9 Tips for avoiding weekend weight gain sabotage.
It’s Friday! Time to let loose, relax, press pause on work and get into that weekend mindset.
Most people, no matter how motivated they are to lose weight and get in shape, downshift their priorities over the weekend, rightly feeling that they deserve a break after grinding it out all week.
The 80/20 Compliance Rule. Focus on the 80/20 rule of compliance. Take actions that support your fitness and weight loss goals 80% of the time in any given situation. The other 20% of the time, don’t aim for perfection, but give yourself some leeway to negotiate around some* indulgences. What do we mean by some? Split a single desert with a friend. Split your side between salad and fries. Have a 5 ounce of dry red wine instead of a more sugary 9 ounce glass. Negotiate with yourself responsibly.
Weekends seem to come and go in the blink of an eye, they never truly quite last as long as we hope they will. It’s easy to be fooled by this phenomenon, but the truth is, the days of the weekend go by just like any other, and the choices and actions that we take over the weekend have an impact on our goals.
The weekend represents 30% of your overall week. A weekend of overeating and binge drinking can completely negate the calorie deficit that you had put so much effort into maintaining during the week. What happens then? Nothing. You will either plateau in your fat loss efforts, or worse, you will start gradually gaining more weight, despite all of your best efforts during the week.
Most people don’t have the perspective to see this, and it feels like crazy making, when you work consistently all week but then blow it up over the weekend and end up sliding backwards.
To lose weight, you need to be in a weekly caloric deficit. This means that the daily calories that you consume each week needs to be less than the average amount of calories that we burn each day. It almost sounds counterintuitive, but you want to spend more than you eat, and you want to be in this imbalance consistently to see change. Don’t bank too many calories, because you end up carrying those calories in your body's fat deposits - those areas that you spend all week trying to reduce.
Imagine your bathtub is full of water. Let's pretend that the drain is sealed shut. Your goal is to empty the tub one shot glass of water per day. From Monday to Friday at 5pm, you consistently empty 1 shot glass of water out of your tub. It’s slow going, but week after week, you show up and put the effort into removing that 1 oz of water. Slowly, surely, you start to notice that the water level is going down. Progress.
Now let's imagine that Friday night comes along, or your pals invite you out on a Saturday night. You drink excessively, you have some fast food after the bar, you go for a heavy brunch the next day because you are feeling hungover. Besides feeling like shit for the remainder of the weekend, you notice that the bathtub tap must have loosened, and it's been dripping into the tub all weekend. All of the shots that you so carefully emptied out of the tub all week have been refilled with more water, and after you measure the water line, you realize that there is actually more water in the tub than there was 2 weeks ago. All of that progress has not only been lost, but you are now further back than before. This oversimplified analogy is exactly what you are facing when you over consume and make poor decisions over the weekend.
Stop trying to be perfect - be consistent instead. Aim for 80/20 all week - including the weekends. It’s a much better approach than throwing the dice each weekend on your progress. Get off of the hamster wheel and allow yourself to make steady, consistent progress by treating the weekend like they are weekdays.
Keep your normal weekday routine over the weekend. Do your best to go to bed at your regular time. If social engagements will require you to stay up later, aim to give yourself an extra +2 hours on top of your regular bedtime. You also want to avoid disrupting your sleeping routines, because sleep, as boring as it sounds, is absolutely critical for weight loss. The same applies for sleeping in. Give yourself up to +2 hours to sleep in. This is a negotiation that you can make with yourself as part of your weekend, while keeping a steady grip on your overall consistency.
Aim to make progress over the weekend. Do your workouts. Drink 64 oz of water each day. Think about your food plan for the weekend. Eat in when you can. If you are planning on eating out - sauces on the side, green sides, one single portion size (box half of your plate). These are all decisions that you can easily make, if you maintain a weekday level of focus. You might not be at work, but you are working on your goals. You can do this.
Avoid getting wasted. Getting hammered1-2x per week over the course of a weekend is something that a lot of people do. I’m not necessarily talking about getting blackout drunk here, I’m talking about 2-3 big glasses of wine - the chalice pours that empty a bottle in 2 supersized glasses. The excesses and bad choices that start piling up around too much booze are legendary. We all have stories. As cute as these stories are, they are not so funny when you feel stuck in your weight loss journey.
When you are tipsy, you lose the ability to responsibly negotiate with yourself on behalf of your goals. These goals are important, they are something you want to achieve, and you can’t let yourself get taken for a ride just because you’ve had a few too many. Spend some time thinking about what is fun, enjoyable or relaxing about screwing yourself over?
To drink or not to drink is your call. If you are going to have some drinks, aim for low calorie ‘dad’ beers like Coors light, Michelob ultra, Amstel light or anything with less than 100 calories and 2.5 grams of carbs. Asking simply for a ‘light beer’ is not going to get you a low calorie beer, especially at a place that only serves craft beers. Specify that you want a low calorie beer, and not just a light tasting one. Unless you are a college freshman, the goal is not to crush a case - but to have 1-2 drinks, mixed in with glasses of water. Aim for extremely dry wines. Dry wine has less sugar. If spirits are your style, try a vodka water with lemon.
Have a weekend workout. Use the weekend to switch things up with your workouts. Consider trying a new workout class, a new series or an introductory program like our Intro to Strength Training, our fasting workout series, Fasted and Furiously Fit, or our Intro to Hiit. Make the weekends about exploring and discovering new fitness experiences. Try something new, learn some new moves, have fun. Use this link for an exclusive 30 day free trial of our fitness streaming platform BodyRockPlus.com and discover something new.
Weekends have the ability to completely sabotage all of the effort we make during the week. Remember, you are pausing your work life , not the work you are doing on yourself, and certainly not the work that you are putting in towards your dreams and goals. Healthy self-negotiation is always your responsibility. Don't allow others to set you up for failure. Make sure that you show up for you everyday of the week.
ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL.
It's heartbreaking to see people with good intentions, sign up for fitness programs and online classes that are too difficult for them to complete.
Coach Jessie, a mother of 3, leads you through our 5 part Introduction to Strength Training Bootcamp from the BodyRock living room.
We’ve taken this problem on here at BodyRock by creating beginner inclusive workouts and bootcamps. Our ‘beginner’ boot camps and ‘Introduction to Strength Training and Hiit’ programs are specifically designed to be challenging and achievable. Miracles can happen when you actually finish a workout. Confidence blooms, and motivation skyrockets. Our programs can be streamed from any device, and our focus is on teaching you the basics will give a solid foundation for your journey. You can train with us for a solid month for free with this extended, 30 day free trial here. We’d love to help you reach your goals.
THE GAME CHANGER.
Strength training (resistance training) is the most effective way to bust your way out of even the most stubborn FPL. You can double down on adding handsfree resistance to almost any activity by snapping on a BodyRock weighted vest. Any movement that you make, from walking, to cycling to cleaning out the garage will be optimized into resistance training. It increases the burn and makes you stronger, helping to add lean, fat burning muscle to your frame.
Our vests have been continuously improved over the last 7 years (when we introduced them to the market). We have crafted a better fit and feel, and unlike the cheaper knockoffs on Amazon, our vests don’t bleed colours and dyes on your skin or clothes, they don’t fall apart, and they actually fit. The BodyRock weighted vests are the Jordan’s of fitness vests, which is why amazon runs ads to compete against our small family business.
As always, thank you for your time and continued support.
Best,
Freddy