Chief Complaint: “I Lose All My Progress On The Weekends”

I hear this complaint all the time: “I lose all my progress on the weekends.”

So, let’s talk about it. Why do the weekends become so powerful? How can we make them work for us when we’re trying to achieve goals? 

Take a moment and think about the weekend. What comes up for you? For most of us, weekends are sacred. It’s time for fun, time to let loose. It’s parties and soccer games and coffee with friends. Time to relax.

We might think, “I deserve this weekend.” I’ve worked so hard, stuck to my plan all week, and now it’s time to treat myself. And maybe this is the only time during the week that we get to see our partner, friends, and families. A major social component is at play.

With all of that, we’re trained to consider that weekends are different from weekdays. And here’s a pretty typical way that that plays out. You’re trying to lose a couple of pounds. During the week, you have an intense exercise routine and a stringent nutrition plan. You’re powering through the week just to get to the weekend knowing that you’ll be able to let your guard down and exhale. 

Here are some ways to handle it so the weekend no longer throws you off track. 

Evening Out the Playing Field

Step one is evening out the playing field. We have to start thinking about how to make the weekends less relatively powerful. And we do that by making the weekdays equally as powerful. 

There are so many ways to uplevel our weekdays to meet our weekends and adopt a uniform lifestyle that doesn’t rely on extra alcohol and food on the weekends. 

So think about the power of the weekends. What do they bring? Relaxation, food, parties, fun, wine, pizza, brunch. A lot of the time, we plan these things because we’re lacking excitement, pleasure, and community in our lives. 

That means that we’re going to have to even off the playing field by creating more community, pleasure, and excitement in our life every day.

Community

Especially lately, a lot of the community we’re relying on is on the internet: social media, zoom, phone calls, and that’s great. It’s just about finding that consistent community where you feel that you have a place and support and people around you that want to see you succeed. 

That is one of the ways that you can start to even everything out. If on a Monday you’re looking forward to a Zoom call with your best friend at 4 pm, then Saturday doesn't seem like so much of a big deal. So take advantage of online communication to use any day of the week to create communication and community.

Pleasure

Some people get pleasure from having a clean, clutter-free space. They love the clean countertops, the flowers, the candles, the high-quality sheets, and the best bubble bath. So what brings pleasure to you? A workout and a long meditation? Shining your silver? It may not seem like a big deal but finding ways to incorporate pleasure into your daily life is a game-changer. 

Excitement

Excitement brings on dopamine and all of the feel-good feeling that come with it. So how can you get more of it in your life?

You can get ideas from other people and see how they are creating excitement in their daily lives. For example, in my life coaching society group there are some Peloton riders who get a lot of excitement from joining each other and doing a ride together. It’s something cool for them to look forward to, move their bodies, feel good, and have community and excitement. 

Another option is intimacy with another person, which can bring a lot of excitement. It doesn’t necessarily have to be physical; deep conversation is also so wonderfully intimate. We often don’t make time for intimacy because we are so overwhelmed, stressed, and tired. So if we can breathe and take the time to create intimacy, it’s usually pretty exciting. 

Willpower

One of the reasons the weekends are so powerful is that we’re using a lot of willpower to get through the week. We segue from a place of “don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it” to “let loose, baby!”. 

For example, if you follow a plan in which you abstain from sugar, flour, and dairy throughout the week, but you like those things, you’ll struggle to stay away from them during the weekend. You’ll think, “I waited all week. I deserve this. I worked really hard and I earned this.” You lose your defenses and take part in all of that sugar, flour, and dairy. Weekends become a free-for-all and then you have that Monday morning hangover. 

The beauty of creating a food plan that is uniquely perfect for you is that it fits into your every day; from Monday to Sunday, every day should feel like the same day. It’s another way to even out the playing field. 

Because when your brain spends all week saying, “don’t do it, don’t eat it,” you get a lot of decision fatigue. You’re overwhelmed and tired and the minute you let down your upper brain, your lower brain takes over and - boom - you have your all-out weekend. To work on this, you have to learn to sit with an urge. Because when you give into urges, like a slice of chocolate cake, you get the positive reward of a dopamine rush and your brain learns that this is a way to feel better and it becomes a habit and pattern. But you can take the power back by learning to sit with your urges. 

To do so, you have to allow uncomfortable feelings. If you can do that and even out the playing field, you won’t have the problem of weekends derailing you. 

Owning It

And maybe you’re okay with letting weekends be your pop-off valve. That’s all right! Own it. Whether you choose to level out the playing field throughout the week or accept that weekends will be a bit extra, just don’t beat yourself up. Make your decision. But don’t live in negativity, confusion, and self-doubt. 

And when you understand your unique body type and set realistic goals for it, you learn that there are a hundred goals you can pick that don’t involve your weight. And if you do choose to focus on weight, you learn to find a realistic number that is unique to you.

This is a whole new way to look at it. Because it’s not okay to go through life not loving your body. You deserve to love your body. It won’t happen overnight. You won’t be able to just flip a switch. It’s going to take work.

The truth is that if you can take one minute today to close your eyes and adore your body the way it is now, you’ll generate amazing feelings that will allow you to act in a way that honors your body. It really works. 

The pressure to never let go or let up will hurt you every time. Acceptance, love, and compassion will help you every time. 

Power Meals

When you think about your body type as part of the process of setting goals, you may realize that weight loss isn’t the best focus for you. Maybe you’re a mesomorph who puts on muscle easily. If that’s the case, when you eat healthfully and move your body, you’re not likely to lose much weight. In fact, you may even put on a pound or two. 

Or maybe you do choose to lose some weight because it is indicated for your health. Often, as part of the process, you get to a point in which your weight stops decreasing and you have to reevaluate whether you’ve arrived at your natural healthy weight or you’re just plateauing. 

An option that works for both of these scenarios is instituting a power meal, which is a meal that tastes amazing and we look forward to. It’s not only psychologically welcome for people who have been following a deficit meal plan, but it’s also capable of helping you stay on track for your goal. Because eating at a deficit for an extended time decreases your leptin levels, which tells your body to stop dropping fat. Your power meal will then give your body the signal to increase its leptin and allow you to drop more weight once you go back to your meal plan and deficit. 

Just a word of caution: don’t start doing this until you have everything else dialed in. And don’t do it alone. It’s so important to have support because if you throw a power meal in and don’t work on the urges, you’ll set yourself up for the willpower cycle. We don’t want that. What we want is for it to be a part of your plan so that you can think of things in a balanced way and eat something decadent every so often without thinking so much about it. 

It’s the mental work, the urge work, being in touch with your emotions and thoughts and feelings, understanding willpower, and navigating urges so you don't have to use willpower that will allow you to be successful.

Know your body. Love your body. Set realistic goals. Create pleasure, community, and excitement in every day. Take time. Slow down. All of this will feed into how you show up. You got this.