The term ‘cheat meal’ has begun to leave a sour taste. For many, the phrase – which means deliberately departing from your regular health-conscious regime – comes with connotations of moralising food: that tucking into a pizza or a bowl of ice cream is somehow ‘bad’, while opting for grilled chicken and broccoli is somehow ‘good’.
This can create a tension between the ‘bad’ foods you want to eat and the ‘good’ foods that don’t quite hit the spot, feeding into black-and-white thinking about how we fuel ourselves.
The trouble is, the phrase ‘cheat meal’ can mean wildly different things to different people. For one person, it’s going out for a burger and chips with their mates, enjoying it and then getting straight back to their normal eating pattern without too much thought. For another, it’s a single meal positioned as an opportunity to eat everything they’ve been trying not to think about all week. If you’re in the latter camp, it’s not hard to see how this can become problematic.
Are Cheat Meals Bad for Weight Loss?
That includes when it comes to your body-composition goals. If you’re shooting for fat loss, a particularly indulgent ‘cheat meal’ has the potential to undo a significant chunk of a carefully built calorie deficit in one sitting.
More importantly, it can negatively affect your relationship with food. If you’re constantly looking forward to your ‘cheat meals’ while everything else on your plate feels like something to be endured, you could end up encouraging a binge-restrict cycle.
What’s more, research suggests that flexibility – rather than rigid rules – may be more helpful for sticking to a diet.
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A study published in 2025 in the journal Physiology & Behavior also found that allowing some indulgence could support weight-loss efforts. Participants who allowed themselves some flexibility over the course of a year also experienced reduced cravings for foods including sweets and high-fat options such as fried chicken.
Should You Stop Having Cheat Meals?
So, should the ‘cheat meal’ be binned? It depends on how you respond to nutritional flexibility.
For some people, a small daily indulgence might be the thing that keeps them on track – a biscuit or two with a coffee, for example. For others, having a specific weekly ‘cheat meal’ to look forward to may make structure the rest of the time feel like a doddle.
Neither approach will work for everyone. Some people may find having no guardrails difficult, while others struggle with too much structure.
There are also those who struggle to maintain a healthy relationship with food and have a tendency to take either indulgence or restraint too far. According to eating disorder charity Beat, a quarter of those in the UK with eating disorders are male, and warning signs can include a preoccupation with food, worries about weight and avoiding social events that involve eating.
As with so many aspects of health – and certainly nutrition – the best approach will be individual.
Aim for Flexibility, Not Perfection
Ultimately, the goal is to find a way of eating in which as many meals as possible provide the nutrition you need – not least to fuel your progress – without leaving you fantasising about a macro-free weekend takeaway.
If you don’t feel overly restricted during the week but enjoy a big social meal at the weekend, go and enjoy yourself. But if you spend all week thinking about the menu and then go overboard when the meal finally arrives, that approach might not be right for you.
What we’re aiming for is nutritional flexibility that means you barely even think about whether food is good or bad, right or wrong, on-plan or off-plan.
Working with a qualified nutritionist or dietitian can be a useful source of support if you’re struggling to find that balance while still working towards the goals that are important to you.
The term ‘cheat meal’ may be on its way out, but the principle behind it – that a sustainable, healthy way of eating should leave some room for manoeuvre – remains a useful one.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
