Cheat Day

At some point in every girl's life, we're bound to come across one of nature's most difficult challenges; the dreaded D-word a.k.a...the Diet. Whether your goal is simply to lose those unforeseen festive pounds or whether it's part of a whole new healthier lifestyle regimen, dieting is about as necessary as waxing your fanny. And it certainly doesn't get any easier the older you get, what with all those delicious delicacies so readily available at the swipe of a loyalty card. Chuckles, Krispy Kremes, a super-size McFeast Delxue meal at 2am after a heavy cocktail binge. It takes a lot of willpower to muster up the strength, discipline and motivation to avoid those sinfully delicious, chocolate-covered carbs and sugars.

While some of us go to extreme lengths such as cleansing our systems full of lemon-cayenne-pepper concoctions or starving ourselves to the point of keeling over, most of us choose the saner and safer option of daily exercise and a well-balanced nutritious meal plan.

Salads, veggies, protein and water. Repeat six days a week with an intensive cardio and functional training routine. These are the things that a good diet doth make, and while the proof is certainly not in the pudding that we begrudgingly deprive ourselves of, at least we have one day in that hellish week to look forward to. My friends, I am talking about the cheat day - that wonderfully glorious day of the week in which meal replacements and dietary supplements are replaced with pretty much whatever the hell we want. Pasta, pizza, speckled eggs. That well-deserved splurge and purge after weeks of sticking to lean cuisine, power smoothies and beastly Banting rituals. It's literally the one day of the week that we can have our cake, and eat it.

Never has a concept such as "Cheat Day" tasted so sweet, and even though we should do our best to keep things in moderation, sometimes our cravings are so intense that we tend to go overboard. One day can turn into two and before you know it, your entire meal plan expands as quickly as your waistline. All that hard work and commitment for nothing. While some of us manage to go through our routine without even thinking about it, others tend to over-indulge which can often lead into dietary consequences.

The whole concept of dieting got me thinking about couples and the discipline it requires to maintain a healthy relationship. While a cheat day once a week is absolutely necessary for our sanity when it comes to food, how acceptable is it in a relationship? What happens when we get bored and sick to death of the same mundane dietary routines? Do we give into our cravings or do we remind ourselves about the health benefits that come with sticking to a stable relationship? While most of us are disciplined enough to soldier through, there are others who simply can't resist the sweet temptation of infidelity...

Samantha was down from London and as always, she was looking her best. Maybe she was born with it or maybe it was her diet. No-one thought in a million years that she could do it considering her notoriously ferocious appetite for men once-upon-a-time, but Sam had achieved the impossible feat of maintaining a healthy-ish eight-year relationship with a man who was as bland as tofu. For eight long years, she lived off a staple diet of commitment, communication and compromise without a single craving for the sweet taste of man...or did she?

A bottle of Pinot Grigio and several dick pics later, Sam began to spill the beans of her several indiscretions over the past three years. Without anyone knowing what she was up to, she had maintained a secret diet of man-meat that included a Viking, an Italian, a German, the gingerbread man, the married guy with a kid and of course, her personal favourite, Mr. dark chocolate. "It's a slippery slope, one that I would never recommend to anyone as loyal as you. It finds a way of eating at you but at the same time, it's a helluva of thrill and highly addictive."

She began to tell me about the first time she had had an affair with the married man. Two strangers sitting at a bar casually conversing over the very best bottle of MCC, neither one of their spouses in sight. Both bored with their draining daily routines and lack of spice in their respective relationships. Chemistry happened. There was an instant connection and attraction between the two of them and it wasn't long before Sam was blowing him in the bathroom stall of this very local, very upmarket Pub in London Town.

"I know what you're thinking. Why don't I just leave Paul and put him out of his misery? Well, because I love him and he gets all of me but when it comes to our sex life, he just doesn't know how to turn me on anymore. He's so vanilla. Everything is so safe, so missionary. Did you know I have 65 tiles on my roof. 65?! I tried explaining my desires to him and told him that I needed him to be more adventurous, more experimental but he just didn't feel comfortable. One day I just said "to hell with it" and started going through men like a thousand flavours. Now my diet is full of variety which of course includes a shit load of really effective sexercise routines."

Is that why people cheat? Because they're bored, or is there something so horribly lacking in their sexual chemistry that no matter how many times you communicate, never seems to fulfill one's sexual hunger? Is a little slip up every now and then necessary to keep us going despite the possible pain and fall out or is it something completely unsavoury? Was Sam just a greedy little skank incapable of staying faithful to her relationship diet or was she simply trying to give her body something that it so desperately craved?

When moral fibre begins to lack in any relationship, how do we get back on track? Do we continue the vicious cycle of cheating knowing that it would break the fast of a healthy and well-balanced relationship, or do we continue indulging until the excess guilt starts weighing us down? Should we exorcise these impure thoughts before they become physical actions or do we keep feeding the beast until it the evidence eventually shows?

When it comes to committing the ultimate crime of relationship carbocide, at what point should we stop pigging out?