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Weekend overeating: why it's killing your progress · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @paulthenutrition: Hello and welcome to No Forking Nonsense, the second most listened to nutrition podcast in The United Kingdom. And we've got one goal to answer your nutrition questions with no nonsense. To send your question in email podcast@TheNutritionistUK.com. Give me your name, what your problem is, what your question is, a little bit about yourself, and we'll get your questions answered. Let's get stuck in to today's question.
• 0:24
  It's from Rachel in Chesterfield. Hi, Paul. Monday, Friday, I am absolutely brilliant. I hit my calories. I get my steps.
• 0:31
  I meal plan the lot, but every weekend, it seems to fall apart. A few drinks on a Friday, sometimes a takeaway on a Saturday, Sunday lunch, and by Monday, the scale's up, and I feel like I've completely undone the whole week. I've been stuck in the same way for months. Why can't I just be good at the weekend, and am I actually ruining all of my hard work? So, Rachel, first off, I wouldn't say you're broken.
• 1:01
  You're also not weak, and you're definitely not alone in this. This is probably one of the most common patterns that I see in my clients, and I think it's important to kind of go through it. So this is Rachel's question, but I guarantee a big chunk of you listening to this are like, yeah, that's me. The discipline week because, obviously, it's structured. You're usually at work.
• 1:24
  You've got your lunches perhaps prepped. You know? Do your dinners are planned. Your breakfast are organized. The steps kinda ticked off.
• 1:31
  You're feeling in control. And then Friday night rolls in. The guard comes down. And by Sunday, you're probably feeling like you've completely fucked it up. And then Monday morning, you jump on the scales, they're up, and you're right back to where you started, and probably you restrict.
• 1:46
  So today is not about trying to explain to you how you need to battle through the weekend because that probably isn't necessarily what the answer is. It's about understanding why the weekend does this, whether it's actually undoing everything and how to have a enjoyable normal weekend without feeling like you have to start again every single Monday. But the first place we need to start is the maths really because it's key to the whole thing. What we often forget is that if you're looking to lose weight loss runs across the whole week, sometimes really the whole month, maybe even the whole year. It doesn't just operate during your best days.
• 2:30
  And often, it's the mass that catches people out. You can do five perfect brilliant days, build up a nice deficit, which is what you wanna do when you're looking to lose fat. And then you can have two days that can completely wipe everything out. And if you think about it, five days of eating really carefully might bank you a pretty decent deficit across the week. But when the weekend comes, if you are being social on Friday, perhaps you're having a couple of drinks, takeaway, Sunday lunch, couple of puddings here and there that you might have, you know, typically have avoided in the week.
• 3:04
  And then you can probably pile back everything that you had ideally saved, if you like, Monday to Friday and sometimes more. So it's not that weekends don't count because they absolutely do. It's that the weekend has enough firepower to cancel your deficit out. Two days out of seven is nearly a third of your week, and I often remind people that that is eight days across the month, presuming that you just have two days where you perhaps aren't as meticulous. If a third of your week is a free for all, the maths just does not leave room for progress.
• 3:42
  And that is why it doesn't look like the weight is moving. Not because you're necessarily failing your approach, but because two days are probably undoing the five days of organization and structuredness. And once you see that, it starts to become a bit of a mathematical story, which is much more fixable. What we also often forget is why do weekends fall apart and perhaps a Tuesday and a Wednesday doesn't. And there's a few reasons why that is.
• 4:11
  Firstly, in the week, we're working, you know, with most people have got jobs. So, you know, the structure's there, and you might have the same thing for breakfast, the same thing for lunch, same routine in the evenings. And you've got those kind of rails, you know, planned, less time to graze perhaps. The weekend, suddenly, it's unstructured because, you know, you open up those unstructured days where things are changing at the weekend. You got social plans.
• 4:39
  It's not the same weekend to weekend. And structure is what's holding you together, and often this gets overlooked. And there's also this kind of reward trap. After you've had a quote, unquote, good week, you kind of think, oh, well, I've had a good five days, so I've earned this. And this is where the people have that horrible heat days and cheat meals, I'm gonna have a treat, you know, like you're a dog.
