Plain and simple: cheat meals are sabotage. Let me explain.

A cheat is defined as a way to gain an advantage by behaving dishonestly. Cheat meals don’t help you gain advantage over anything. In fact, what you actually do when you have a cheat meal (or worse, a cheat day) is you sabotage your hard work and your progress by setting you back. How so?

First, you’re reinforcing bad behavior and habits and continuing to make it okay. A lot of cheat meals are (and you know this or you wouldn’t even call it a cheat meal) bad for you or contains foods that contain ingredients that aren’t healthy.

Second, any progress you’re making in breaking those bad habits is being discarded because you’re still clinging to your old way of eating which got you into trouble with your weight or your health (or in my case, both).

Third, it can stall your progress, or worse, set you back. If you’re doing Keto, this can throw you out of ketosis and set you back as much as two weeks. For me during a Whole30 or when I’m on my regular Paleo Diet, it can erase days or even a week or more of progress in weight loss.

Fourth, it is a slippery slope. It’s how I always end up having to do another Whole30. By allowing one cheat meal, you start to rationalize not eating healthy and say to yourself something like, “Oh, it’s just this one meal,” or “It’s just this one dessert.” The problem is that the one meal turns into two which turns into days which turns into falling off the proverbial wagon altogether.

I tend to have cheat meals on vacations. I do this as a treat, but I do so knowing full well that I will need to do a sort of detox by doing a Whole30 afterwards to mitigate the emotional and physical damage done by not watching my diet closely. This is precisely what got me to this most recent Whole30: my last month of deployment to Kosovo, my two months back from my deployment and reintegration into my civilian life, and then a two-week trip to the Balkans. Now, I’m back to eating healthy, and resisting any suggestions from friends about, “Oh, c’mon, just have a cheat meal!”

I can’t, and I won’t. For me, sabotage is what it is, and it’s why I always frame cheat meals as sabotage meals. This morning, I was at 202.2 lbs. That’s almost 8 lbs in just over 2 weeks that I’ve lost already. While it hasn’t been hard, it hasn’t been easy, either. I’ve had to resist a lot of temptation and at a few social events, I’ve had to refrain from indulging in the way that our culture does at gatherings and get-togethers. Some people don’t understand my level of commitment, and they infer it as me being unsocial. It’s nothing of the sort; I’m just taking care of me.

I’ve repeatedly been successful on Whole30’s, and over the nearly 8 years I’ve been on the Paleo Diet, my health has never been better. I’ve kept off the vast majority of the weight I gained, and right now, I’m well on my way to getting back down to a weight I’m much more comfortable at. This will not only make me feel better in my own skin, but allow me to fit back into all my favorite clothes (and uniforms!), but will also allow me to do my exercise much easier. Riding a mountain bike with an extra 30 lbs is much harder than when I weighed 180 lbs!

So, there will be no sabotage for me. I work too hard for this progress. I will not throw it away for the short-term satisfaction that a meal brings. I prefer the delayed gratification and long-term benefits of being healthier and weighing less.