How to Win the Weekend Without Feeling Like You’re Dieting

Ep 186 - WordPress (2) (1)


Since 2013, Paul has worked one-on-one with nearly 1,500 men and women who ALL have something in common:

Staying on track during the weekends is a significant challenge!

Can you relate?

If you find yourself consistently taking five steps forward and two major steps backward each week, then buckle up and get your notepad ready because this episode is for you.

In today’s episode, Paul and Micheala discuss how to begin making subtle changes to reframe your mindset and relationship with the weekends so they work for you, rather than against you.

They detail actionable steps to take to help you crush consistency without feeling like you’re dieting, and ultimately detail costly mistakes they’ve made and observed in their clients to help you avoid making the same mistakes.

If you’ve struggled with nutrition consistency on the weekends this episode is a must-listen! And when you’re ready to further your personal development to achieve your best self from the inside out, click here to work directly with Paul and Micheala for a 12-month transformational year.

Key Highlights

  • Discover how to rebuild and reframe your relationship with the weekends to better prepare for success.
  • Learn how your current half-assed approach to navigating your weekend nutrition is doing more to work against your goals than you may believe…
  • Gain clarity on what successful weekend nutrition navigating looks like to you in order to best prepare to align the appropriate action steps to make it happen
  • Learn how Paul has taken these flexible strategies and infused them into his everyday eating to live a more confident, in-control, and calm life when it comes to navigating his nutrition choices!

Episode Resources

Read our “Maintain Your Weight Loss After A Diet” Blueprint

Join The 5% Community

Transcript

Micheala Barsotti:

Hey, everyone, welcome back to other episode of The 5% Way Podcast. Paul and I are so happy that you’re here and we are so grateful that you choose to listen to us each week. If you happen to be new here, we hope that you enjoy today’s episode and that you stick around and listen to us more. As always, if you find this episode valuable, make sure that you share it along with a friend. This really helps us towards our goal of reaching more people, spreading that valuable information all around to help you achieve true transformation from the inside out so that you can show up as your best self. And before we dive into today’s awesome episode, let’s take a moment to share some positives that we’re celebrating within The 5%. Paul, you want to kick us off today? How are you doing first of all?

Paul Salter:

I am great and I hope you are as well. And yes, I love to kick us off. I was just on a one on one call with one of our fellow 5% community members. And it was so just incredibly, I guess the best way to describe it is it made my heart happy to hear her share how her primary goal for joining the 5% community was to learn how to keep the weight off after a diet. She had had a lot of success losing weight in the first place, but could never really seem to sustain that success that she achieved.

And what she shared with me, and by the way, not only has she kept her weight off for multiple months now, but she has gotten so much more than just nutrition when it comes to her experience in the 5% community. She loves how there is so much of a guidance and a push, if you will, towards this path of self discovery and having more self-awareness and really being able to have frameworks and tools to evaluate her current level of emotional intelligence and maturity, what her self talk sounds like, what she can do throughout day to overcome negative thoughts and limiting beliefs and how she’s been able to implement behaviors that better serve her much more effectively to the tune that they’re actually sticking around.

And it just really… Like I said, made my heart warm because so much of what we do is so much more than nutrition. If I had to put a number on it, we do 100% emotional management. We do 100% behavior change, 100% positive psychology and self talk and 100% nutrition strategies because we are 100% committed to helping you feel, look and be your best. And it takes all of those elements having equal attention brought to them to bring the best out in you.

Micheala Barsotti:

It’s so funny because as you were saying that I was thinking of a conversation I just had with my mom this morning. So you might have heard me shout her out on a previous episode, but my mom is in our fundamentals program and she’s just been, she’s made so many positive changes to her lifestyle in the past three months. And obvious, we all have got into this field because we want to help people. But when you are helping somebody that’s so close to your heart already, it’s like that much more. Just her success is my success. I just love seeing her so happy and today’s conversation we were just chatting, she tells me all of our wins every day, she’s celebrating them.

