Weekend Weakness

Weekend Weakness

In talking to many friends who are trying to lose weight, I find that one of the biggest obstacles is getting through the weekend without cheating on their diet. Personally, this used to be the biggest obstacle for me and to date still is at times. During the week, it can be pretty easy to keep a healthy diet and not over indulge yourself with fatty foods or junk. Particularly if you are like me and work in a Downtown Business area with no fast food chains and may have a cafeteria in your building that caters to your requests. The hard part is making it from Friday night to Monday morning and still keep the same habits in line.

Regardless of where we work, we all have stress. For some it is physical, for others it is emotional and for many it is mental. When the end of the workday rolls around on a Friday afternoon, something enters our mind that tells us “I’m FREE and I’m going to do whatever I can to forget the last 5 days and enjoy the next two”. For some, it is alcohol but for many it is food. The LAST thing you want to do is cook after a long week at work especially during your two days off. So what is left? Eat out, order in, etc. and usually this means eating thousands of empty calories full of fat, cholesterol and tons of carbs.


I remember one week, I had worked out every day so I decided to give myself Saturday and Sunday off. I had lost about 3lbs,was able to wear a shirt that I hadn’t been able to for a while, and had a lot of energy. Friday night came and after a stressful work week, I decided to have a couple of beers. As many of you know, Guinness is my favorite beer but at 20g of Carbs per bottle, it can be like eating a half loaf of bread after a fun night. By the time Monday rolled around, the one bottle of Guinness became 6 and along came Taco Bell, 3-Item Chinese food, Round Table Pizza, Sunday Donuts and a box of Lucky Charms. When I weighed myself Monday morning, I had gained back the 3lbs AND 2 more. What a waste…
So the question is, how can we stop from feeling like F, S & S stands for Fat, Sugar and Scrumptious? How can we still enjoy our weekend but not throw out all the hard work we did during the week?

Let’s start with Alcohol.

Click on this link to learn about what Alcohol does to your body in regards to fat:

http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/research/alcohol.htm

As you can see, how much you drink and the types of drinks you consume can have a great effect on your diet. Even if you think you aren’t doing anything to yourself by drinking that diet coke and Jack or Low fat beer, you are still dehydrating your body making it easier for any calorie you consume to stick to your body like putty. So my rule is, drink moderately and lay off the stout if you can. If you need to have beer, I’ve found that the best are Bud Light, Miller Light and Heffeweizen Wheat beer. If you are going to have mixed drinks, remember ladies that all fruity drinks are packed with high fructose corn syrup and empty calories. Opt for a simpler white rum and coke or cranberry and vodka. Although vodka is primarily a starchy alcohol, it contains less calories than an apple martini.

Now on to food.

Recently I read a very helpful article on About.com that centered on how we can eat healthy on the weekends.

http://nutrition.about.com/od/changeyourdiet/f/weekends.htm

One particular item I was very interested in is the “eating less at restaurants” point. And I agree! Who said it is illegal to cook on the weekends? I don’t know about you guys, but my wife and I seldom have time to cook during the week and we both LOVE to cook. So for me, the only time I get to really try new recipes and play with my taste buds is on weekends. We like to use Sunday as our cooking day and often invite friends and family to enjoy in our cooking. There are multiple benefits to this:

• You save money
• You learn to cook something other than pop tarts

• You get to make your own food and therefore control the ingredients

• You get to spend quality time with friends and family

• You can cook enough to have lunch/dinner for the rest of the week!


If you MUST eat at a restaurant, stay clear of chains that will offer you nothing but high calorie high fat fried foods. If you are not sure as to where to eat, this website offers some great insight into caloric data for your favorite restaurants.

http://caloriecount.about.com/restaurants-mc1

The truth is, we will all splurge from time to time and rightfully so! However, think about it this way… Imagine if you worked tirelessly on building a house and during the first week you put up all the frame work and at the end of the week, you take a sledge hammer and knock it all down. How long will it take you to build that house? It’s the same with your health and body. If you work hard with dieting and exercise, why would you knock it all down on a weekend?

So when Friday rolls around this week, have fun, but watch your waist line!