By Pete Cataldo
Don’t let the weekend be your fat loss weak end. Here are actionable tips to avoid the dreaded weekend weight gain once and for all.
+++
The biggest obstacle to your fat loss success is not how you handle things Monday through Friday.
It’s how you handle things Friday through Monday.
Let me know if this sounds familiar:
You crush it during your workweek. Meals are planned and prepped. Protein is easy to hit. Daily walks, lots of movement, making time for those workouts.
Then Friday night comes.
Happy Hours. Boozy Brunches. Relaxing with a glass of wine. Birthday parties, weekend trips, football Sunday.
You step on the scale on Monday and feel like you’ve destroyed all of your hard-earned work and you’re starting over again from scratch.
The weekend weight gain problem is one of the biggest challenges that you’ll face along the way to being lean for life.
But you can beat it.
Today, we’re going to break down a few of the reasons why the weekends might be your weak end. And you’ll learn a few strategies to avoid weekend weight gain once and for all.
Let’s get into it.
+++
Avoid weekend weight gain by not being so restrictive during the week
Remember when your parents would tell you not to do something, and even though it kinda made sense to not do it, you kinda wanted to do it only because your parents warned you against doing so?
Yeah, that’s what’s going on here a bit.
Sounds counterintuitive, but the majority of the folks who blow it all up over the weekend do so because they never have any fun during the week.
You work so hard to punish yourself with a huge calorie deficit on Monday through Friday.
Eating nothing but chicken breast and vegetables and avoiding anything that has a little extra added sugar in it.
When the weekend comes, you are out of your routine. You are relaxed. And you are much more likely to give into the temptations now that you don’t have your normal schedule. So you indulge. But that indulging quickly turns to overindulgence.
Instead of enjoying a cookie, you eat half of the batch. Rather than have that slice of pizza, you eat two thirds of the pie.
The trick is to allow yourself some more wiggle room on Monday through Friday. Play around with the 80/20 Rule of nutrition.
80 percent of your foods should come from the following:
- Lean proteins
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Unprocessed, natural foods
Once you have that covered, then the remaining 20 percent of your calories can come from the following:
Anything you want as long as it stays within your calorie target.
No one food will ever make you fat. It’s an overconsumption of foods that turn your calorie deficit into a surplus that will lead to unwanted weight gain.
There’s a difference.
Learning to balance fun foods throughout your week will make the diet more enjoyable. And if the diet is more enjoyable, you’ll be much more likely to adhere to it for the long term.
Turn to your staple foods
Weekend weight gain doesn’t have to happen if the foods you eat during the weekend are similar to the foods you eat during the week.
You know that you can use the 80/20 Rule to provide more balance into your nutrition and include some of those “fun” foods in your rotation from time to time.
Since you can allow more wiggle room in your diet, you should be spending some additional time working on the staples of your diet.
For me, that means one BAS (big ass salad) every single day.
Every. Single. Day.
Yes, even on Saturdays and Sundays, I’m still adding tons of lean proteins and veggies into a bowl and crushing a huge nutrient-dense meal to cover my bases.
If you are not interested in doing this, it likely means that you’ve made your salad (or whatever meal you’ve created as a go-to) far too boring and uninteresting and you’ll need to go back to the drawing board to create something that you can eat on most days that end in “y.”
Have a plan for the weekend
My Lean4Life Academy members likely grow tired of me repeating this one all of the time. It’s all about finding the right plan for you and then executing every single weekend.
It’s easy to fall into a routine during the work week. Everything is programmed:
- Wake up time
- Breakfast
- Shower and getting dressed
- Out the door to take the kids to school
- Rushing off to work to start the day
- Lunchtime
- Evening commutes
- Dinner time
- Bedtime (if you haven’t created a consistent bedtime, then you should and here’s why)
All the way through the normal lunchtime hours, evening commute and dinner time.
It’s all regimented. Whether you’re into that kind of routine or not, it’s predetermined in your life.
But then the weekend comes and it’s freedom. You are free to sleep in. There are no obligations for rushing off to the office or dealing with after school activities.
This weekend freedom is too much, though. You’ve been provided with too many options that you settled into picking zero options that align with your goals. It’s a form of decision fatigue.
So your job is to develop your own weekend plan.
It doesn’t have to be rigid or grandiose.
But you do need some structure on the weekends to prevent blowing up your progress. Here are a few strategies to make that work:
Save some extra calories and budget them for the weekend
This is a little more of an intermediate to advanced technique. But if you are managing your calories well, you can view them on a weekly basis, instead of day to day.
So let’s say that you need 1600 calories per day in order to lose weight. That’s 11,200 calories for the week.
You could opt to eat 1500 calories per day, which would leave an extra 700 calories for the weekend. That’s an additional 350 calories for both Saturday and Sunday.
In this case, you’d be eating 1500 calories on Monday through Friday and then 1850 calories for Saturday and Sunday.
Which brings your total for the week to 11,200. That’s still eating in a deficit and fat loss still happens.