And today we were talking about how many other areas of her life have improved. The weight loss is really cool. She’s seen a lot of success there, but it’s a correlation of all the things that she’s done to change in her life that has made the weight loss happen and fall off. And even just being more productive by following a schedule. She learned that from us and now she’s sticking to it, she’s following through on her word. And it’s just amazing, we get too hyper focused on, is this the right food I eating? Should I eat at this time? Should I do this? We don’t tap into all the other areas like we do in the 5%. And that’s why you remain struggling. So it’s just so cool to see all the success.

Speaker 3:

It is. I love seeing her win. I just, yeah. I love having here in our group and she’s so coachable and I think equally is important is a fucking action taker, I love it.

Micheala Barsotti:

Definitely. All right. I think it’s time to dive on in and today we are talking about a very highly requested topic. This is something that I actually just put a poll on my social media the other day asking. And I had a very large amount of people saying that they struggle with weekend consistency. I know in my past I struggled with it for many years and clients and members, it’s just very common that we do really well Monday through Friday, and then on Thursday maybe, then we get to the weekend and then it’s just a crap shoot. And so today we’re going to really talk about the common reasons why weekends become such a disaster for so many of us, why it’s so hard to stay on track. And then we’re going to talk about some effective and tangible strategies to help you become more confident navigating your weekend so that you feel like you can absolutely still enjoy your life to the fullest, but you’re also still staying on track.

You’re not getting to Monday and feeling just so upset and regretful of your choices. That’s the biggest piece. So as we dive into the mindset piece here, I really came up with these based on my own struggles, because like I said, in the past, early on in my health and fitness journey, I did it all wrong and I was solely chasing numbers and the way I looked and so I was always in a dieting mindset. And Monday through Thursday, that was, I was dieting and then Friday would roll around and I’d get a little looser. And then Saturday really bad. And then Sunday was probably a cheat day. So one of the biggest things, as I just mentioned, you’re eating too low of calories during the week. Our bodies are really smart and it’s only a matter of time before they start demanding more. So if you create this large deficit for yourself during the week, well, no wonder why you see food on the weekends and you’re like, give it to me, right? We’re setting ourselves up for that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Many of us can experience or relate to that experience on a daily basis too. Specifically if you’re somebody who works out in the morning, you might work out fasted and then slowly get around to breakfast and feel like you’re burning so many calories during your workout. Your Apple Watch, or Watch Band tells you just burned 800 calories, yada, yada, yada, but by not eating before or during your morning workout, you put yourself in a position in which you’re playing calorie catch up the rest of the day, which is not a fun position to be in.

Especially if you’re actually in a calorie deficit trying to lose weight too, because then you already have less to work with. And you’re trying to play catch up all day. You’re hungry, your energy and your cravings are fluctuating through the roof all throughout the day. And you have trouble focusing, except of course, focusing on food and what you’re going to eat and the next time you’re going to eat. And then basically that same framework is applied on a Monday through Sunday basis as well. If you’re playing catch up the first part of the week, because you’re starving yourself, inevitably you are going to break, you’re going to succumb to those cravings and temptations and find yourself back square one seven days later.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah. There’s also sometimes I think of a lot of self sabotage in our thoughts because we reward ourselves. This could be a whole nother one in itself, but we reward ourselves for doing so great for a couple of days that then the weekend comes and it’s like, we allow ourselves to let loose, which ends up being a little bit too much, because again, we’re very restrictive. So then it just kind of bleeds into that.

