You really must have some cheats in your diet or you will crack. My cheats come in the form of traveling with friends on trips or having dinner with loved ones on special occasions. If you are real good 80 per cent of the time, the small 20% cheats won't matter to much as long as it is after a few months of building a soild foundation. The following day of my cheats I usually FAST for the day. Paleo should not be like the vegatarian dogma but closer to a foundation to support the diet and life changes. And steak and eggs fixes everything.

Forgive me O Paleos: My worst cheat to date was named Cindy. She was three timing me! She was expensive and got fermented a lot also!

I have some issues with cheating- when I cheat I used to just say "f*** it" and go all out. Ever since listening to one of Robb Wolf's podcasts I have had a small epiphany. He likened a huge planned binge to a party with cocaine and hookers. It just won't turn out well. Robb said if you are at a party and you want to kick your heels up and have some ice cream, have some ice cream and move on. This is what cheats should be, times to relax and then move on. For anyone planning cheats, it is bad news, trust me!!

Here's a good link to "normal eating". I don't think she is paleo but she makes some great points.

http://fortheloveofcookies.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/normal-eating/

My worst cheat is definitely also Nutella related. I could eat a whole jar (and have!).

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. Went to an Ethiopian restaurant for lunch today (which was holy crap amazing). Of course, you eat all of of the food with a bread called injera. Thankfully it's actually gluten free, so I didn't feel too crappy afterwards. It was well worth the cheat

I ate an entire Lindt 60% cacao bar last night.

Invited over by my parents neighbors (dogsitting) for dinner, I was served a quesadilla with chicken and chocolate cheesecake for dessert. I managed to eat most of the middle out of the quesadilla (with the lovely, but clueless, neighbor saying "but it's whole wheat AND fat free" about my uneaten tortilla) but I succumbed to the cheesecake. However, I was in so much pain that night that I've been amazingly compliant since :)

Coupla months ago I sat in my car in the parking lot of Trader Joe's and ate an entire 18 oz package of Trader Joe's Crispy Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies with a quart of half-n-half. That's close to 4000 kcals. I felt lousy even before I finished it, but I punished myself by eating it all. I was sick as a dog for three days and haven't touched wheat/gluten since.

I still eat a little rice when I make Kung Pao chicken and I snack on peanuts and cashews from time to time. Oh well, at least I'm off the wheat/sugar/fructose/veg oil merry-go-round.

straight up easy answer for me:

in about 2 years of hardcore paleo eating (sometimes going pure animal foods without veg, most of the time orthopaleo though) on my birthday we went out and drank a LOT of beer. Something like 8 pints. Still ate pretty well, if i remember correctly;) But i'll tell you, the hangover was such that in all honesty i do not look forward to the next round:) Ah, the pleasure, the pain.

I was at the Playboy mansion, extremely drunk from a beer binge and high on Ecstasy, so it was hard to avoid.

Joking... :D - Robb Wolf reference.

LOL...I'm not even sure one drink could count as a cheat. Take it easy on yourself!

Last year on July 4th I made up my mind beforehand that I was going to cheat. 6 beers, 2 hot dogs, a hamburger...and to top it all off...a giant dessert plate of something at a popular local restaurant to go along with more alcohol. I'm fuzzy on what it was exactly as a result of the alcohol, but I am certain that it was delicious. And don't worry, Grok wasn't driving.

The problem with this cheat was that it spilled over into the next few days. After you wake up from a day like that, you start thinking about how good McDonalds breakfast food is, with those little hashed browns and the McGriddles...my God the McGriddles sandwich. Ketchup briefly became a part of my life again. And soon...tighter fitting pants.

My advice is that cheats shouldn't be planned, sort of like drunkenness shouldn't be planned. When this happens, overdoing it practically becomes an inevitability.

I did some event planning and we did a huge event with a bunch of restaurants and breweries. Of course, I ate everything from cake to bread...which I washed down with massive amounts of beer . The next day was so incredibly painful that I vowed to get off gluten forever. It took me at least a week to recover.

I also no longer plan events. Back to the nerd-career for me. I never had event planning in me, and the inability to eat cheese and crackers is a disqualification. Sometimes I think about that night though and how much better it would have been if I had eaten paleo...it was definitely possible. These days at food events I make a better effort. Yes, I miss out on some tasty things, but also on feeling like total complete crap.

