The Cheat Day Design Blog

Healthy Living Made Simple.

My goal is to simplify nutrition & fitness and make it easy for anyone to understand. These posts are a collection of my own guides, tips, lessons, recipes, and more, to help you make sense of it all. Click on a category below to sort through, or just start clicking around and exploring.

Looking for my recipes? Head over to the recipes page for tons of high-protein & healthy recipes.

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Recommended Posts

Dunkin Krispy Kreme Donut Calories

How Many Calories Are in Popular Flavors of Donuts?

What 100g of protein looks like

What Does 100g Of Protein Look Like?

The best thing I did for my healthy journey- tracking macros

The two best things I did for my health journey

Wendy's Menu Nutrition

Wendy’s Menu Calories & Nutrition Guide

What each vitamin does and which foods have them

Vitamin Cheat Sheet

Dunkin' Coffee Caffeine Content

Dunkin’ Coffee Caffeine Guide

Most Recent Posts

Five Guys Nutrition & Calories

Five Guys Nutrition & Calorie Guide

How does cooking spray contain zero calories?

How Many Calories Does Cooking Spray Really Have?

Chipotle Menu Nutrition

Chipotle Nutrition Guide

Steak Nutrition Guide

Calories in Different Cuts of Steak

Calories in parts of chicken

Calorie & Nutrition Breakdown of Chicken

Girl Scout Cookies Calories 2021

Girl Scout Cookie Calories for 2021

Nutrition Guides

Five Guys Nutrition & Calories

Five Guys Nutrition & Calorie Guide

Chipotle Menu Nutrition

Chipotle Nutrition Guide

Steak Nutrition Guide

Calories in Different Cuts of Steak

Calories in parts of chicken

Calorie & Nutrition Breakdown of Chicken

Girl Scout Cookies Calories 2021

Girl Scout Cookie Calories for 2021

Chicken Sandwich Nutrition Guide

Chicken Sandwich Wars | Which sandwich is the healthiest?

Comparisons

Comparing iced coffee and cold brew coffee

Cold Brew vs Iced Coffee: Let’s Compare

Lenny & Larry's vs regular cookies

How Healthy is Lenny & Larry’s?

Protein Cheerios vs Plain Cheerios

“Protein” Food Labels

Comparing healthy pizzas

Healthier Sounding Doesn’t Mean Healthier

Skinny Gingerbread Latte

A Lightened up Dunkin’ Gingerbread Latte

Comparing McDonald's Breakfast

Shifting your mindset about “unhealthy” breakfast options

Fitness & General Nutrition

How does cooking spray contain zero calories?

How Many Calories Does Cooking Spray Really Have?

What is reverse dieting and how do you do it?

What Is Reverse Dieting and Why Should You Do It?

Tracking macros of raw or cooked meat

Tracking Macros of Raw vs Cooked Meat (and other foods)

Estimating restaurant calories

How Do You Estimate Calories When Eating Out at Restaurants?

What 100g of protein looks like

What Does 100g Of Protein Look Like?

The best thing I did for my healthy journey- tracking macros

The two best things I did for my health journey

cheatdaydesign

You need to do what is best for you. Not what some

You need to do what is best for you. Not what someone else says you should (or shouldn’t) do.

I talk about eating whatever you want all the time. I preach eating cookies, donuts, waffles, you name it. I don’t believe you should ever have to deprive yourself of food you love, regardless of your goals.

But that message often gets misconstrued into people thinking I’m saying that cookies and donuts are what you SHOULD be eating.

Frankly, I don’t care what you eat.

I care that you eat food that doesn’t make you miserable. You can eat whatever your heart desires.

At the end of the day, weight loss does come down to total calories above all else. If you’re in a calorie deficit, you’ll lose weight. You can eat donuts every day, be in a deficit, and still lose weight.

But just because you CAN, it doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

There’s no one-size-fits-all diet. One person might eat donuts every week, another person might cut out sugar completely and never eat a donut again, and they may both reach their goals and be totally happy.

Which approach should you take? Either. Possibly neither. Whatever works best for YOU.

Some people love intermittent fasting. For me, fasting that long makes me cranky, distracted, and miserable. Does intermittent fasting work? For a lot of people, yes. Does that mean I should do it if I want to lose weight? Absolutely not.

