You’re only cheating yourself.
Jenna Rizzo, a women’s weight loss coach from Georgia, says the one bad habit that kept her from reaching her fitness goals was planning cheat meals.
Rizzo began her fitness journey in 2015, exercising hard and often. “I basically started going to the gym one day and just didn’t stop. You think this would lead me to have some crazy transformation, but nope,” she explained in a TikTok last week.
Sharing before-and-after pictures, Rizzo noted that the first photo was taken three years into her working out every single day. Still, “my butt was still the same size, my stomach was still soft. I was just really unhappy with the way I looked.”
Rizzo, who has previously gone viral for her 2-2-2 weight loss program, her method to getting shredded in a single season and other fitness suggestions, claims that cheat meals kept her from transforming her body.
“I used to try to eat as clean as possible Monday through Thursday,” Rizzo said. “I’m talking egg whites and kale every day. Then Friday would roll around and I’d tell myself I just deserve a cheat meal.”
She reports that while she was usually able to maintain her healthy eating during the workweek, her fetishized Friday cheat meal would spiral into a free-for-all.
In a previous post, she shared, “I would have one cheat meal and it would turn into a full-blown cheat weekend. I’m talking eating to the point of literally being in so much physical pain — and kept going.”
Her mindset was a combination of “now or never” and “good versus bad.”
“My brain was telling me that these foods are limited, and I need to eat as much as I could when I could,” she reasoned.
Recent research has identified this phenomenon as “hedonic compensation” — making up for the loss of pleasure by seeking extra gratification elsewhere.
Rizzo explains that she perpetuated a cycle of restriction and abandon for years. “I would lose a bunch of weight during the week,” she said, “and gain it all back and maybe even then some on the weekend.”
She proclaimed, “Cheat meals now do not exist to me.”
Instead, Rizzo focuses on making sure 80% to 90% of the food she consumes comes from fresh, whole food sources.
She does leave a margin for what she calls “fun food,” creating an abundance mindset that ensures nothing is off limits, and she never feels restricted to the point of craving a cheat meal or binge weekend.
As she poetically maintains, “One salad won’t make you skinny, and one cookie won’t make you fat.”
One celeb who continues to go whole hog and double patty on a cheat day?
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the 52-year-old actor, has splurged on two In-N-Out burgers and two large fries with two different kinds of tequila in one sitting.