's not what I'm saying. Eating disorders are complicated as hell, and there isn't one single cause. I know that professionally, and I know it from my own experience with recovery.

What I am saying is that I think we need to question the environment we've created around food. When people are constantly hearing that certain foods are bad, hunger should be controlled, smaller bodies are better, and eating something they enjoy needs to be made up for later, how the hell is any of that supposed to help us build a better relationship with food or our bodies?

And Then We Bring Movement Into It

This is where the whole thing gets even more fucked up for me because we don't just tell people they were “bad” because of what they ate. We also give them a way to make up for it: exercise.

You've probably heard some version of it. “I need to work this off.” “I better get a workout in before dinner.” “I ate like shit all weekend, so I need to hit the gym tomorrow.” Or someone exercises in the morning and now they can have dessert because they “earned” it.

When you really listen to what we're saying, we've turned food and movement into a transaction. Food creates the debt, and movement pays it back.

That is not the relationship with food or movement I want to help someone build.

I work with people around both movement and nutrition, and one of the things that matters to me is looking at the actual person in front of me before deciding what they need. If we're talking about food, I'm not looking at someone's plate trying to figure out what I can take away. I want to know what they're already eating, what they enjoy, what their day actually looks like, when they're hungry, when they're training, what they have access to, and what is realistic for their life.

Sometimes the answer isn't taking anything away at all. Maybe we add something. Maybe we change the timing of a meal. Maybe we realize they're going into training without enough fuel and talk about what might work better for them. That is very different from handing someone a list of “good” and “bad” foods and telling them to follow the rules until they're finally allowed to cheat.

There is an actual fucking person involved in all of this. People have different lives, bodies, needs, cultures, preferences, schedules, access to food, relationships with food, and reasons for moving. If I'm going to coach the person standing in front of me, then that's where I need to start, not with some fucking list of rules that assumes everybody needs the same thing.

Weightlifting changed the way I think about movement. It became less about what my body looked like and more about getting curious about what my body could actually do.

Movement Doesn't Have to Pay for Food

The same thing applies when I'm coaching movement. I don't want you walking into a gym because you think your body owes a debt for what you ate last night. I don't want movement to be how you apologize for dinner, and I don't want you thinking you have to exercise before you've earned the right to eat something you enjoy.

I love watching someone discover what their body can do. I love when someone picks up something they didn't think they could lift and realizes, “Holy shit, I just did that.” I love figuring out how to make a movement work for the person in front of me instead of expecting them to force their body into some arbitrary idea of what movement is supposed to look like.

That doesn't mean every workout has to be easy. I'm a weightlifting coach and an athlete, and sometimes training is fucking hard. Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's boring, and sometimes I have a goal I'm working toward and I need to put in the work. Joyful movement doesn't mean smiling through every rep. For me, the joy can be in discovering what my body can do, working toward something that matters to me, and having a relationship with movement that isn't based on punishing myself.

There is a big difference between challenging your body because you're working toward something and punishing your body because you ate.

That distinction matters to me personally too. My relationship with food and movement has changed a hell of a lot through eating disorder recovery and weightlifting. Weightlifting helped me become more curious about what my body could do instead of constantly thinking about what it looked like.

When I started asking my body to do hard things, I also started paying more attention to what I was asking from it. Did I have enough energy to train? How was I recovering? How was I sleeping? Was I actually giving my body what it needed? Turns out, your body needs fucking food.

Weightlifting didn't magically fix my relationship with food, and I would never pretend that it did. Recovery doesn't work that way. But it helped me start asking a different question. Instead of always thinking about what I needed to take away from my body, I started thinking about what my body needed from me.

I've worked too damn hard to untangle food from guilt and movement from punishment to turn around and tell somebody else that eating something requires repentance at the gym.

Maybe We Need to Question the Rule

So the next time you hear someone say they had a cheat day, or you catch yourself thinking you need to work something off, I'm not suggesting you pile another layer of guilt on top of it because now you're using the “wrong” language too. Maybe just get curious about where that thought came from.

Why was that food something you had to cheat to eat? Who made the rule? Why does eating something you enjoy require making up for it later? Why is movement part of the punishment?

Changing the phrase “cheat day” isn't going to magically undo everything we've been taught about food, bodies, and movement, but I do think the language we use tells us something about the beliefs underneath it.

Maybe that's where we start. Not with another food rule or another workout we have to complete, but by getting curious about why we were taught that eating food was something we needed to feel guilty about in the first place.

Because you ate food. You didn't cheat, and your body doesn't owe anyone a workout because of it.

I've got more to say about this. Next, I want to talk about what happens when movement becomes punishment and why I think those of us who coach movement have a responsibility to pay attention to it.

Resources

Eating disorders are complex, and everyone's experience is different. If this conversation brings something up for you or you want to learn more, these are a couple of places I trust as starting points:

National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA): Information about eating disorders, risk factors, warning signs, treatment, and the relationship between eating disorders and excessive exercise.

Project HEAL: Eating disorder education and resources with attention to barriers to care, identity, and making treatment more accessible.