I’m sure you’ve seen those fitness memes, “Don’t let the weekend be your weak end.” Many of us do have a different protocol for life Monday through Friday than we do Saturday and Sunday. That’s totally okay. I actually want to propose that you think about having a weekday plan and a weekend plan. For most of us the weekend is when we throw our hands in the air and say:
- “I give up, I can’t do anything on the weekend.”
- “I’m a slave to my kids’ sports.”
- “It’s always so busy.”
- “I’m so tired.”
- “I don’t care anymore, and I deserve a treat and all of that stuff.”
Instead, we can take extreme ownership of our results and the goals that we have. We can make a plan, even if that plan includes pizza and wine. Let’s figure out how the weekends might be f*cking up your progress. There are 6 areas you need to consider.
#1- Planning.
As humans, we do plan our week. We’re very busy at work, commuting, picking up kids, meetings, etc. But weekends have a little bit of a different pace. Sometimes we’re tired and we don’t want to plan. We just want to kick back and enjoy ourselves. We also tend to eat more over the weekend. This is not a problem if you’re not trying to lose weight though.
Take a look at your calendar. Do you have a wedding this weekend? Are you on vacation? Do you have 6 basketball games to go to? Do you have a concert? Make a plan! Know when you’re going to eat and or what you’re going to eat. It doesn’t have to be chicken in your pocketbook.
I mean take 5 to 10 minutes in the morning and write out what you’re eating for the day. It doesn’t have to be super specific. The reason to do this is not to be a buzzkill and take away all the fun out of life. It really is to help you make decisions ahead of time so that you don’t end up overdrinking or overeating and feeling regretful.
#2- Anticipate Obstacles.
As you’re making a plan, you also have to have a plan B, C, and D. Start anticipating obstacles. What if we don’t go to that restaurant? What if I have to eat leftovers?
You can even make a plan that has 2-3 food options for yourself so that you are sticking to your plan. You’re not making spur-of-the-moment emotional decisions on what to eat. You can solve your “problems” ahead of time.
#3- Revisit Your Goals.
As you’re planning for your day, it is a great time to do this. Think about:
- Do these plans move me toward my goals?
- Do these plans move me away from my goals?
- What are my goals?
We walk around with this idea of “I need to lose weight”, or “I want to lose weight”, but have you really thought about it further than that? Have you ever really written down your goals?
If you do want to lose weight, gain more muscle and be leaner, be more athletic, or feel more active, vibrant, and alive, then put it in writing! Get really clear about what your goals are. Because walking around with ambiguous goals means you’re just going to get ambiguous results.
#4- Are You Doing this Plan Right?
I think it’s really interesting to sort of play out what would happen if.
What would happen if I have another glass of wine? What would happen if I eat the brownie sundae? Ask yourself:
- How do I want to feel tomorrow?
- How will this choice affect me tomorrow?
- How will I feel about it tomorrow?
We know how it feels, not only physically, to feel bloated and to feel lethargic. But we also know how it feels to be regretful, guilty, and ashamed. We wonder, “What is wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this?”
So ask yourself, “How do I want to feel tomorrow?” Then work your way backward. You can reverse engineer the feeling you want to feel. Both the physical sensations of feeling lighter and less bloated and you can feel the progress in your body. Not every weekend is going to go perfectly, but not every weekend has to be off the rails.
#5- Eating for Joy.
I do think it’s great to pick things that you like to eat. It’s wonderful to plan in your pizza, beer, and pretzels or your wine and cookies. I think you should eat things that bring you joy.
Here’s how to do that. You just need to literally plan for it! If it’s Saturday, and you’re going to meet your friends for bowling and pizza, plan to have the pizza. Write down how many slices if you are worried about it. You’ll feel so much more in control and relaxed when you’ve already planned to have the pizza, and maybe even planned how much you’re going to have. There is no guilt or regret. Then you can actually eat the pizza, taste the pizza, enjoy the pizza, and probably not even eat as much as you normally would. You can 100% learn how to incorporate your favorite foods into your plan.
Before you go running off, getting your notebook and writing down all the pizza you’re going to eat, I also have a couple of other things to add. If the food we eat is the only joy we have, we might want to have a little timeout with ourselves. Figure out if eating on the weekends is the only thing we have to look forward to.
