Is the weekend ruining your diet?

Week after week I check my client’s food diaries to see a week of well balanced, calorie controlled eating, followed by a weekend of binging, overeating and overindulging – it then comes as no surprise that in most cases these clients are not losing weight.

Whether it is programming imprinted in our brain when we are small, or that we are overly restrictive with our diets in the week and feel that we need to “reward” ourselves on weekends, straying too far from our calorie controlled meal plans simply because it is the weekend is a recipe for disaster – research has proven this.

People who control their weight keep their food intake stable MOST of the time – this means they may have a meal off over the weekend but it does not equate to an addition two coffees a day, three glasses of wine, cakes on both days as well as dessert simply because it is “the weekend”.

To get your own weekend under control, aim to have as routine a breakfast as possible and if you do have breakfast or lunch out, you are likely to need to skip a meal to compensate. Follow up any large, heavy meals with a soup or salad and most importantly you need to exercise, probably more than usual because if you are organized you will have more time. We live in a world of constant calorie overloading and minimal activity and for this reason we cannot wipe out two entire days of the week if we want to maintain let alone lose weight, so identify your food rules and stick to them, even on the weekends.