• 5:00
  And that thought turns a treat into this kind of two day event. And often if you've been in what I often see is that people will be in a deficit probably too aggressively throughout the week, and suddenly you're faced with, as I say, some treats or some foods that you've been avoiding all week, and it's just too much to bear. And your body quite literally remembers and ends up wanting to gobble everything up. And often people will feel that they've been on it all week. So now I can be off it.
• 5:29
  I can afford it. And it's just the weekend, and then I start again on Monday. Third one, alcohol. Not not everybody drinks, but a lot of people do. And it does kind of three jobs at once because not only is it the calories on their own because often there's quite a lot of liquid calories that have absolutely no nutritional value.
• 5:46
  They don't fill you up, but now it also lowers your resistance. So that's why often after drinking, suddenly, you know, cheesy chips suddenly sound like a wonderful idea, whereas at Tuesday, 05:00 in the afternoon, if I said to do you wanna go to chip shop and have a portion of cheesy chips? She'd look at me like a mental. But it also wrecks your sleep, alcohol. And we've done this talk before in that it impacts your sleep.
• 6:11
  So next day, you're tired, and then tired means that your body craves hyperpalatable foods. You're gonna be hungrier because you got low energy, and then you reach for rubbish. So one night out turns into kind of three separate hits, and that is the reason why so many people tell me that the worst day of eating is after off often after alcohol, and it's not necessarily the drink itself. And none of that is because you're broken. It's just the biology of what a normal weekend will do to a normal person in this regard.
• 6:40
  So now Rachel asked, am I ruining all my hard work? And the honest part is it's kind of a a two pronged answer. The first answer is on the scale on Monday, no. You don't really need to panic at the number. A weekend of foods that are higher in salt, more carbs, a few drinks, you know, is gonna hold on to a lot of water.
• 7:03
  So Monday's scale is often a couple of kilos on. And, also, if you've I've spoken about scale weight before often, if you've had a stressful weekend. So, you know, this weekend, as I record this Scott and Ironman, I can guarantee that's on a Sunday. I can guarantee you on Monday, my weight is gonna be up maybe three, four, possibly even five kilograms a day before. And that number is, you know, it's it's a bit daunting, but it's not fact of I haven't put on fat.
• 7:28
  And it will settle by Wednesday, sometimes a little bit longer if you're female. If you've had any kind of weekend which is, as I say, a little bit more stressful, high salt, higher carbohydrate, perhaps lower in water, perhaps very some alcohol in there, then that number's gonna be up. And if you've heard my episode where I've spoken about the scale, you know that usually on a Monday, it seems to be a little bit larger. But the second part to this question, and I have to be straight with you, over weeks and months, if the weekend is genuinely a blowout every weekend, then, yeah, it can be the exact reason why you're not feeling like you're making progress. Not because she ruined Monday, but because 13 big weekends over three months is a a pretty long time of undoing.
• 8:12
  And if that's Friday to Sunday, and that's very if I'm honest, that isn't normal for people. If you I'm not suggesting this is you, Rachel, but, you know, if you're having three days out of every weekend, then you you pretty much haven't got much hope really. So the water is nothing. The pattern is everything. Right?
• 8:29
  So we don't need to necessarily sweat the Monday number if it's consistent for you, but we do need to probably look at the habit of what's happening at the weekends. So the fix. And here's a good bit because I'm not gonna tell you to spend every weekend eating chicken and rice while your mates are in the pub. That is not how I want you to operate, and it's certainly, you know, not the way to have a successful health journey or a very enjoyable life. The goal isn't a perfect weekend.
• 8:58
  It's a weekend that is, I guess, less disruptive and isn't gonna cause you to feel like you've absolutely fucked your whole week. And there's a huge amount of room between flawless and a wrecking ball when the middle ground is probably where we want our life to live. So practically, firstly, keep the anchor. And what I mean by that is you don't need to run a weekend of military precision, but keep one thing consistent. A normal high protein breakfast on a Saturday and a Sunday, regardless of what happened or being the same as what you do in the week is probably one of your most consistent things because it anchors the day.