I forgot to bring my eggs to work for breakfast, and got a ham cheese croissant instead (figured the more buttery the carbs, the better). Feel like shit now. Nausea and heartburn - great combo. Live and learn I guess.

All Inclusive Honeymoon...BP had nothing on my butt for about 10 days.

My cheats almost always say "Frito-Lay" on the outside of the package. But at least I stick with the gluten-free varieties (no Nacho Cheese Doritos, sigh).

I'm ashamed of this, but I work night shift at a hospital and the only thing near us open after 2AM is Taco Bell. After some psych patient calls me every name in the book and throws things at me I really want an F-ing chalupa! Hmm, maybe I have some issues with emotional eating... :)

Maybe this is just nitpicking over semantics, but I really don't like the idea of "cheat foods." If you're cheating, it means you're doing something wrong. Occasionally enjoying dessert, bread, etc. isn't wrong - it's delicious.

I think we're all familiar with Sisson's 80/20 rule. It's good, but I prefer the more widely applied formulation of the 80/20 rule: the law of diminishing returns. Basically, 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

If you're largely off sugar, eating plenty of real food, exercising, and resting well, you're in pretty good shape. I think we could all benefit from relaxing a little bit when it comes to food.

Oh, for me, it's pancakes. I love my pancakes.

Had a good sized cheat at lunch today... demolished a pizza buffet w/ my co-workers (made the cheat count)! I was feeling bad about the cheat, but may have stumbled on to something, because I have been very low carb the past couple of weeks and have been struggling lately w/ CrossFit MetCon WODs, but I felt a lot better today. Perhaps I need to add some more "smart carbs"...?

i ate an entire jar of peanut butter in one sitting once... was constipated for like 4 days and just felt terrible. If i did it again, I would do almond butter, which is all I eat now anyways.. and no salt. I didn't realize how much salt was in peanut butter... I was super thirsty for days after eating it, but drinking water made me super bloated

9 sushi rolls, ugh, too much food and rice soy wheat

Yesterday at work they had pizza delivered. It wasn't even good pizza but I had three slices, and steeled myself for wrenching heartburn later, but it never happened! Maybe my stomach acids are recovering after years on PPIs (stopped taking this in April).

My Dad's birthday on October 26th of this past year. I had almost half of a cold stone creamery cookie dough cake, as well as ten raw cookies. Even though I felt like crap the next day, it was so good and totally worth it.

Doughnuts which I filled with Nuttella :blushes: A blast from my ""Paleo"-but-low-fat" past.

I cheat a little whenever I feel like the enjoyment will outweigh the pain I will experience afterwards. Sometimes I lose this gamble, but mostly I win, because I give myself permission to enjoy these things when they really count - for instance, homemade cheesecake or creme brulee is worth it every time, whereas stale Fritos in the company lunchroom are totally not worth it every time. A little wine is good, a lot of wine is bad. You get the idea... everything in moderation, including moderation, as they say.

Most of the paleo foods I now relish with gusto (esp. fat- denied myself fat for decades, now eat fat fat fat) feel like cheating to me, so I don't cheat hardly at all. Sugar just tastes weird and harsh, and bread smells suspicious. Sometimes, I dream about these little vanilla bean cookies at Trader Joes, but that's about it. Oh, bite of dark chocolate and a nip of tequila now and then feels pretty naughty.

Oh man. I have had EPIC cheat days.

The most recent: Dunkn' Donuts (1/2 dozen assorted) for breakfast, with milk and coffee, a burger from a GREAT local joint with fries and a shake for lunch, and Papa Johns for dinner.

Heeeelllllloooo uncomfortable BM's and poor performance (for like 4 DAYS).

Never again.

NEVER AGAIN.

Just recently had peanut soup. Loved it in the past. Cherished every drop of that soup knowing that I shall never do that again. I am sooo against peanuts....but I hardly ever see it on the menu.

Oh man, I have to drag this thread back up just to convey an epic cheat from a couple months ago:

Breakfast: nothing

Lunch: Chipotle burrito, Reese's peanut butter cup brownie from 7-Eleven, Mug root beer.

Dinner: Whopper with cheese, Medium Fry, 2 Hershey Sundae Pies

Post-dessert dessert: Snickers ice cream bar, 3 Raspberry Zingers, Dark chocolate Reese's cups

Late night snack: half a pail of cheese balls

So yeah, it was not a good paleo day. I've got pretty bad joint problems, and occasionally choose terrible food instead of vicodin for pain control. Might not be a great idea.