Weekend Problem

You managed to stick to a diet for the whole week and now weekend is coming. You’ll be running around the whole weekend and you’re afraid that you might eat too much. Plus, you’ll be invited to your friends’ houses and you are worried you won’t be able to say no to whatever they bring out in front of you. You’re not alone.

Let’s say you typically have a few temptations during the weekend. You’ll be running around in malls for 3 hours before lunchtime on Saturday and in the evening you’re invited to a friend’s house and on the next day you’ll be attending someone’s birthday party. Before you were on a diet, you’d eat some fast food in the mall and have a feast in the evening. And pizza and birthday cake is what you’ll be having at the birthday party. You know that this behavior has brought you to this diet. Well, now you have a few options, but not all the optimal ones. These options include:

• You decide to tough it out and stay focused on your diet. You reschedule the celebration meal for the time you visit your friend, and you have brought your binge emergency kit with you to the mall. Knowing that you’re going to your friend’s in the evening, you decide to spend an hour in the gym, doing extra hard training, believing that your friend will have something to offer you that is hard to resist. You also concluded that you deserved a treat for doing so great on your diet during the week and, instead of treating yourself with food, you decide to treat yourself with a spa visit after the gym. You decide to tell your friend you’re on a diet and eat a healthy celebration meal while having only one glass of wine and maybe a thin slice of cake. That slice of cake cancels out the extra hard work, but in the end you’ll lose weight on that day. Bravo! This is the preferred mindset!

•  You’ll bring a low-carb meal to the mall and eat the celebration meal at your friend’s house. The decision whether to eat the cake or what to drink will make or break your calories count on that day. 12 oz. beer has 140 calories, a light one has 110. Mineral water with some lemon has almost none. It’s up to you. Don’t eat the cake or take just one bite.

• You’ll bring a low-carb meal to the mall, but you’ll slightly over-eat at your friend’s house. You won’t lose any weight on that day, but you won’t gain it either. It’s up to you.

• You opt to eat a low-carb meal in the mall and over-eat at your friend’s house. That will cancel your 3-7 day weight loss effort. It’s up to you.

I would suggest to script the entire weekend and make plans for what you will eat and when. That should prevent you from over-eating, because you will be mentally prepared for the whole weekend. Script it!