And that leads me into the second one, similar to eating low calorie. You’re being too restrictive during the week with your food choices. If you’re following a plan that you don’t love, if you’re never eating foods that you enjoy, then it’s no wonder why when you get to the weekend where we might have social occasion or you’re out at a restaurant where the food is a lot yumier that you just can’t control yourself because you’ve been so restrictive.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. You can have cookies on Tuesday. You can have peanut butter every day of the week for every meal even. Everything goes Monday through Sunday. It all comes back to these unsustainable, unnecessary, rigid frameworks we place on in ourselves that ultimately cultivate this night and day difference between the weekday and the weekend where we can do certain things these days. We can’t do certain things the other days. And it really just sets us up to take maybe four and a half steps forward. And then three steps backwards the Friday, Saturday, Sunday. But what really happens is we take such huge steps backwards Friday and Saturday, Sunday after depriving ourselves of things we enjoy. And just simply not eating enough those first four days that those three steps kind of multiply and become five, six or seven steps. Therefore, our Monday through Sunday progress nets us a negative game towards our goal. And we wonder why we feel stuck and are constantly searching for the next diet or magic bullet because we take any consistent approach.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yep. And that’s why having an individualized plan that tailors to your needs and your wants and your preferences is so important because if you are somebody who loves ice cream so much, and you don’t want to just not include that in your lifestyle, well, you can figure out a way to make it fit. You don’t have to eat ice cream and then call that day, “I effed up”. That’s what happens usually when we save those foods for the weekend, then we view it in our head as I already messed up. So then F it for the rest of the day kind of thing.

And the last one that usually leads to this is we have no plan going into the weekend. Usually all of us have routine and schedule throughout the week, but then we get to the weekend and we don’t plan anything. Why do you think that is Paul? Why do we do this?

Speaker 3:

We got to ghost this night and day difference. We’ve put the weekends on a pedestal. There’s no work. There’s far less stress. We don’t have to be up early. Nobody needs anything or demands or expects anything of us. And therefore, hey, we just put in a good 40 or 50 hours in the office. We deserve to eat like an asshole and do whatever the fuck we want, when we want, when in reality all of your success and your path to feeling, looking and being your best is a reflection of what the little things you do on a consistent and basis. And again, if you’re taking four steps forward and six or seven steps back, you’re never getting there and having the appropriate mental framework and then equally as important physical behavioral framework for the weekend is an incredibly strong game changer.

And for me, it never really made sense why there had to be such a discrepancy because I still want to feel good on the weekends. Yeah, maybe I’m going to have more opportunity to indulge, but my structure I’ve cultivated throughout the week is there for a reason, it serves my highest best self. I want that, those other two days or three days of the week as well. So what that means is if I want to adapt to the scheduling changes and stress changes and extracurricular changes on my plate for those few days, I can just make a couple subtle, yet powerful changes to my nutrition, my meal prep, or my weekend to accommodate the fact that I have more opportunities to enjoy social occasions on the weekends, but still don’t have to just fall victim of eating like an asshole and finding myself in a position to start over again on Monday.

Micheala Barsotti:

Absolutely. Yeah. And when all of these above factors that we just talked about are present for so long, what starts to happen is you build this habit of living for the weekend and you can’t see my quotes here, but you’re white not going through the weekdays. You’re not enjoying the process whatsoever. So when the weekend comes, it’s that immediate, I need to let loose and enjoy myself mindset. So overall it’s not good. And we want to try to… We want to get out of this loophole, this negative loophole.

So, before we go into some strategies, I want you to stop and just ask yourself a few important questions. If you have a pen and paper here, write it down. If not, come back and listen to this later and write them down because it’s important. You want to get to the root of the problem for you. So asking yourself a couple of questions, one being, why do you view the weekday or the weekend different than a weekday? Paul, you just kind of touched on this. Second one, what part of your day looks different on the weekday versus the weekend? And why do you frame weekdays and weekends different? Why do you allow yourself to be more relaxed here? Why do you not allow a plan to be present?

So when you try to become a lot more clear on where it is that you’re specifically struggling, you can put an area of focus and then you can kind of develop that strategy for the area. Maybe it’s a combination of all the things that we just mentioned, but bring more clarity to where it is specifically that you struggle. For myself, I know when I would was really restrictive, I was actually pretty good till about Saturday afternoon. That’s when it went downhill. And then Sunday was always my designated cheat day. So it was like, even if I didn’t want something, I was going to have it and go off the rails because it’s cheat day.

So diving into some strategies to help you conquer your weekend to feel more confident and to really just feel like you’re in control. Number one, obvious, but so important. We have to have a plan, have some prepped food on hand. For this, I always recommend maybe Monday through Thursday, because it’s easier for your schedule, you individually prepped food. But then on the weekends you just do a bulk prep so that you have some protein and some easy options to just throw meals together. But it’s a must. You absolutely have to do that.

