One of the most common complaints I hear from people is; 

“Paul, I eat barely anything, I should be losing loads of fat BUT I’m not. It must be my metabolism, I think it could be slow or not working properly” 

9 times out of 10 the issue is with the weekend.

When they reflect on the past week all that comes to mind is the horrible starving feeling that they tolerated from Monday - Friday and what they completely forget to consider and account for is their weekend’s activities. 

When the weekend arrives and they get a break from work, tracking calories are quickly forgotten about and any intentions of living a healthy lifestyle have been pushed to the bottom of the list.

They start following the SeeFood Diet (See food & eat it) for Saturday & Sunday. 

So here’s what really happening ; 

Let’s say for example a person has fat loss calories of 1700 cals a day which for a week would equal; 

1700 x 7 days = 11,900 cals 

So if the person in question eats 1700 cals every day or a total of 11,900 cals a week they will successfully lose fat. 

What they think is happening; 

Mon-Sun (full 7 day week) they eat 1000 cals per day.

Weekly total = 7000 cals 

What is really happening;

Mon – Fri = 1000 cals = 5000 cals 

Saturday = 4000 cals 

Sunday = 4000 cals 

Weekly Total = 13,000 cals 

So as you can see from the example above, if the person was really eating 1000 cals a day they would be losing weight at a dangerously fast rate.

In this situation, my advice would be to increase food intake. 

However, when we take a look at their weekend activities, Saturday night can be seen to include substantial consumption of alcohol and Sunday’s priorities turn into nursing that hangover with comfort food.

We can quickly see that they’re over-consuming 1000 calories based on their weekly fat loss calories. This type of lifestyle doesn’t get positive results and the person may even start gaining fat.

How can you fix this?

1. A very simple fix is to continue tracking calories on the weekend and ensure you’re keeping to your fat loss calories which for this person was 1700 cals a day (Fictional number, this does not relate to you)
2. If you do have an exciting social life and enjoy your weekends you can opt to keep some additional calories from the week for the weekend.So, following a weekly allowance of calories can be useful here. Using the person mentioned earlier for an example now; 

Daily Allowance = 1,700 cals

Weekly Allowance = 11,900 cals 

But on the weekend I would like to eat more or drink more so I’m going to have 2000 cals on Sat & Sun. 

Saturday = 2000 cals 

Sunday = 2000 cals 

Weekend Total = 4000 cals 

Now, we subtract 4000 from our weekly allowance which is (11,900 – 4000) = 7900 cals leftover for Mon – Fri which is our 5 day week, so; 

7900 divided by 5 = 1580 calories per day 

Mon – Fri allowance = 1580 cals per day 

So, from understanding how many calories you can have in a week you can dedicate more calories for the weekend when you want to increase your food intake.

In order to balance this out, you should simply reduce your calories slightly based on what was left over after your weekend. 

I hope you found this useful and if you want help with planning your strategies to get the results you’re looking to achieve, consider one of my SUWS plans.