Weekend was a bust! :-(

We all have those times, put it behind you and move on.

same here, did really well until Sunday then *BOOM!* - got on the scales today and +4lb! FOUR POUNDS - you have to laugh really. It'll come off in the week. Don't get too hung up by it! In my case it's like a trigger mechanism, once I go even slightly astray it opens the floodgates, something I have to work on. Did better than last week when I triggered it on Friday night, so.. progress!!

You need treat days / meals to stay on track – even though it’s painful, you should still record your indulgences. You will cringe but perhaps it’s not as bad as you thought – does it even out over the week anyway? i.e. if you’re targeting 1,400 calories per day (as an example), this would be 9,800 over an entire week. I aim for 1,350 per day but I’ll have days where I’m less hungry and eat less and others where I’m really craving and I’ll go over but I try to just make sure it evens out over the week or at least make an effort to do a bit more exercise if I’ve gone over. This approach tends to work. Also it’s a fairly controversial and disputed theory but you should read into alcohol calories – lots more studies coming out which prove that they are not equal to calories in food. Without wishing to bore you, in short the calorie system is calculated by burning food to determine how much energy it has. Burn alcohol and it burns significantly – why? Because it’s flammable. This does not mean that the calories within the alcohol equal energy; in fact the body does not process these calories in the same way. Over a 10 year study, those who regularly drank (red wine in particular) were LESS likely to be overweight than those who drank less or not at all. Red wine can aid weight loss when not drunk to excessive levels. I do not include alcohol calories in my food diary and I’ve maintained 7st 12lbs – 8st 4lbs for the last 3 years (I’m 5’’3). The exception to this is beer because it’s made with wheat and this converts to sugar and will cause weight gain.

I did very well on the weekdays and then I had an old friend in town for the weekend and we ate a ton of trash for 3 days. Just have to keep moving forward! Don't let mistakes steer you off course.

You have to have a plan - you have to create the plan ahead of time - you can anticipate when you are going to participate in certain events, and you have to have a strategy in place to deal with them. Maybe it is save calories during the week. Maybe it is bring your own snacks, or instead of eating out all weekend, eat a couple of meals at home, but make it really special, with new recipes, the good china and some candles! It is something that we all struggle with, but at least if you have a plan, you can mitigate any damage that you think you may have done by overeating for the weekend. Weekends come every week, they are not a surprise (same thing for Xmas!) so walk yourself through the activities or even the what if activities and get prepared. Otherwise, you just give up control of your eating to outside influences instead of maintaining it for yourself.

I log everything no matter what, and log alcohol separately in it's own category. I couldn't learn how to lessen or mitigate cravings until I saw the whole ugly thing in right there on the screen in numbers. Once I started logging even the worst days calorie-wise, I was able to make some small changes that really helped. What ended up working for me was to figure my total calories i wanted to eat for the entire week and eating 300 calories less Monday - Thursday so I could have those extra 1200 calories divided between Friday - Saturday - Sunday. This gives me a small amount of extra freedom to have social dinners during the weekend so I don't feel too deprived.

I stayed home and didn't drink, bit still managed 4500 calories (Lara bars, peanut butter, dark chocolate, Halo Top, etc). At least you have some fun to show for it!! It's a new week........

Also watch this video- and maybe even actually do this video... it's a workout video that shows exactly how much exercise it takes to burn off the calories from ONE OREO. I find this helps me when I want to eat something with empty calories or I'm tempted to go over my daily calories:

https://youtu.be/mVfSG3lV8Mk