And then I would say two, have some kind of a schedule, even if it’s a lot looser, maybe you generally know what your day’s going to look like so that you can plan around that.

And building off of that, I highly highly recommend keeping your morning routine as close as you can to the weekday. There’s a reason you do that morning routine there in the week, right? Paul, you mentioned you want to feel good. You want to set your day up for success, do that on the weekends. And then my last tip of advice here is start your day with movement. This always helps you feel better. You get those endorphins going, and then you follow that up with a good breakfast. Those two things are just going to really kick start your day and help you still have a bit of the weekday routine, even if the rest of your day looks different.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I mean, fail to plan, plan to fail. It’s really as simple as that and one of the biggest game changers I began implementing years ago and now share with everyone I possibly can now, will listen to me, is probably one of the most proven effective of simple strategies. And I’m kind of jumping ahead into point number two. So I’ll ahead and dive into is, eat one fewer meal per day on the weekends compared to weekdays because chances are, you’re sleeping in a bit more. Your schedule’s a little different maybe instead of getting up at 5am, you sleep till seven. Instead of going to bed by 9:00 PM, you can stay up till 11 or 12 on occasion. Your day’s just different, adjust accordingly. You also have more opportunity to dine out which means bigger portions, more calories, less opportunity to control said portions.

Eating one less meal per day is such an invaluable strategy to give you more wiggle room and flexibility to navigate the inevitable social occasion that you should be attending and enjoying free of any thoughts and worry, anxiety, guilt, or frustration related about or related to food. So that plan is important. And one of the biggest strategies you can actually take away from today’s episode and begin implementing to build a plan is if you actually eat four meals per day, Monday through Friday, maybe you’ll benefit from meeting only three times per day, Saturday and Sunday, to better align with the schedule that the weekend typically brings.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah. And I’m just going to address this because condensing your meals does not mean starve yourself all day and then have that big dinner-

Paul Salter:

Bingo.

Micheala Barsotti:

… Whatever with friends. I know from experience that does not work, that is going to set you up for failure because by the time you get to that meal, you were going to be so ravenous and you were going to just go buck wild. So it means strategize, plan accordingly, still spread your meals out appropriately. If you are playing around with… Save a little bit more carbs and fat for this bigger dinner you know you’re going to have, you’re still having ample protein and vegetables throughout the day and there’s lot of strategy behind it. So I just want to make that part very clear because I know that’s definitely a common mistake.

Paul Salter:

Yes.

Micheala Barsotti:

And then number three is having non-negotiables. We should all have non-negotiables every single day. And that includes the weekends. So for example, for me, some of my non-negotiables every single morning, I start my day with 24 ounces of water. Every single day. Doesn’t matter if it’s Monday or if it’s Saturday. I get a one walk in every single day or I do push myself to a step goal daily but in the rare occasion that I wasn’t going to hit my step goal because I don’t know some event on the weekend or whatever, I still push myself to always make sure I’m getting in an intentional walk every day. So it goes back to that intentional movement. And then the other thing is I try for one big salad every single day. Paul, I know you do this as well.

Paul Salter:

Yep.

Micheala Barsotti:

Do you have any other non-negotiables that are worth sharing?

Paul Salter:

My morning routine is non-negotiable and it looks different when I have different priorities in different days. So I have three different variations. Meaning one is like a less than five minute version. One is more of like a 20 minute version. One is my vacation, not a fucking thing to do variation, which is 60 to 120 minutes, which just really just includes a lot of reading and maybe some more meditation. But my morning routine is non-negotiable, but that primes me for the day. It gives me five minutes or more of peace, quiet, stillness, silence, and solitude to really collect my thoughts, hone in on what matters most to me, and be able to focus on how I want to show up with intention to throughout the day. So that’s non-negotiable Monday through Sunday.

Micheala Barsotti:

I love that so much. And I love how you have different plans depending on how much time a day you can devote to that. So every day, no matter what you’re getting it done, but it’s just depends on the amount of time you have. That’s really good.

