Damage control?

Aupairgirl29

Help, I am going away for a weekend and both nights we are going drinking. It is just me and a friend, and I cannot not drink as it is the whole point of the weekend away - blowing off steam and having fun! How do I do damage limitation? I feel like every weekend there is drinking or a meal out and it is so difficult to have a deficit with these activities around every corner! I am on a year out abroad and don't want to deprive myself of this experience but I am so unhappy with my weight gain - catch 22 ey! I have just started, 5'3 149 pounds aiming to eat between 1200 and 1400 cal a day and just started doing the 30 day challenge.

darkrose20

Help, I am going away for a weekend and both nights we are going drinking. It is just me and a friend, and I cannot not drink as it is the whole point of the weekend away - blowing off steam and having fun! How do I do damage limitation? I feel like every weekend there is drinking or a meal out and it is so difficult to have a deficit with these activities around every corner! I am on a year out abroad and don't want to deprive myself of this experience but I am so unhappy with my weight gain - catch 22 ey! I have just started, 5'3 149 pounds aiming to eat between 1200 and 1400 cal a day and just started doing the 30 day challenge.

You plan. Figure out where you're going and what their menu looks like. You have to take into account your weekly deficit. If you're in a 500/day (1 lb per week) plan, then you have to be 3500 below your maintenance calories in a week. Let's say you don't plan and you simply splurge when you go out and eat/drink your way through enough to bring your daily total to 2500 cals. Let's face it, you can easily eat 2000 cals in a "portion" of an entre at any chain restaurant these days. That would put you (gulp) 1100 cals over in that day. Do that twice and you're 2200 over. You're still in a weekly deficit of 1300 cals (assuming you are on 1 lb/ week mode). Clearly, those two days won't negate ALL of your deficit, just quite a bit of it. You may experience slower than the usual weight loss, but still lose, if you do nothing to counter the "splurge".

You have to figure out what to do about the excess you consumed. You could get some exercise in (I tend to go dancing when I know I'm going to be with "the girls", so the dancing burns off the splurge meal/drink.). You could eat under your reccomended calories each day of the week (keepping 1200 or more each day) to tally up enough leftover calories (1100 in this example, hard to do with just diet) to balance out the splurge. It's up to you, really. It's about moderation and learning to live the way you will be able to sustain it.

I would exercise off the 1100 calories either a little each day of the week or just on these days, say, by making it dinner/drinks/dancing/take a walk/do something physical.

Learn which menu items to avoid. For instance, instead of having the loaded cheese fries with bacon and ranch and cheese and more grease as an appetizer, maybe choose a shrimp cocktail or the chips and salsa option. Maybe substutue a beef burger for a turkey burger...or try the fish. Also, if you want a coctail, steer clear of the fruity drinks. Steer clear of beer and wine. Try a vodka drink or a shot in diet soda or tonic water. There's a web site that tells you the calories in your alcoholic beverage...Get Drunk Not Fat (www.getdrunknotfat.com).

Seriously, it's all in the planning. I had a really hard time of it at first. Me and my other half tend to go to eat on the spur of the moment, so I'd be on the smart phone looking up calorie content of dishes at the place we were trying to order from and flipping back to MFP to see how many calories I had left and so on. UGH. It was a pain, but he was patient enough with me to wait it out. Sometimes, I'd be agonizing over where to go to eat before we walked out the door (like, for a half hour or more). I'm pretty good now about figuring out what will and won't fit in my cals and not stressing it so much, if I go slightly over. I admit, every once in a blue moon I think "screw it" and go buck wild. I'm still losing (maybe not as fast as I want...), and I'm having fun while doing it.

Hope this helps! :drinker:

Aupairgirl29

Thank you so much! It is reassuring to hear I can still have fun while losing weight!

eldamiano

Help, I am going away for a weekend and both nights we are going drinking. It is just me and a friend, and I cannot not drink as it is the whole point of the weekend away - blowing off steam and having fun! How do I do damage limitation? I feel like every weekend there is drinking or a meal out and it is so difficult to have a deficit with these activities around every corner! I am on a year out abroad and don't want to deprive myself of this experience but I am so unhappy with my weight gain - catch 22 ey! I have just started, 5'3 149 pounds aiming to eat between 1200 and 1400 cal a day and just started doing the 30 day challenge.

Drink Lambrini instead of beer....

onionparsleysage

There's also the idea in dieting of a cheat day.

Friday: Stick to your caloric goal. Nurse on one drink, like a Miller's light.
Saturday: Go nuts! Pina colada, etc.
Sunday: Stick to your caloric goal. No drinking, it's Sunday!

If you don't want to plan ahead, then pick filling low-calorie dishes. Like order a dinner-sized salad instead of a burger if you're not counting carefully that day.

darkrose20

There's also the idea in dieting of a cheat day.

Friday: Stick to your caloric goal. Nurse on one drink, like a Miller's light.
Saturday: Go nuts! Pina colada, etc.
Sunday: Stick to your caloric goal. No drinking, it's Sunday!

If you don't want to plan ahead, then pick filling low-calorie dishes. Like order a dinner-sized salad instead of a burger if you're not counting carefully that day.

^^ This ^^ One day of "cheating" isn't going to blow your whole deficit (Unless you REALLY swing for the fences...)

darkrose20

There's also the idea in dieting of a cheat day.

Friday: Stick to your caloric goal. Nurse on one drink, like a Miller's light.
Saturday: Go nuts! Pina colada, etc.
Sunday: Stick to your caloric goal. No drinking, it's Sunday!

If you don't want to plan ahead, then pick filling low-calorie dishes. Like order a dinner-sized salad instead of a burger if you're not counting carefully that day.

Careful of the salads. Some of the salads in certain chain restaurants can have as many calories as the burgers.