The importance of a FREE DAY

One of the reasons I love the Body for Life program so much is that it allows for a free day. A day when you eat whatever you want, whenever you want, all amazingly guilt free. Previous to Body for Life, I would eat well for about 1-2 weeks (usually it was a matter of days, okay maybe one day) then I would eat some naughty treat, feel horrible about it because I had failed, then say "forget it I can't do this", give up, and feel horrible because I hadn't followed through with what I said I was going to do. This cycle repeated itself for years. When I first started BFL I was SO excited I didn't have to completely give up some of the foods I loved. I would plan ahead all the things I wanted to have on my free day, and then (and this is the beautiful part), I would enjoy them GUILT FREE. Yes, there was no self loathing about free day, because it was PART OF THE PROGRAM. I hadn't failed because I had eaten dark chocolate, ice cream, squishy white bread with butter, pasta, etc.
I really believe that anyone that is doing a reduced calorie diet will have a very hard time sustaining any type of long term weight loss, because it just isn't realistic to reduce calories indefinitely. Besides, how sad it would be to give up all those wonderful 'naughty' foods forever!!!
Let me remind you that in my first BFL 12 week challenge, I lost 12 pounds of fat and gained 2 pounds of muscle...and I took 12 free days eating whatever I wanted. I'm not one of those people who, after eating well for weeks, then got in the 'habit' of eating well, and didn't crave any bad foods anymore. I still LOVE all those foods I loved before. I am more careful about what I choose to eat on free day because I don't want to blow it on gross fast food, I make sure to eat things I really LOVE.

So what is the reasoning for a free day you might ask. Well, our super smart bodies know when we are calorie restricting, and after a while it adapts to this calorie deficit by slowing down your metabolism and going into sort of a starvation mode, holding on to the body fat in case food is going to be scarce and it needs the fat for energy. Having a day where your calories are higher, announces to your body that all is well, food is not scarce, and boosts your metabolism to burn off those extra calories. Recently there has been more research on this idea. Read this interesting article about a former BFL champion who has now written his own book The Cheat to Lose Diet I have not read the book, and the fact that the word DIET is in the title puts me off a little, but since it reinforces why the cheat day/meal is so important, I was happy.

Anyway, I would not have stuck with BFL if there was no free day, it's psychologically and physically important. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

On a side note, I got on the scale today (I vowed to only weigh in once a week), and the scale HAS NOT MOVED...not my weight, and not my body fat% (insert expletive here). Oh, this is infuriating. I'm convinced that I'm not getting enough calories. I haven't been feeling 100% the last week because of an infection, so my appetite was a little low. I'm going to try to boost clean calories next week, and cross my fingers. That combined with the new exercise routines should confuse my body enough to get off this plateau.

So, I'm off, just had some delicious fluffy bakery white bread french toast made by my DH. I plan on having a Starbucks iced mocha, some more white bread, maybe pizza tonight with a glass of wine (strange combo I know), then ice cream tonight. YUMMM