• 9:35
  It will keep you fuller. It will stop the whole thing turning into this grazing from the moment you wake up. Secondly, plan what you're going to do. Don't ban it if planned because if you can pre think it, you're then bringing it to your conscious mind. So you pick the thing that matters to you, the meal out, the Sunday roast, have it, enjoy it.
• 9:53
  Just make sure that you're mindfully deciding what you're doing as opposed to reacting. So I often say, my best clients are those who are proactive and not reactive. What kills progress isn't the planned Saturday curry that you're having. It's the unplanned everything else around it. So if you're gonna drink, how many drinks you're gonna have and you stick to it?
• 10:13
  Third, one meal, not one weekend. And this is the biggest mindset shift. A takeaway on a Saturday night is one meal. It only becomes a disaster when it gives you permission to write off the Sunday too. The damage is almost never the actual meal.
• 10:29
  It's the spiral after it, days after. So have the meal then go straight back to normal at the very next one. Not on Monday, just the actual next meal. Four, and this is boring, and I say it all the time, but protein and steps don't clock off. Keep the protein up as high as possible.
• 10:48
  And if you usually go to the gym, go to the gym the next day or just go for a walk. It genuinely will take the edge off everything else. It's so important. If you go out on a Saturday, the rule that you make with yourself is that Monday sorry, Sunday becomes normal. We go to the gym.
• 11:05
  We live a normal life. We have normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's really important that that is the case because what the worst thing you can do, and I I say to my clients, there's no excuse. If you're going out on a Saturday, the Sunday has to be your tightest day of the week because we cannot afford to have two days of just chaos. Hangovers are not a thing.
• 11:23
  We do not have hangovers. We deny them. We wake up and we go, nope. Not for me. I'm not participating in a hangover.
• 11:29
  I'm cracking on. Fifth, be honest about the booze. I'm not telling you to never drink, but if the weekends are the thing that are stalling you, the drink is very often the biggest single lever because of the kind of three hits that we've spoken about, it's alcohol, which is probably gonna cause the most damage. So we just need to maybe realign it a little bit. One night always instead of two.
• 11:51
  You should never be drinking two days in a row, especially if you're looking to improve your health because it absolutely will impact your progress. So we wanna ensure that we are on top of it as much as possible. Right? So fewer I mean, even if you realign a little bit, fewer days alcohol across a month is gonna make a huge difference to you. And these days, there's so many alcohol free beers.
• 12:15
  There's lot of new tropic drinks I'm seeing knocking about these days, and it's often alcohol, which is a thing that unsticks the whole picture. So here's what I'm gonna leave you with and everyone else who's listening to this. You're not failing because of Monday to Friday. You're doing a brilliant job Monday to Friday. It is the issue unless you are restricting out calendaring.
• 12:34
  If you're in too much of a deficit, you're finding yourself hungry throughout the week, you're having cravings, and that is a separate issue, you need to look at that. But the issue is that two big days have quietly been canceling out those five good days, and the maths just isn't gonna win from there. The answer is to ensure that your weekends are a little bit less disruptive so we get that anchor right. We plan the good stuff, and we enjoy it. Let one meal be one meal, not two, three days of a write off, and go easier on the thing that probably is causing the most damage.
• 13:07
  Do that, and your five good days can stay at five good days, and then we can move them into six good days. And that's where you could probably find your scale away after a bit of consistency will settle down. And it isn't because you got stricter, it's just because you're being proactive and not reactive. So I hope that makes sense, Rachel. I hope you found that really helpful, and I shall speak to you all next week.
• 13:28
  Thanks for listening to this episode of No Forking Nonsense. If you would like to get your question on a future episode, email podcast@nutritionistuk.com If you would like a free meal maker resource, click the top link in the description and don't forget to follow me on Instagram PaulTheNutritionist. Chat to you next week.