Just be mindful that you may see some scale increases as a result of extra water retention, sodium and gut content after the increased calories for the weekend.
This is not fat.
Weekend weight gain might not be fat
Remember that there is a difference between weight and body fat.
Your weight can fluctuate for a dozen reasons, most of which are outside of your control:
- Eating more carbs than usual
- Increased sodium
- Performed a difficult workout
- Ate later than usual
- High stress levels
- Poor sleep
- Monthly cycle
- Ate more food than usual
This means that one day you could step on the scale and it reads two to three pounds heavier than the previous day.
Again, this is likely not all fat from one evening of indulgence.
Let’s do some more math.
A pound of fat is generally considered to be 3500 calories.
So in order for that excess weight to be two to three pounds of pure fat, you will have had to consume almost 7,000 more calories than your maintenance level.
If your maintenance is 2,000 calories, then we’re talking a full on cheat day of almost 10,000 total calories for you to see two to three total pounds of pure fat gain in just one or two days.
Not impossible. But not necessarily probable.
However, continued overindulgence over your calories can lead to slow and insidious fat gain over time.
Which is why it’s important to mitigate the impact of the treat yourself, cheat day, “Sunday funday” mindset.
Here are the rules and action steps to avoid weekend weight gain once and for all …
Manage the protein problem
Since you’re likely out of your normal routine, you’re probably away from your usual sources of protein. So, grab some protein powder or even ready-to-drink protein shakes from the grocery aisle.
Carry these things with you to the kid’s soccer games and even your brunch to sip alongside your carb-heavy, low protein pancakes.
Scout ahead, plan ahead
If you have restaurant meals coming up. It’s your job to do some advanced scouting.
Two options:
- Look up the restaurant beforehand and identify a few friendly meals you can order.
- Or go into this meal with the mindset that you will order whatever you’d like and enjoy it, but will get back on track after that meal.
Both approaches are totally fine.
But, you must commit to one or the other and not get caught trying to ride the middleground. That’s a recipe for indecision and guilt.
Stick to the (weekend) staples
Find one or two easy-to-make meals that have tons of protein and fiber and be sure to have those handy on weekends, too.
You want to avoid the decision fatigue around food selection. Because when left to emotions to make that call, it will mostly likely be a call to order takeout or delivery instead of cooking a whole meal.
Protein and produce loading (PPL)
Let’s say you’ve got a big dinner with family and/or friends coming up on Saturday night. Dinners at restaurants are typically loaded with lots of carbs and lots of fats.
Not to mention, tons of calories, which I explain in more detail in this guide to eating out.
But I digress.
Your job during the day on Saturday is to load up on the two things that the restaurant meal does not have an abundance of: protein and fiber.
Go light on the carbs and fats throughout the day, saving them for the evening. Instead, you’ll go heavy on protein and veggies through the day, which will help mitigate hunger, help you hit your protein goals and provide a buffer for the bigger feast later that evening.
Get those steps up
You don’t necessarily need to hit the gym over the weekend. But, you cannot sit on your ass for two days.
Getting your steps up should still be a priority. Even on weekends.
In fact, I often challenge my Lean4Life Academy members to go above and beyond the call of duty to hit upwards of 15,000 to 20,000 steps on the weekend.
Walking is just good for overall health. Increasing your steps twofold can help burn a few extra calories to help provide a bigger cushion.
Do something active every day
Walking counts here. So at the very minimum, you should be keeping up with your daily step count.
But, the weekend can present opportunities to be a little creative with your movement.
Maybe it’s going dancing in the club.
Or it’s chasing the kids around the park or playground. Perhaps it’s playing a sport yourself.
Whatever it is, I encourage you to stay active on Saturday and Sunday.
This is not necessarily about the amount of calories burned here, remember that calories burned from exercise are minimal.
It is more about establishing a lifestyle.
Being active inherently promotes better food making decisions, too. It also leads to more energy levels, improved sleep and better all around quality of life.
It’s just a win-win. So get up and be active.
Never miss twice
You’re going to enjoy pizza and cakes and wines and everything in between. That’s okay. It happens.
You should enjoy it. Guilt-free.
Just know that the best way to avoid weekend weight gain from becoming a consistent problem is to adopt the never miss twice rule.
So if you go off-plan with brunch on Saturday, get right back on plan with your very next meal. Not the next day. The next meal.
This will likely mean a bit of planning ahead of time to ensure that you have the food options and resources available to get right back on track after an off-plan treat.
It means having staple foods handy and stocking protein that you can turn to in a pinch.
And then being okay with enjoying things in moderation, because you know that you can do so and still hit your goals.
As long as you get right back on track.
Let me help you learn to avoid weekend weight gain …
I’m here to help you out.
If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Avoid weekend weight gain” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.
Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
If you enjoyed this post, maybe you’d like more knowledge bombs from me. I’d be honored if you join my mailing list to get regular updates every time I post something pretty dope.