How do I stop the weekend binge eating cycle?

Sounds like you need to plan food better on weekend, but sometimes you just have to put the food down and walk away

Its also a good idea to eat a healthy meal before you go out to a restaurant. Even though you may be at a restaurant, it doesn't mean you can't make the healthiest choices. At the Chinese restaurant, ask for steamed veggies, get one of the lighter dishes. Don't take any leftovers home with you and immediately cut the portion in half and either give it to others or box it up. Before you go to any place where there is going to be food, drink a bunch of water 15 minutes before to let your brain get the full signal. It all boils down to making the healthiest choices given the situation. I also tend to do a big workout early morning on Sat and Sun just to give me some room for the day calorie wise. I have lost over 200 lbs and kept it off. You can read my post here

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10506038/800-days-logging-mfp-and-207lbs-lost-exercise-has-become-ingrained-in-my-dna-and-i-love-it/p1?new=1

One thing that helped me to stop the weekend overindulgence was to set my weigh-in day for Monday. I only weighed once a week on Monday, so I knew that all the crazy weekend crap was going to show on the scale and then I'd have a mountain to climb all week to get back to where I had hoped to be.

If you're not already doing it, log everything you put in your mouth. See where your calories are really taking you. Make a commitment to yourself to make YOU a priority for ONE WEEK. Decide to stay under your calorie goal for an entire 7 days (including the weekend) and prove to yourself you can do it. Celebrate with something non-food related. A new workout top or a pedicure. Then repeat. Once you do this for a couple weeks, you'll get in the swing of it and you'll stop cheating on yourself. Sometimes I pre-log for the whole day and try and stick to my plan, including snacks.

I spend almost every Sunday doing meal prep and meal planning for the coming week. It's a fun day where I get to try new recipes and fill my fridge with healthy stuff for me and my husband to eat. There are a lot of threads on MFP about meal planning, so check them out along with the success stories.

You can have a fun evening with friends, Chinese food and wine without going crazy. Look at the menu in advance and decide what you will order. You can order stir fry without all added junk (sugar, cornstarch, MSG, sweet & sour) and have a lower calorie, lower sodium Chinese meal. I do it all the time. Chicken broccoli or happy family with 1/2 cup of rice. Take some home for lunch the next day. Just because a combo plate has enough for 4 people doesn't mean you have to eat that much. Order an entree instead of a combo or split something with a friend. Maybe only do this kind of thing once a month instead of every weekend.

For munchies, try some air-popped popcorn with a little butter and salt. You can eat a lot of that for much lower calories than chips or munchies. Lots of low-cal ideas for snacks - celery with laughing cow cheese or a little peanut butter, cucumber slices with hummus, a boiled egg, low-fat string cheese.

And last advice, but not least - Quit eating your kid's leftover food! Been there, done that and had the saddlebags to prove it. You're not saving the world's hungry children by eating his leftover ice cream. Tell him to toss it out and don't even touch it.

Good luck - you can do this if you want!

What works for me is everytime I think I am hungry, I drink 2 cups of water, fast. I wait, and usually it takes the hunger trigger away. Then before I eat anything, I drink 2 cups of water. Yes, I visit the restroom often, but it works for me, especially on the weekends.

I know exactly how you feel. I have always struggled with this as well. I got off the bandwagon, and just started logging again 2 weeks ago. This time I have made my weekly weigh-in on Monday. I have also logged EVERYTHING I eat in. My diary is open, and so that has held me more accountable. In the past I would binge on the weekends, and not log anything. For me the key is just recording everything I put in my mouth. I still have gone over on the weekends a bit, but not nearly as much. I am looking for friends, so feel free to befriend me, and good luck!

I don't have a total grip on this either, but I have been working on it. I find on the especially challenging weekends and/or I get to a Friday night and for whatever reason I am just HANGRY, this is particularly helpful: I let myself eat the things I would like to eat, and eat until I am full, but I weigh and measure everything. Popcorn, wine, ice cream, chocolate...it all goes on the scale before it goes in my mouth. I find this allows me to eat until I am full and satisfied without the guilt, because I make choices about whether to keep eating or not, and how much, instead of just putting myself on autopilot. I may go over my calories a bit with this technique, but it's way less than if I just said screw it and washed a bag of chips down with a pint of ice cream! Lol It also seems to put the brakes on my urge to binge away the rest of the weekend.

I second the don't eat the kids' leftovers. I always do better when I stick to this religiously & it always does me in when I don't follow it.

For girls nights I try to plan what I'm going to eat ahead of time and pace myself throughout the event - try to estimate however much alcohol or food you think you'll be comfortable with ahead of time and pre-log it. Then while you are out, you can enjoy that stuff guilt free because you've already planned for it.

You can do this. Keep working at it.

Another little tip would be if you are going to gave a splurge meal, do it at breakfast or lunch so you're not going to bed with a heavy meal in your stomach and you can adjust your meals for the rest of the day to help stay in your limits.

1. Are you restricting too much during the week?
2. Food is neither good nir bad. Weight loss is not moralistic. You are not "good" during the week and "bad" when you eat more than you need to.
3. Try this: for a week, pre-log everything you eat in a day, either that morning or the night before. Start your log with a piece of chocolate - a square of Dove, for example; you don't need to eat it for breakfast (unless you want to, I suppose), then build tbe rest of your calories (or macros, whichever) around that one piece of chocolate. When you do eat it - and this is important - enjoy every second of it, and acknowledge that you're going to have another piece tomorrow .

It takes time to get out of the "I can't have that because it's bad" mindset; eating it on a regular basis helps get rid of the "forbidden food " aspect. Additionally, pre-logging and planning your day around something makes you conscious of the fact that you have control over what you eat.

I'd back the pre-logging as well. I always feel really prepared during the week, know what I am going to eat when, and then Fri evening turns up and suddenly I have no plan for saturday/sunday. Getting better now I have smoothies for breakfasts at the weekend before going to to the gym. But even though Sunday is food prep day for the week, Saturday lunch and tea can still turn into a 'binge'. I try and look back on the week and realise that I have 'spare' calories and it isn't a 'bad' thing to eat more food.

I have recently changed my meal planning cycle. I used to grocery shop on the weekends and create a meal plan starting on Monday morning. Recently I started using online grocery ordering, so I order on Thursday, pick up on Friday, and my meal plan for the week starts on Saturday morning. This is been a huge help to me in managing how I eat on the weekends.