Do you have a Friday night ritual to unwind after a long stressful week that leads to weekend overeating? Is it a gateway to the big Saturday morning breakfast before the gym, before the large lunch that’s before the big night out of drinks? That’s before the big brunch on Sunday and the big roast that you have just because its Sunday? What happens on the weekends that makes us lose control and why does our social circle condone it?
Side effects of all of this weekend overeating are feeling bad, crampy, angry, bloated and unhappy. All of those home improvement and chores end up stalled because you have inflammation. Your body is too full to run the next morning, so your exercise regimen suffers.
Is it ok to overeat if its real food? What if I work harder during the week? None of that bargaining with yourself will really work. What needs to happen is to develop a healthy relationship with food.
Stop Weekend Overeating Strategy 1: Aim for good enough instead of perfect
Aim for good enough. When you are very restrictively eating during the week, you get frustrated by Friday and binge on the weekend. You see the options as perfect or crap. If you take perfect away as an option, you can have more solutions and will not give up and bomb your entire meal. For example, if you are out to eat with your family and cannot have that perfect kale salad, perhaps you can have an alternative that is good enough instead of having the burger, fries and shake, completely obliterating any progress you’ve made. The decent method you follow is better than the perfect one that you quit.
Stop Weekend Overeating Strategy 2: Let go of your food rules.
Food rules tell you what and when you can and can’t eat and how much. Once you break one of your food rules, you may give up and feel as though you should break the rest of them or binge. When, where, or how, are you likely to give into break your food rules? Are you doing so because you are truly hungry? Let go of your food rules and listen to your body and allow hunger to be your guide. When you have rules there’s nothing to guide you when you’ve broken them which can lead to an all-night binge, or maybe an all weekend binge.
Stop Weekend Overeating Strategy 3: Give up cheat days
Cheat day is the happiest day of the week, the day when you eat and drink everything that is forbidden during the week. This makes every other day of the week food purgatory. Give up cheat day and give yourself permission to choose what you wanted to eat all week long. It counters the scarcity and anxiety feelings that dieting makes you feel. What and when you eat is up to you and your hunger and fullness queues.
Stop Weekend Overeating Strategy 4: Own your choices
Skipping dessert today does not mean that you can trade it for two desserts on Friday. Playing mind games with your food just will not work. Own your choices. If you choose to eat that tub of ice cream, own nausea, and the fullness that it will bring and be okay with it. Different choices produce different outcomes.
Stop Weekend Overeating Strategy 5: Stop rationalizing
Weekends produce a million reasons to eat unhealthy meals. Busyness, boredom, travel, or other obligations are not the reason for overeating. Stop rationalizing your reasons for overeating and try to get to the heart of why you are really overeating. Sometimes you will want to eat bad food and too much of it. That may be normal, but you will see some patterns if you question yourself when you are binging.
What to do next
If you are OK with your Friday night binge eating, Saturday night large lunches followed by night out drinking, Sunday huge gut-busting brunches, and your weekend cheat day, and they all work for you, then carry on.
If you are unsure and are not convinced that you want to continue this way, start with asking yourself what does weekend overeating do for you, what does it make you feel, what is it a path to, how does it solve a problem? Some people find it is self-medication, or anti-anxiety, stimulation, to connect with other people, or de-stress to finally eat what they would like to eat when the weekend comes around. That’s why we suggest following the above steps to avoid the binge.
Try aiming for good enough instead of perfect, letting go of food rules, giving up your cheat days, owning your choices, and stop rationalizing. If you are not happy, consider a change in the manner of adjusting the way you are thinking about food during the week using the above five strategies.
Other Related Resources:
For more expert opinions:
Weekend-weekday Difference in Diet Among US Adults
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