[Nadya]

I don't do keto but I do a similarly "limits social activities" sort of dieting.

I just don't follow a diet "strictly at all times". If you're (truly) following your diet 95% of the time and go out every-other Friday (or hell, even if it is every Friday) for a social dinner, 1 meal of 21 or 42 meals isn't going to completely ruin your dieting any more than forgetting to brush and floss after lunch on Thursdays is going to completely ruin your teeth.

If you go out for social dinners every single day it might be a problem - but that is pretty atypical.

I feel most people could benefit from "following a strict diet 95% of the time" over "not dieting at all because I like pizza during my weekly Saturday D&D nights".

[tobz]

Keto relies on being in ketogenesis, which is affected by intake.

You can certainly have a "cheat" meal of higher-than-normal carb intake, but you might get knocked out of keto for a few days. If you cheat every week, you could be screwing yourself out of progress.

[Nadya]

For keto in particular I'll agree out of ignorance. I was speaking broadly of "dieting makes social occasions hard" which is a common excuse to avoid certain diets. However, even with slower progress, I contend that slowed progress is still an improvement over no progress.

[tobz]

Very delayed follow-up, but I wanted to respond: you're 100% right.

Any progress at all is better than no progress. If being able to deal with social interactions by utilizing a cheat day helps stick to the diet -- helping to shutdown excuses, helping to be the "weekend" at the end of a long work week, etc -- then that's a useful model to adopt.

[swah]

I've been trying IF just to eat a big dinner at night since my wife loves to cook.

(But weekends are a problem since I don't have work to distract and tend to have 4 big meals with the family...)