TGIF! How do you stay on track on the weekends?

I workout on Saturday and Sunday is a complete rest day for me. I'm a little more relaxed on my calorie choices but I still log and adhere to the calorie goal.

I might, depending on the weekend or occasion, just eat a maintenance.. And I have been known to eat a little less during the week as well to indulge a little on the weekends.

I still pre-plan as much as I can and I keep up with my calories, weekly.

Daily weighing helped me a lot, and using a weight trending app.
Seeing that kick upwards at the weekend, even though mostly water weight, eventually encouraged me to put a bit more effort in.

It's hard. I never have enough time to eat enough on weekends. Have to make up for it during the week.

I train like a dog each weekend morning.

I wouldn't want to sabotage those efforts by horrible food choices.

I have always found weekends easier as at work I sit next to a table full of treats which seems to be stocked up constantly by people and ignoring that is hard, really hard!

On a weekend I track my cals the night before and plan my snacks just the same as I do during the week. I can't work out on a weekend due to having a young son and my oh working so I have noone to look after him.

As diet goes, weekends aren't really any different than weekdays...I eat well most of the time because that's just how I eat. An exception would be taking the boys out for pizza or something, but that's not that big of a deal.

Weekends are when I actually have free time and I use it wisely...weekends are when i actually have time to get in longer rides and spend a bit more time in the weight room. Week days are brutal in regards to getting my fitness in and I'm generally limited to about 45-60 minutes in the weight room on Mon and Wed and 30-45 min on the bike Tuesday...

I get most of my cycling done on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday...that's when I have time...I take my rest day on Thursday usually. Weekends are typically pretty active anyway...much more so than weekdays when I'm stuck behind a desk...we're always doing something...taking the kids to the zoo...doing yard work...fixing the seemingly endless list of broken things in the house, etc. I don't use my available free time to be lazy usually.

I never use my weekends as a rest day. Unless of course a holiday or special occasion falls on either Saturday or Sunday. Otherwise I figure I am off work, so I have more time to get extra sleep and work out even harder. Since I work out early in the mornings before work (from 5:30 to 7am) I'd much rather take my rest days during the work week and sleep in a bit. Also, on the weekends there is generally more opportunity for additional food or meals, or eating out, etc. so having those extra calories works best on those days.

I tell the train driver keep it under a 100 MPH

Discipline

TavistockToad wrote: »

I try to eat 100 - 200 calories less on a Monday to Thursday so that i have extra cals to eat Friday - Sunday. plus i usually get an extra 500 cals + from my long run on a Saturday morning so i can pretty much eat what i like at the weekend and hit my weekly goal.

I do pretty much the same. Eat a little under during the week (I'm in maintenance), long run or a long video workout on Sundays. Then I can slack off on weekends for calories. Though I've found the hard way that eating everything I want doesn't make me feel good after eating healthy all week, so it's not like I'm hitting buffets all weekend or anything.

I mostly just eat vaguely the same as I did through the week. And maybe one meal where I just say *kitten* it and eat whatever.

active562 wrote: »

For those who save up calories for the weekend and are maintaining , how much do you save during the week?

If I know I'm going to indulge, I'll cut 2-300 calories during the weekdays. It allows me to go over about 1000+ calories and get away with it. I'll also 'pay for it' afterward if necessary the next week by just leaving calories in the diary each day until I feel I'm caught up. I sometimes will do extra workouts, etc. For me it's about learning what I need to do before or after a large meal or holiday (or whatever occasion caused me to over-indulge). Once that becomes second nature I may not need to log food any longer. It's a process I'm trying to teach myself.

Once you are in maintenance mode for a while it's not a huge deal to go over largely every once in a while. I watch my weight more as a trend now, so I'll enter weekly weigh-ins with an app called Happy Scale (there are many like it) that shows me over a period of a month, or even several months, if my weight is climbing, lowering, or staying the same. If it's going a direction I don't like I can simply make some adjustments and check it again in a few more weeks. Right now, and for the next two to three months, I'm hoping to gain about 5 lbs slowly (as much muscle as I can) so I want to see a slight up-tick. In the spring I'll start cutting a few hundred calories a day and start trimming it off to get back down to the weight I wanted by summer and hopefully end up with less body fat and more muscle. I work out so much now though that I sometimes have trouble eating back all of my exercise calories. There's been several nights I've reached for the peanut butter jar to compensate lol.

This is what the chart looks like (this is from my original start until recently, you can see maintenance is a bumpy road):