Why Am I Good All Week Then Ruin It at the Weekend?

And I think first we need to sort of break down what we mean by good.

What does good Monday to Thursday actually mean? Because for some people, they see good as eating as little as possible or cutting foods out, like no chocolate, no pudding.

no alcohol, having salads, trying to be perfect in their own eyes.

And they get to Friday and they're thinking, oh my goodness, thank gosh, it's Friday.

I'm going to have a takeaway and some wine.

I'm going to snack, so we're going for meals out.

I'm going to eat the dessert.

And then we get to Sunday night and then we think, I'll start again on Monday.

And what is actually happening is it's this weekday restriction that contributes to to a weekend of overeating.

And if we were just to put this into like mathematical terms, if we were to do like a simple calorie example, and I'm not saying you should count calories, by the way, I'm just using it for in terms of energy here, energy needed.

So if we say hypothetical basis of somebody might be 2000 calories, Monday to Thursday, they're like, right, I'm going to bank myself some calories.

I'm going to eat 1500 a day.

So then over the four days, it would be a 2,000 calorie deficit.

Then they get to Friday to Sunday.

And, you know, Friday night, they're having a takeaway, having some pudding and then some wine.

And on Saturday, they're going to be going out as well, Sunday, et cetera, et cetera.

And then they're having 2,800 a day, which would be very, very easy to do.

Particularly when we're going out or we're having alcohol, etc.

It's very easy to do that.

So that is all of a sudden 800 extra per day.

So times by three over the course of those three days, over maintenance, 2,400 calories, that weekly deficit that we created.

has completely disappeared.

So the whole eating less Monday to Thursday, trying to bank up for the weekend can actually make the weekend rebound even worse when we're telling ourselves that we deserve it when in actual fact we're just completely undoing everything that we've done in the week.

And then for a lot of people that can make, if they're trying to lose weight, it can make weight loss really, really tricky, particularly mentally.

because they're working so hard Monday to Thursday and then just allowing that flexibility but kind of a bit too much flexibility that undoes it all and it can be a really really terrible vicious cycle to be in because then we just feel like we're working hard and we're not seeing the rewards from it.