Weekend Weight creep

I struggle with this too.  Inevitably it starts with Happy Hour and then appetizers and then pancakes and then Hubby wants some McD's for lunch.... bleh. 

Not that I've mastered it, but if you can keep track of in & out even on your free days (or less stringent days) then you can at least make sure you maintain instead of gain as long as you keep even with total expended energy. 

I think the problem is deprivation during the week.  If you get to the weekend and say "Woo-hoo, it's the weekend, time to celebrate and I worked so hard this week I deserve a reward" then you are setting yourself up for a binge.  Maybe if you should try letting yourself have things you 'munch' any day, in moderation of course and working it into your eating plan.  After all, this is how those people (rare as they are) who are naturally slim eat.  Nothing is off limits, it is just a matter of portion control.  Binges only occur when you think you are deprived of something in the first place.  (Just do an experiment and fill you cupboards with nothing but Chips Ahoy, I bet if you ate that mon-friday come Saturday, those cookies wouldn't seem like such a treat!!)

Having said that, I can tell you that I understand this from an intellectual standpoint, but still haven't incorporated it in to my psyche.

 

Edited by guppie 2009-06-22 7:08 PM

If you're having pounds melt off during the week and gaining on the weekend you have some serious issues.  It takes 3500 calories to lose a pound.  If you are seeing more then a 2 pound loss a week you are having a deficit of 7000 calories.  Anything more then that then you are having a server deficit of calories which could be causing your some serious issues.

If you are gaining weight in two days then you are eating a ton of excess calories, 3500 to many per pound gained.

Each situation I described above is a problem.  It sounds as if you are doing both!  I think you need to have a good look at your caloric intake.  Along with calories is your physical activity.

What would really help is if you give your stats; age, weight, height, sex along with the activities you do.  This way we can figure out what your caloric needs are each day and what is safe amount of calories to lose.

FOCUS ON YOUR HEALTH NOT YOUR WEIGHT.  Eating and living a healthy lifestyle will safely take off the weight and keep it off.

My monday through friday eat's are as follows.

Meal #1 - 06:00 AM
Food Name	Servings	Cals	Fat	Carb	Prot
Bran Flakes Cereal	1 cup	120	0.67g	30.67g	4g
Milk, whole, 3.25% milkfat	1 cup	146	7.93g	11.03g	7.86g
Meal total:		266	8.6g	41.7g	11.86g
Meal #2 - 09:00 AM
Food Name	Servings	Cals	Fat	Carb	Prot
G2 Gatorade	2.5 250ml	75	0g	17.5g	0g
Meal total:		75	0g	17.5g	0g
Meal #3 - 12:00 PM
Food Name	Servings	Cals	Fat	Carb	Prot
20 oz Diet Coke	20 oz	0	0g	0g	0g
Baked Lays	1 Small Bag	120	3g	24g	2g
Subway 6 inch veggie sandwich/wholewheat/no mayo/swiss cheese	1	230	3g	43g	18g
Meal total:		350	6g	67g	20g
Meal #4 - 05:15 PM
Food Name	Servings	Cals	Fat	Carb	Prot
BAR - Cliff (Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch)	1 bar	250	6g	43g	11g
Meal total:		250	6g	43g	11g
Day total:		941	20.6g	169.2g	42.86g
Total calories from			168.77	616.16	156.07
% calories from			17.93%	65.48%	16.59%

DINNER: Hard to break this one out but it's usually 1000-1200 calories since I workout in the evenings and need the extra caloris. All in..Monday to Friday I am about 2000-2200 calories a day.

WEEKENDS: I don't have this data...but will start tracking it so I can do some forensincs research here. I don't think I eat a lot but they may be calorie dense foods even if they are small.

I bike anywhere from 8-16 miles every other day, and run those off days an average of 2.5-5 miles a day.


I am 6'3" and about 268lbs, so my body is using up quite a bit of calories just hauling my frame around. I'm not "goby fat"...lucked out I guess with genes that balance the heft and distribute it so I look more like a football player, but regardless how I wear it, I should be roughly 185lb..(where I was when I was 22).

I'm 36 now.

I think you may be right about tracking my eats better. Something's not passing the sniff test on the weekend and I need to find out what.

Your caloric intake isn't too bad.  Depending on the chart you use your not going into starvation mode or anything.

