Enough for a Cheat Day???

If I eat about 165 calories over my normal limit should I consider it my once a week cheat day? Tonight I'm gonna be eating dinner at a friend's house and I estimated the meal to be anywhere between 380-500 calories. But if it's 500 calories then that would put me at 1965 calories for the day (when my real limit is 1800.)

Just an FYI- I'm in maintenance so I eat between 1700-1800 calories daily. I powerwalk on the treadmill for 50 minutes/ 6 days a week. I also walk around my block 3 times, usually about 5 days a week. Otherwise I just sit in school, work on my computer at home or sit in meetings all day so I consider myself to be at a light activity level.

Normally I'd be more strict with myself but it is Valentine's Day and I'd like to enjoy myself with everyone else tonight. I'm used to eating  5 times a day so it was too hard to not eat till tonight... I was shaking with hunger after school today.

I would just count it as makeing up for one of the day's you had 1700 if you need to make yourself feel better about it...But I don't think a few calories over is going to do any harm to your ability to stay the same weight (lol sorry can't spell maintanance...hmm have to go look up the spelling on it)

Hmm... never thought of that, thanks though! =)

Actually funny you said that because it was about a week and a half ago I decided to go from 1800 to 1700 calories a day (thinking that 1800 was too much) but it turns out that I lost some weight already! So I'm back to 1800 (starting today.) So your idea works. I'm not sure why I ever went down in the first place because I never gained weight after starting maintenance anyways.

Hmm... never thought of that, thanks though! =)

Actually funny you said that because it was about a week and a half ago I decided to go from 1800 to 1700 calories a day (thinking that 1800 was too much) but it turns out that I lost some weight already! So I'm back to 1800 (starting today.) So your idea works. I'm not sure why I ever went down in the first place because I never gained weight after starting maintenance anyways.