The best diet for you needs to meet 3 criteria: 1, it needs to put you into a calorie deficit. 2, it needs to be something you can stick to. 3, it needs to make you not want to punch yourself in the face.

Eat all the donuts, or eat none of the donuts. It’s up to you, and only you.
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#fittips #diettips #diethelp #nutrition101 #weightlosstips #weightlosshelp #flexiblediet #flexibledieting #fatlosshelp #fatlosstips

Yes, I said PANCAKES! Look, everyone just assumes

Yes, I said PANCAKES!

Look, everyone just assumes I hate pancakes because I’m the captain of #teamwaffles. But there is room in my heart for ALL breakfast food, and that definitely includes fluffy pancakes.

I had a bunch of extra cake mix in the pantry from my various cupcake recipes in the past, so I wanted to see if that same base recipe would work as pancakes.

As you can tell by these photos, it works VERY well!

I hesitate to call these protein pancakes because they’re not suuuper high in protein, but they’re nothing to sneeze at either. Each pancake is 100 calories & 5g of protein. Not bad for something this delicious that you can whip up in about 10 minutes.

Recipe & notes at the link in my caption or cheatdaydesign.com/cake-mix-pancakes

PS: these DO work as waffles, too. I added a note in the recipe for it 😉
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#fluffypancakes #simplebreakfast #highprotein #proteinpancakes #proteinbreakfast #pancakestack #quickrecipes

Here’s what 100 calories of different (and total

Here’s what 100 calories of different (and totally random) food looks like! Swipe to see my other 100 calorie guides I made specifically for fruit & nuts.

100 calories is NOT the gold standard of eating. Nobody is saying that you should only snack on 100 calorie options or build your meals around neat 100 calorie increments.

But we’re all about easy math and nice visuals around here.

None of these options here are going to be EXACTLY 100 calories- brands of bread will vary, the type of cereal you eat will be different, eggs can be different sizes, etc. But, we can estimate pretty closely.

These are all just totally random examples of food, but you can see how some options may be more appealing than others depending on your goals and preferences.

When weight loss is the goal, we don’t just want to eat as little as possible. Yes, we want to keep calories lower, but we want to still maximize our food intake!

In those cases, it’s all about volume. High volume foods with low calories are great to turn to when dieting- you can see that plain popcorn, watermelon, and spinach all fit the bill there.

Something like peanut butter tells a different story- one small spoonful is going to be 100 calories, making it something to be mindful of if you’re watching your calories.

I have no wise words to wrap up this caption, so how about a joke instead…

Did you hear the one about the greedy peanut butter?

Nevermind, I’m not telling you. You might spread it.
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#caloriecounting #countingcalories #100calories #diettips #diethelp #healthyeating #flexibledieting

@fiveguys nutrition guide coming in hot. Swipe ➡

@fiveguys nutrition guide coming in hot. Swipe ➡️ for all of the toppings!

Five Guys is certainly not the “healthiest” fast food by most definitions of the word, but it is damn good and worth the treat. With no salad or white meat options, the menu is certainly less desirable overall if you’re looking for lower-calorie options.

Side note: their website doesn’t have any photos of their food, so I apologize for the weird lookin’ meats. Best I can do!

Five Guys is most know for their burgers and fries, but they also offer a handful of other sandwiches like hot dogs, veggie sandwiches, grilled cheese, and a BLT.

All of those items are built using the very basic ingredients in the guide above, which makes it easy to calculate the nutrition if ya want to. Yes, the grilled cheese is just slices of cheese on a bun (although I’m sure it’s still delicious)

If you were to look at the menu online and check a hamburger, you’ll see it has 840 calories, which doesn’t exactly add up based on the calories here. The regular hamburger is actually two patties- the “little” hamburger is what you’ll want to order if you’re only after a single patty.

Why do the fries have so many calories? Because their serving sizes are YUGE.

Their smallest size, the “little fries”, weighs in at 227g. To put that into perspective, large fries from Burger King are 173g. A large serving of fries from Five Guys is the equivalent of 3.5 orders of large fries from Burger King. Woof.

I’m not saying you need to avoid the large fries…but mayyybe split them with a friend.

Let’s be real here: you’re ordering Five Guys because it’s delicious, not because you want a low calorie option. So tell me: what’s the go-to order?
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#fittips #diettips #diethelp #fiveguys #healthyfastfood #macrotracking #macrocounter #flexiblediet #flexibledieter #countingcalories

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