My Diet Starts on Monday…
It's Monday.
After a weekend of celebrating, indulging, or just "eating like it's the weekend," it's time to start (or restart?) your diet, right?
Most of us are able to keep to a routine during the week.
And then we reward ourselves for such discipline by letting go "just a bit" on the weekend.
Let's say you're dieting. You've diligently kept under your calorie target during the week, maybe by 100-200 calories each day. So it stands to reason you have some "wiggle room" on the weekend.
Maybe it's an extra beer or glass of wine.
Or a bit of snacking from the "snack bowl" sitting out at the party.
Or why not enjoy those nachos at the Mexican restaurant, with a beer, plus a small dessert?
Before you know it (and most people aren't actually aware of this), you've overconsumed by 2,000 to 3,000 calories.
The 1,000 calories you "saved" during the week have been overblown by 2,000 calories or maybe more, significantly slowing (or revsersing) progress toward your weight loss goal.
Of course, it could be much more than this if you're going to a big party with a free-for-all on drinks and high fat/carb foods.
This is the insidious path to weight loss plateaus. You THINK you're being consistent with calories, but you're not. Not really. These weekly indulgences take you waaaaay "off the rails" with your nutrition.
Some of us try to "make up" these calories by severely restricting the next day, or week.
This is the "startover Monday" mentality, and it can lead to a viscious cycle of binging and restricting, binging and restricting.
How can you get ahead of this and avoid the resulting guilt, shame, and self-derision that leads to just repeating this over and over?
Here's a simple strategy to try.
There are many names for this strategy: high calorie days, refeeds, carb cycling, or even "planned hedonic deviations," and so on. However, they are NOT "cheat days." A cheat day implies you're going off track and "cheating" on your plan.
Instead, this WILL be your plan.
Steps:
Identify your calories for the week. Let's say it's 12,600 (that's 1,800 per day).
Plan for the "big" day (let's say Saturday) and "reserve" a much larger calorie total for that day. Let's say 4,000 calories.
Subtract 4,000 from 12,600, and you're left with 8,600. Divide that by the remaining 6 days to get 1,433 calories (per day) for the rest of the week.
The number from step 2 might be lower for you, but the strategy is the same.
The challenge here of course is being consistent on the other 6 days.
But knowing that you've THOUGHT ABOUT and PLANNED FOR the weekend indulgence can skyrocket your compliance and adherence, keeping you on track toward your goal.
And you might find you don't need the 4,000 calories that Saturday, giving you the opportunity to accelerate your progress a bit that week.
Using a strategy like this can be effective.
But it might be hard to do completely on your own.
That's where a coach can help in providing accountability while giving you the chance to experiment, adjust, gain feedback, and learn without going back to the old binge/restrict cycle.
👉 If you DO want some accountability, just click here.