Paul Salter:

That’s something we taught, we did a whole, full workshop. If you remember, in the 5% community on 3M to morning routine, movement, meditation and me and yeah. Three different variations. It’s great.

Micheala Barsotti:

Awesome. And number four here is creating boundaries for events or social occasions. So I want to start this one by saying that some form of a plan should always be present. We always want to have some form of structure. Now how much structure, how much of a plan that’s going to look very different depending on the event, the person and whatever. But creating boundaries can be extremely beneficial for you. And I’m especially talking to those busy bees that are social butterflies that always have something going on. And they’re like, how do I navigate all of these things? And if you are somebody who’s like, my weekends are always jampacked with events and activities. Well then this is going to be really helpful strategy for you because creating boundaries are going to allow you to still have fun, live in the moment and enjoy some of your favorite foods and drinks without feeling like you have to restrict or say no to it all.

But you also still keep things reeled in and checked, where you’re not completely just going crazy. And then having those feelings of regret and anxiety the next day, because you don’t feel good. So that’s kind of what we want to avoid. And as an example here, how you would put boundaries in place, let’s say you have a birthday party you’re going to on the evening and there’s going to be a ton of great food. You’re going to be drinking all night, all these different things. Well, let’s say you want to put some boundaries in place. Maybe you start by saying, I’m going to have two drinks and then I’m going to switch to water. So I’m still going to join myself, have a few. But then after those two drinks, I can slam them both. Or I can space them out appropriately throughout the night, but what it is, I’m going to have two or maybe you say I’m going to allow myself to have any food that I want at that party, but I’m only going to have one plate of food.

So I’m going to go up once, put whatever I want on it. And then that’s it. And then another example even is with dessert specifically, if you say, or, I mean, I guess this could work with any food, but maybe you say I’m going to have as much dessert as I want, but I’m only going to choose one dessert. And I heard this once that somebody was saying, you’re less likely to overindulge when you have the same thing in front of you. There’s only so many brownies you’re going to have, but let’s say you have a whole dessert table and you got a little brownie and cheesecake and cookies, then you’re going to keep grabbing and picking at it. So just, I guess, creating some form a boundary for yourself. And my biggest tip with boundaries is that you have to create it before you get to that event.

Paul Salter:

Yeah.

Micheala Barsotti:

You cannot get there and then decide, okay, this is what I’m going to do because chances are, it’s not going to work. This has to be thought out and planned beforehand.

Paul Salter:

I like that a lot. And it’s very similar to essentially painting the picture on what success looks like when it comes to navigating that social occasion. I mean, so many of us set these big audacious goals that we get really clear on what success looks like. And that same principle can apply to a teeny tiny goal of winning that social occasion or navigating with confidence, freedom, and ease. We just need to know what success looks like. And if we don’t know what it looks like, we’re never going to know if we’re successful, if we’re going to be called spinning our wheels. And if we don’t feel successful, we don’t have a perception, there’s progress. We’re far more likely to say, fuck it, throw in the towel and eat every single piece of dessert, for example, in sight.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah. I just had this conversation with a one-on-one client recently. And it was funny because he said something to me like, “I have to plan for the rest of my life.” And I laugh, but I’m like to some degree, I mean, there are going to be, eventually you’re going to get to the point where you have so much more control where you go to things and you just kind of know how you want to act, because at the end of the day, how you act is going to determine and how you feel. So it’s all going to relate there. So it just depends. You don’t have to be crazy setting boundaries all the time, but if you’re trying to achieve your goals while also still navigating social occasions, et cetera, this is a very important strategy you need to implement.