The other question is what do you do for a living?  Desk job or manual labor?  If it's a manual labor job then I would say you are eating too little.  If it's a desk job then I think you maybe over eating way too much on the weekend.

How much weight are you loosing during the week?  How much are you gaining on the weekend?  The other part of it is if you are resting on the weekend then it may be muscle growth you are seeing.

I work a desk job. I average about 3-4lbs lost per week and on the weekends I jump up 2 lbs by Monday morning...then start the whole cycle over again.

Weekend activity is not where it should be. This weekend I took two whole day's off. It could be muscle growth, I've seen that before and the pants are not getting tighter by Monday AM. I'll simply have to focus on the caloric intake on the weekend. I can't be eating 7000 calories more than M-F...I have to believe that kind of intake would make me sick as the stomach would have to expand a lot to hold all that.

Kinda excited thinking it may be muscle growth...I need to get to the gym and start slamming around some barbells again maybee.

I wouldn't be too worried about it.  If you add everything up, you're looking at a 2 lb loss a week.  That's about perfect.  All of your health experts will tell you not to lose more then 2 pounds a week.

I would say continue taking the weekends off.  Just track your calories for a weekend to make sure you're not gorging yourself or anything.

Your body needs recovery time.  Psychologically speaking, having a couple "free" days of eating more liberal can do you wonders.

Plus, there might be some other factors at work... I usually weigh about 2 pounds more on Sat/Sun/Mon than I do for the entire rest of the week.  The culprit seems to be that I spend all weekend training or otherwise outdoors, and drink lots of fluids all day long.  During the week, I work in a laboratory and have to take a break to drink water (because of the radioactivity and poisons in the lab, no food or drink is allowed.)  So I'm always up 2 lbs. water weight when I can drink as much water as I want to

When I'm happy with my weight and body fat, I can eat "clean" as I like to call it Mon-Sat evening, then be more lax--a nice dinner Sat eve, a few glasses of wine. Then on Sunday I usually have a meal I wouldn't normally have (like white pasta, cheesy things, something higher in fat, etc) OR a dessert like ice cream. That is my MAINTANANCE diet. I won't lose this way, but I won't gain. Other friends trying to lose weight will say, "how come you can eat pizza or ice cream, etc once a week and stay lean and I can't?". My answer is that I'm already where I want to be. I'm not trying to lose. So I can train like a maniac and eat like a saint 6 days a week, but afford to cheat a little on the weekends. It doesn't seem fair but for those of us who are 30+ and not blessed with good genes, we have to really watch everything that goes into our bodies, hard workouts or not.

If you're goal is weight loss, you have to more diligent. Again, not fair, but eating healthy 80% of the time probably won't work unless you're very overweight and out of shape, which you're not. I'm guessing you're looking to shed those "vanity" pounds as I like to call them. Those are tough.

You have to track calories as you've shown for every day of the week, weekends included. This doesn't mean that you can't treat yourself every once in awhile, but if you want to lean out it has to be very controlled, like maybe allowing an additional 100-200 calories one day of the week. Otherwise, you're doing a maintenance diet and it sounds like this is not what you want to be doing right now.

Do you drink Alcohol on the weekend?

For me, my food intake is the same every day but when the weekend comes around, I drink. Even if I only have 2 glasses of wine, my body notices and my weight goes up. The thing is that by Tuesday I'm back to my starting weight, so I've deduced that alcohol bloats me so I am carrying around water weight until the alcohol exits my system. Also I usually do my long rides and runs on Sat and Sun. During the summer, I drink a lot more and my body stores that liquid as well.

Track your food online (try dailyplate.com or fitday.com) and do it over the weekend as well. Pay attention to your liquid intake, alcohol and otherwise and eventually you'll find the culprit.

Good question with the alcohol.  Many of my friends who can't lose weight fall victim to the weekend drinking.  In addition to adding empty calories, while alcohol is in your system your metabolism becomes depressed and won't function to its fullest.  Add to that, most people tend to make poor food decisions after drinking.

I also believe all the weight lifting is slowing the loss down. Being of endomorphic body composition....I can gain some Grade A pretty quickly...and underestimated my gains at 36 years old. I've got a duathlon in August..(short route)..and the mens health urbanathalon in Oct so I'm not training aerobically as much in an attempt to direct more calories to muscle gain....My first Triathlon is not schedlued till next spring....Come DEC I am going to jump back into "two-a-days" on aerobic and try to lean out tightly for the events.