When you start to make changes, you start to break habits and patterns. Just like the habitual Friday night pizza. if I don’t have pizza Friday nights then what will I have to look forward to? It’s almost like breaking up.
There are going to be some thoughts and feelings that do come up when you choose to have the pizza, or you choose not to have the pizza. As you get further along in your journey, and you start to really look at how we have some mindless eating, habitual eating, and emotional eating, you might start to examine your relationship with food. Your relationship with trying to create joy in your life. Where else could you get joy? Where could you find happiness and pleasure other than food?
#6- Tally Mark Challenge.
For those of you who feel like you’re addicted to sugar or you love your wine or whatever, it’s normal. The way food and alcohol manufacturers work is they know how to create a product that is hyper-palatable. It is super easy to consume and even overconsume. That’s where we’re going to be fighting against the food manufacturers and human nature, and of course, neurotransmitters….namely dopamine.
Our brains get a lot of dopamine from those first couple of bites of cookies, ice cream, pizza, or chips. It’s very pleasurable. The problem is that the more we indulge, the more we let our inner 5-year-old eat all the things.
The reason I mentioned that is this idea of how to get a reward or pleasure. How can give your brain a little bit of this dopamine hit that it’s looking for in another way? I like to call this my Tally Mark Challenge.
All you need is a dry-erase marker and a mirror. It’s a visual reminder of a day when I followed my plan. I’ve used tally marks when I follow My Food Plan. You could use tally marks for getting in your walks or your weightlifting or your water or whatever. You’re trying to build a new habit with tally marks.
I give ourselves a tally mark at the end of the day if I stick to my plan for the day. The first tally mark, you might be thinking that it just looks like something crazy happened in your bathroom. But you’re going to accumulate a lot of tally marks, and your brain is going to be like, “Yeah, this is awesome.” It’s worth trying, even if you do it for two or three weeks.
For most of us, the weekend is when we throw our hands in the air and give up.
We say:
“I give up.”
“I can’t do anything on the weekend.”
“I’m a slave to my kids’ sports.”
“It’s always so busy.”
“I’m so tired.”
“I don’t care anymore, and I deserve a treat.”
Instead, we need to take full responsibility. We need to take extreme ownership of our results and the goals that we have. We can make a plan, even if that plan includes pizza and wine.
NOTES IN ANCHOR
I’m sure you’ve seen those fitness memes, “Don’t let the weekend be your weak end.”
Many of us do have a different protocol for life Monday through Friday than we do Saturday and Sunday. That’s totally okay. I actually want to propose that you think about having a weekday plan and a weekend plan. For most of us the weekend is where we throw our hands in the air and say:
“I give up, I can’t do anything on the weekend.”
“I’m a slave to my kids sports.”
“It’s always so busy.”
“I’m so tired.”
“I don’t care anymore, and I deserve a treat and all of that stuff.”
Instead, we can take extreme ownership of our results and the goals that we have. We can make a plan, even if that plan includes pizza and wine.
ABOUT THE HOST
Bonnie Lefrak is a Life & Body Transformation Expert and Founder of Self Made, a program designed to help you tackle the physical aspects of health and weight loss as well as the beliefs and thoughts that drive our habits and behaviors. It is her goal to help women create certainty in their own lives, their own results, and their own abilities.
Weight loss is not about the one “right” diet – it is about MUCH more than that. Weight loss is not about the one “right” workout. Weight loss is not about being positive and putting a big smile on. Weight loss is about FEELINGS. All of them. Not trying to bury them or hide from them but knowing and allowing the full human experience.
Weight loss is not about grinding hustling and will powering your way to some end line. Transformation (when done well) is done from the inside out.
By addressing both the physical and mental aspects of dieting and weight loss, she has coached thousands of women ages 30-55+ from all over and helped them ditch the mindsets that are holding them back, achieve permanent weight loss, and get the bangin’ body of their dreams.
Bonnie is an expert at Demystifying weight loss. She helps you unf*ck your diet brain.
She is on a mission to help women love themselves, to find PEACE in the process of losing weight, taking care of themselves, and leveraging the power they do have to become who and want they want right now.
Connect with Bonnie-
Facebook Group- https://www.facebook.com/groups/707942356603835
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/bonnielefrak/
Website- https://bonnielefrak.com
Application- https://bonnielefrak.com/application
Email- bonnie@bonnielefrak.com
