DON’T BE A WEEKEND WARRIOR!
You’ve worked hard all week. You’ve meal prepped Monday through Friday. You’ve hit the gym after work and gotten all of your cardio in. You’re feeling good and like you’ve made some progress. So now it’s time to celebrate! Unfortunately, if you’re trying to lose weight and look leaner, your weekend can easily sabotage all of your progress…
Say you are a 28-year-old 200 lb. guy who works a normal desk job. You workout in the gym for an hour every weekday. You want to shred up and lose about 20 pounds. Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (the amount of energy you need to maintain your current weight with your current lifestyle) is around 2800 calories. All week you eat 2000 calories to help you reach your goal. It’s hard, but you do it!
Then, Friday and Saturday you have the days we described above. Friday you enjoy a whole pizza and ice cream, giving you a total of 5000 calories. Saturday, you only eat two meals, but each are 2,000 calories plus 500 calories in drinks for a total of 4500 calories. Sunday morning you have a large breakfast to feel better. Combine this with a last hoorah meal before the week of 2,000 calories starts and you are at 3000 calories for the day.
Weight loss requires a caloric deficit. This means you need to eat less than your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). If you eat the above meals (2000 calories Monday through Thursday and a no-holds-bar weekend of eating) your caloric average comes out to 2928 calories per day. If your TDEE is 2800 calories, you won’t be losing fat. In fact, you may be slowly gaining weight!
Instead of suffering all week and trying to make up for it on the weekend, the above person should try increasing his calories to 2400 calories per day. This will allow him to fit more of his favorite foods in during the week and avoid the binging temptation on the weekend.
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