New Here. Weekend=Scary

Perhaps you just need to look at things from a different perspective. So your normal routine is to eat out for most of your meals over the weekend. Are you making drastic changes now but once you reach your goal weight are you planning to go back to eating out for most of your meals over the weekend? If yes, then odds are you're going to put the weight right back on. Doing what you did before will lead to the same results later.

Instead, what you need to focus on is learning how to manage your lifestyle while losing weight so that you can maintain your weight once you reach your goal. So if your lifestyle includes restaurant meals on the weekends, then either work to find menu items that fit your calorie goal, eat only half your meals and box the rest for leftovers or cut down on the amount of times you eat out. The idea is to make changes now that are going to be sustainable for the rest of your life.

One thing I do is to exercise more on the weekends. During the week, I might only manage 60-90 min/day, but on the weekend, I can get out and be active for hours.

And not only do I "exercise" (long bicycle rides, hikes, etc.), I'm generally more active on the weekends. During the week, I have a full-time office job and I am a part-time student. So I sit a lot. But on the weekend, I'm up and around doing more housework, wandering about the yard and surrounding area with my camera, and so on.

As far as eating out goes, we've stopped getting pizza on the weekends, and that has helped immensely! But it has worked out that since I started here at MFP, I've had my birthday on one weekend, on two weekends friends from out of town have visited, and we had dinner meeting yesterday ... so all of a sudden I've been forced into eating-out situations.

One thing I've found has really helped is that I look up the menus of the places we've gone, and I've looked up or done the calorie calculations (a few sites have been nice enough to provide that for me), and I've chosen the lowest or lower calorie options.

For example, last weekend, we went to La Porchetta. I looked over the selection and discovered that several were quite high, and then I found that the spinach and ricotta cannelloni wasn't too bad. That's one of my favourites anyway, so that's what I ordered.

It does require a little extra thought and preparation.

caaber01 wrote: »

Thanks, guys. I will definitely need to look things up when it comes to restaurants. One of my major downfalls is McDonald's coke. I hate diet coke but love,love, love their coke lol! I've gone a week without it and have been drinking so much water. Yes, I do want this to be a lifetime change. One of my biggest problems is that I'm terribly picky. I hate almost every vegetable out there. I also hate fish and pork. I've been eating so. much. chicken - anyone have tasty chicken recipes so these tenderloins don't wear me down!?

I wish I had better advice for the soda component. I've been drinking diet coke since junior high, so I actually oddly enough like the taste. Some Mcdonald's have coke zero - I don't know if that's something you'd like or not. I'd just get water if they have that option in the meals (I actually haven't been to Mcdonald's in a while, and I know when I went there last I just got diet coke...). When I go to sit-down restaurants I definitely get water, but that's because I'm cheap and I can't see a point to paying $2.50 just for a drink.