Without the order, discipline and sobriety of the working week imposed on us it’s easy to over-eat on the weekends and undo a whole weeks worth of healthy eating in under 48 hours. Unsurprisingly, this pattern of eating can seriously undermine your results and prevent you from achieving the weight loss goals your aspiring too. To help you overcome this particular challenge, I’m sharing with your three of the most effective strategies for sticking to your diet on the weekend, whilst still being able to enjoy time with family and friends.
1. Practice Flexible Dieting
A major flaw with peoples diets on the weekend is that they approach it exclusively in ‘all or nothing’ terms. Either they religiously follow their meal plan and avoid all social engagements, or they throw caution to the wind completely, spending the entire weekend indulging in food and drink. Ultimately, neither of these approaches is a path to sustainable results. The former will lead to social isolation and unhappiness in the long-term and the later will jeopardise your results and leave you feeling guilty in the short term. The solution to this ‘or all nothing’ dilemma is to practice what’s known as Flexible Dieting, an approach that allows you to indulge in your favorite foods as long as you remain within your daily calorie limits. Unlike the two approaches outlined earlier, flexible dieting gives you the ability to enjoy food with your family and friends whilst still achieving results, effectively allowing you to have your cake and eat it.
2. Minimise Your Alcohol Consumption
Alcoholic drinks are high in calories, inhibit fat-loss and will undermine your self-control even when consumed in small quantities. For those reasons, it is strongly recommended that you minimise your alcohol consumption on the weekends. If you can do it, then abstaining from alcohol completely is obviously the best option but many people find this difficult, particularly at important social events such as birthdays, weddings and family get-togethers. The best way to manage your alcohol intake in such situations, whilst still enjoying time with friends and family, is to limit your drinking to one night, set an upper limit on the number of drinks you consume and stick with low-calorie alcoholic drinks. This will help ensure that the amount of alcohol you consume is kept to a minimum and will reduce its impact on your levels of self-control, calorie intake and results.
3. Offset Any Excess With Exercise
If you do end up indulging a little too much at the weekend then performing some exercise, that doesn’t interfere with your regular training routine, will help you burn off some of the excess calories and stay on track. Personally, I recommend 30-60 minutes of low-intensity steady state cardio for this exact purpose as it will burn a ton of calories and give you a much-needed boost of endorphins without undermining recovery. In addition to exercise, keeping your levels of N.E.A.T (walking, climbing stairs, etc) to ensure your energy expenditure remains high. Most peoples activity levels tend to drop off at the weekend, which usually coincides with an increase in calorie consumption and contributes to unwanted weight gain. Keeping your level of N.E.A.T at or above your weekly average is therefore important to ensure your body remains in a negative energy balance. Of course, all of this is difficult to do with a severe hangover which is why it’s doubly important to keep your alcohol consumption to a minimum.
Closing
Temptation, peer-pressure and the freedom to do what we want, can all make it difficult to stick to your diet on the weekend. And unfortunately, whilst you get the weekend off from work you don’t get it off from your diet. That means any extra calories you consume on Saturday and Sunday will still affect your results on Monday. This obviously presents a dilemma for anyone that wants to lose weight but still wants to participate in social events with friends and family, the majority of which revolve around energy-dense food and drinks. Minimising your alcohol intake, practicing flexible dieting and offsetting any excess calories with exercise can all make your diet easier to adhere to on the weekend, without compromising your results. You pretty much get to have your cake and it!
If you’re struggling to find the right diet to achieve your goals, contact me to arrange a free 30-minute consultation. We’ll do a thorough analysis of your current diet and identify what diet plan will best for you based on your goals, needs, and present lifestyle factors. All you need to arrange your free consultation is to fill out this form and send it back to me.
