Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 80: Bouncing back after a bad week
Transcript
- Cameron: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I want to talk about how to bounce back after a not great week when it comes to weight loss. So we are all human beings and as much as Instagram would have you think otherwise, we're ⁓ not all perfect and living our best lives at all times. Sometimes things happen. Your boss is an idiot. Makes a change, The kids are sick. You get no sleep. You have a terrible sleep because it's too hot, I don't know, it's getting sunny. Could be all sorts of things, sleep, stress, real life, just a dip in motivation, time of the month, all these things can factor in, right? And it can be tough. When you have a week where you think, didn't really go to plan and you feel a bit demotivated. So, the first thing that I want to talk about is this idea of it's rarely as bad as you think it is. Now, I'm sure there are exceptions. If you have had a eat three custard cream packets a day type week, then you're probably going to find that your calories have been up into a of a surplus and you've probably gained some fat mass. And we just have to, there's an acceptance stage of this. You have to grieve for your, that's what it's talking about, isn't it? It's like the first stage of grief is acceptance. So in this case, the first day of your tiny little bit of fat loss gain, you have to grieve for it and just accept it. It's happened. It's not the end of the world, but it's happened. But for most people, what they actually see is this. Is they see a spike on the scales on a Monday morning, their tracking was kind of wobbly over a Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, think of the bank called the weekend. But Friday, Saturday, Sunday, their tracking was a wee bit wobbly. They then start getting back to tracking the Monday, but they're feeling a wee bit down because the scale weights up. Now, first thing to think about is very often when your scale weight spikes up, it's because of a few things. It's because you had some saltier food over the weekend, i.e. you ate out or had to take away something like that, one. Two, you're eating more food than normal. So if I have 2,000 calories that's normal like I'm dieting on right now, I 1,900 calories, and I go and have 3,000 calories. I'm not in a 1,000 calorie surplus. For me, I'm probably only in a 3,400 calorie surplus, not massive, really. Maybe not even that, maybe 200. But the point is is this, I'm not in a massive surplus, but what I have done is eat half. more food than I normally have, if that makes sense. And that food has a weight to it, right? Those thousand calories, even if it was all protein yogurt, well that would still be a lot of weight, right? That would still be an extra additional kilo of food potentially. If it was fruit, that's a lot. If it was a pizza, then you know what? That extra thousand calories. Like, well, there's a lot of salt, a lot of carbohydrates, so we're gonna gain some water weight and all the rest of it. And this is another thing, a lot of the time when you're on the weekend and you do that, you do tend to get a lot of carbohydrate. It does tend to be bit of more water weight stored as well, because your glycogen storage goes up. For every stored gram of carbohydrate, you get that one gram of glycogen, right? You end up with three to four grams of water. That adds up really quickly. If I have 300 grams more carbohydrate than normal, I might expect to be potentially up as much as a kilo. like 1.2, that's a lot of additional weight. The good news is it's not fat mass. Now, there's food in my digestive tract, there's extra water storage, there's glycogen being stored, all these things can lead to these quite dramatic spikes on the scale. This is where people go wrong because they feel so down about it and so down in the dumps that they demotivate themselves or they do the worst thing of all, is they guilt trip themselves. I'm so annoyed at myself, I'm so pissed off, I'm so... Like, blah, blah. Like, it doesn't really matter. The dialogues were really negative. I'm so angry at myself, right, for going over that much. What was I doing? And then on Monday, they think, right, I'm gonna drop the 1000 calories and fix it. You won't. What will happen is you get halfway through Monday, the day before you had 3000 calories and now you're trying to have 1000. So you're having a third of the calories did yesterday. You're bloody miserable. It's a Monday at work and you're grumpy and then you sack it off and you smash the biscuits and you end up in a shitty loop of that nonsense. Or what you can do is, do you know what? It didn't do very well at the weekend. I mean, a bit of a mess of it. And actually, I know why. This reason and this reason. I could do that better next week. I wasn't organised. I just turned up and hoped my weekend would go to plan. Well, that probably wasn't the best strategy, right? Like, if you had social plans, you probably should plan a little around what you might eat and what you might have rather than get caught up in the moment. So, okay, that's something to work on for next week. Tomorrow, I'm just gonna go back to normal. And within two or three days, your weight's dropped. and you feel a lot more motivated and you feel a bit more positive and you've forgotten about it, that is how you bounce back from a bad weekend. You do not fix it quote unquote because you won't manage it. You just won't. Especially if you're over by couple hundred calories, sure. You might say, I'll skim a little bit off Monday, that's cool, fine. But if you're having to skim 500 calories over five days to try and sort it out, all that will happen is even if you did manage it, which is doubtful, you'd just overspill on the weekend again. That's just pointless. and it keeps you in a very stressful loop around your nutrition. So try to avoid that if you possibly can. Get back to normal the next day. You have a weekend that doesn't go to plan, Monday, pff, bounce back. But try and be analytical, not critical, when it comes to your weekends. Good rhyme, right? But if you are analytical, you say, right, I've done this over the last three weekends, something needs to change. Don't just say something needs to change and stop there. That sentence is half finished. Something needs to change and that something is this. Actually I'm letting myself get too hungry and then I'm going over. Oh do you know what, the family really fancied a Domino's tonight and I just said yes because I always just go along with what everyone around me does. Maybe that's actually not so good. Maybe that's gonna hold me back from weight loss. Maybe actually I could just have my own thing. Or maybe I have my own thing and a slice of pizza. Or two slices of pizza because that's a hell of a lot better than me having a medium Domino's at 1800 calories a pizza, right? you're making better, not perfect, but better choices. There's a difference there. But that's important, it's analytical, not critical, because you cannot just be like, I did shit, I didn't do well. Like, great. That's helpful, not. Like, where are you gonna go with that? We need to be more constructive. So this is your sort of nudge to be more constructive with yourself, be more deliberate, but also be less harsh. The person who says, do you know what? I'm gonna plan Monday ahead, I'm gonna plan Tuesday out in the tracking app as well. and I'm gonna make sure I've done a really good food shop on Sunday night, that is a positive bit of momentum into next week. What isn't a positive bit of momentum is, I've done terribly and beat myself up, I'm gonna sit on the sofa and sulk about it, or I'm gonna guilt trip myself so much to try and restrict myself. That doesn't solve any problems. A bit of meal prep and a bit of organization for 20 minutes, that is actually doing something about it because there's a difference between what we say and what we do, right? Someone who says, right, actually, yeah, I do need to make a change. And someone who just does it and gets on is like, right, actually I'm gonna get some food cooked tonight. I've not done a good job this weekend. I'm not too pleased about it, but I'm gonna make sure I'm set up so I go into Monday more organized than last week. That's a win. That's how you win at weight loss is by being positive with your actions and your thoughts towards it, not just negative and beating yourself up. Because you can do that for months, if not years and get bloody nowhere. And that's no fun at all. So if that was helpful and you are struggling with your weight loss and struggling to navigate weekends, then. you can jump into the show notes. There's gonna be a link to my WhatsApp there. You can pop me a message and ask anything about coaching or if you have any suggestions for future topics, you can also do that there. If you are interested in one-to-one coaching, please feel free to drop me a wee message or ask any questions you have. One-to-one coaching is very much built around getting you in the best shape of your life but also getting you into better head space with your nutrition and giving your training direction. So you're no longer doing a bit of this and a bit of that and wondering about the gym. or just skipping your gym sessions entirely because you well, you're not seeing much progress from them. So if you're interested in that, jump into the show notes. Otherwise, enjoy the weather, have a great week, and speak soon.