Paul Salter:

Yeah. Your plan or your action steps just become a part of who you are. They’re part of your identity. So maybe you’re known as the person who always has no more than two drinks and enjoys herself mindfully, but with no restriction. And if that’s what makes you feel your best, and that’s a good thing to be known as that person. So setting boundaries every week is making it seem like it’s a much bigger time and energy commitment than it really is. It’s a couple quick mental checks in your mind. You can probably do an under 30 or 60 seconds and it starts to happen on autopilot the more you do it.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yep. And I put a little bonus tip in there. So our fifth tip, I believe, is connecting our boundaries to our why. We have a whole episode on our why and how powerful it is to get extremely clear here. But you have to be able to keep the big picture in mind. Let’s say you are chasing specific goals. Then when you’re in a situation where your feelings take over and you don’t really want to do the thing that aligns with your goals, you have your powerful why that brings you back to reality and reminds you of why you’re doing what you’re doing, why you’re going to make the decision that aligns with your goals rather than the decision that you want to make just in that moment. Anything to add to that one, Paul, I know you’re really… You do a really great job of just expressing the importance of having a why.

Paul Salter:

The why is something that’s always there to fall back on no matter how well prepared you are, life’s always going to throw a curve ball of some sorts. And the why is an undefeated answer or solution to any challenge life will throw at you. It doesn’t mean that having a clear why guarantees the easy way out or an easy path forward, but it guarantees clarity, awareness and simplicity, which sets you up for success.

Micheala Barsotti:

It’s also really a good determining factor as to if your why is really deep enough and is your why, if you find yourself, I keep going back to this thing but it’s not stopping me from doing something that doesn’t align with my goal. So then maybe you need to peel back the onion more to realize what is it that connects you to that?

Paul Salter:

That’s a great point.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah. Cool. So let’s recap quickly, those strategies to help you feel more in control and confident in your weekend choices. Number one, having some kind of a plan. Your weekend doesn’t have to look identical to your weekday, but try your best to keep what you can the same. As we mentioned your mornings, that’s easiest. How you start your day. Number two, being condensing your meals. So as Paul mentioned, instead of four meals, maybe you bring it down to three. Creating non-negotiables for yourself. This is just all about going into your day with intention and having some form of control. Creating boundaries, so this is how we practice flexibility while still in hanging onto some structure. And then the last one, connecting it all back to your why. So get really real with yourself and make sure that the goals that you are telling yourself that you want to achieve, that you’re willing to do what it takes to achieve them. We have to keep that bigger picture in mind. Anything else you want to add here, Paul?

Paul Salter:

I think this was an incredibly thorough and valuable episode. No, I think if you as a listener take the time to listen to this possibly twice, three times, if need be and implement these subtle mental, emotional, and behavioral frameworks that Michaela and I’ve shared with you’re going to notice a 180 degree shift in your weekend. And when you’re able to change your week from four steps forward, six steps back to seven steps forward every week, while also still feeling psychologically fulfilled because you’re not feeling restricted, you’re feeling flexible. You do the math plus seven every week versus minus one or two goes a very long way into accumulating significant sustainable progress.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yep. This is not… In my past year, so when I was struggling, it was literally because of two days. And it was so frustrating when you are so on point or maybe a day and a half when you’re so on point for so many days out of the week, but you can do a lot of damage in a couple of days if you’re not careful. So it’s just so important that you really figure out how to navigate your weekends better so you can gain more consistency.

Well, we thank you guys so much for listening today. We really hope that you did find this episode valuable. And if you did make sure that you share it with a friend that you think will enjoy it and benefit from it. And if you haven’t done so already, we would love for you to leave us a genuine review and rating on Apple Podcast or wherever it is that you listened to this episode. All right, we will catch you next week.

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Paul Salter

Paul Salter is a Registered Dietitian and Founder of The 5% Way. Since 2013, Paul has worked one-on-one with nearly 1,500 men and women, helping them to collectively lose tens of thousands of pounds of body fat and keep it off for good. He’s also published nearly 1,000 articles, two books, and 175 podcast episodes (and counting) on all things related to our five core elements of sustainable weight loss.

MICHEALA-1

Micheala

Micheala is a Transformation and Community Success Coach. She specializes in bringing out the absolute best in you and helping you see that you already have everything you need to achieve the transformational results you desire. Micheala will be an incredible asset for you on your journey since she went through the process herself and has seen long lasting results.
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The Maintain My Weight Loss After A Diet Blueprint

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