Why do the weekends play us like this? We stay on track all week, prepare our lunches, eat our breakfast, come home to the meal we had organised, then Friday night hits us with – ooohhh relax, unwind, and chill!
If we look at it logically it makes sense, with (appreciate typically) working Monday to Friday the sense of relief towards the end of the week, coupled with the chance to relax goes hand in hand with loosening of the rules. Thinking back over the last couple of editions of the newsletter, we looked at how to balance calories and creating a calorie deficit.
One of the key takeaways (hehe pun) is that building some flexibility in is fundamental in creating a good relationship with food, one where we acknowledge the need to control, but aren’t so restrictive that we become a ‘rule breaker’. Consider it like the days we go to train, some of them are golden and it feels like the blood of unicorn is running through your veins, others may be less unicorn! – what we do is work around and keep everything moving.
This is all about you, knowing how we react and how we manage our relationship with food can offer up a great guide to how best to frame the weekend. For some staying on track and being regimented helps, whether that’s to stop straying off piste, or because a consistent style works better for you, awesome, go for it. Likewise, if the thought of being regimented fills you with dread, maybe a little bit of calorie cycling could help, and there are many ways to achieve this, recipes that offer up similar taste and style with a few less calories or having a different breakfast etc can be good tools to have in the box.
Other weekend activities can help, walking is so underrated that I’ve been known to have a little rant every now and then! Do a little home workout, then treat yourself to a longer soak in the bath. Increase your water intake, sometimes we aren’t hungry just thirsty – whilst on that note, if we do feel hungry ask yourself if you would eat an apple (or another fruit) it’s a good double check of actually being hungry.
Plan your evening meals out, again these can be something different to our weekday choices, maybe something a little more flamboyant, just with you in control and hopefully not on the phone to the takeaway…. So in short, we want to create a good relationship with food, having some of the ‘bad’ foods every now and again really isn’t a problem, having them regularly perhaps a little more so. Being regimented also isn’t a problem, provided it suits you.
Finding the right balance for you may take a little bit of time, it is worth it – Rome wasn’t built in a day after all.
Stuck for ideas? – if you have any questions or would like some help speak to a member of Team SF on info@spikefitness.co.uk or 07597215652.