In all my time as a personal trainer, one thing I’ve seen time and time again is ‘Monday guilt’, where people have been great all week, getting their training done, eating well, staying within calories or getting their fasts in, only to let the whole thing go at the weekend. They then come into the gym on a Monday to work off all the excesses of the weekend.
I’ve also seen people do well all week, have a heavy weekend and then when they weigh themselves on the Monday, not understand why they’ve not lost weight, or even worse - gained it!
There’s an easy explanation as to why this happens…
The second Friday evening comes, work mode is switched OFF (as it should be) and relaxation mode is switched ON.
I’ve got no problem with that at all - we should relax. We deserve to relax.
What we need to be careful of is confusing ‘relaxing’ with ‘stuffing ourselves silly until we can’t breathe’. There’s room for weekend indulgences, but if you want to lose weight or body fat consistently, you’ve got to make sure that the excesses that you have at the weekend are controlled, otherwise you’ll undo all the progress you’ve made through the week.
If you work on a daily 500 calorie deficit, you’re on a 2500 calorie deficit from Monday to Friday. If your Saturday involves 10 pints and a curry, not only will you have wiped out your deficit, you’ll instead have gone into calorie surplus, meaning you’ve effectively wasted 5 days of dieting!
How Do I Enjoy My Weekend Without Killing Progress?
There's a few different ways you can do it. I covered a couple of them in this blog around Christmas time. It essentially comes down to preparation beforehand and giving yourself the excess calories to play with, followed by a period of damage recovery afterwards!
If you know you’ve got a big weekend coming, the earlier you can start your planning, the better. Think of it like this…
If you normally hit a 500 calorie deficit, aim for 700 hundred each day in the week before. Instead of being 2500 calories down, you’ll actually be 3500 calories down, giving you extra to play with.
Add an extra couple of cardio or HIIT sessions in to your week. If you wear a heart rate monitor, aim for at least 600 calories burned per session. If you add another couple of cardio sessions on top of your normal training, you’ll actually be in a near 5000 calorie deficit.
On the day of the binge, get a weight-based HIIT session in. You’ll want to go HARD here, to benefit from EPOC.
By following these steps, you’ve got a better chance of getting over the weekend indulgences without blowing all of your progress.
BUT… Preparation is Only Half the Battle
When the indulgence is over and done with, you’ve still eaten into your calorie deficit and may even have wiped it out. With that in mind, you have to pay back a little bit of a calorie debt to get you back on track.
The morning after a big binge, you don’t really need to focus too much on hard training to burn a load of calories - it’s likely with a load of heavy food and booze on board you’d be willing/able to train properly anyway. Instead, I think you should focus on getting plenty of vitamins and minerals in your body and making yourself feel generally more human. The calorie deficit is to come!
If you can, take a walk or do some light exercise - nothing that pushes you too hard. Just enough to move your body, clear your head and get you back on the right track. Drink plenty of water, maybe have a fruit and veg filled smoothie or even a Greens drink just to fill yourself up with vitamins and minerals. The healthier the food you eat after the binge, the quicker you’ll feel better.
That is the start of the process that’ll make you feel fit, healthy and cleansed again.
Give Your Gut a Rest
One of the most effective ways of getting yourself back to normal is letting your body ‘spring clean’ itself. The quickest way to do this is by fasting. By not eating for 24-72 hours, you allow your gut to clean itself out, feel healthy and restore digestive hormones.
It may sound like torture, but it’s really not. Here’s an account of what happens on a 72 hour fast. You don’t feel as hungry as you’d think, plus you’re still allowed to drink water an black coffee, or a BCAA drink if you want to.
The other benefit of fasting is that you go into a calorie deficit naturally, because you’re simply not eating! It’s actually far easier to diet when you turn your brain into ‘fasting’ mode, because you’re not tempted to make a bad food choice. You aren’t making ANY food choice!
Just don’t fast on a day when you’re training, because it’d be a tough old workout on no food in your system!
Don’t Make it a Habit
The reality is that if you want to lose weight, you’re always going to struggle if your dieting and exercise is undone by 2-3 days and nights of heavy eating and drinking every week. I’d love to be able to tell you that you could eat what you want and lose weight, but I’d be lying to you.
Instead, see a heavy weekend as an occasional thing rather than every week. You could get away with it once a month or so, but if you’re serious about losing weight, you can’t do it every weekend and expect to build a lean and fit body.
For more information on who we are, what we do and how we can help you achieve your health and fitness goals, contact us on… 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
Our locations are…
AdMac Fitness: Arch 457 Robeson St, London E3 4JA
AdMac Fitness South Woodford: Unit 4 Marlborough Business Centre, 96 George Lane, South Woodford, London, E18 1AD