A ton of folks make solid progress Monday through Friday, but then their weekends tend to get the best of them and their entire week ends up being a wash because of it.

This weekly cyclical pattern can be super frustrating…and I’m speaking from personal experience because I literally spun my wheels like this for years. Fortunately, there are 3 ways around this and they’re all very straightforward, they’re not always the easiest to implement, but you will have no doubt as far as what to do moving forward in order to produce results by the end of this article.

So, right now you have a set of habits and behaviours in place from Monday morning to Friday afternoon more or less. You’re in a routine…your nutrition is on point, your movement is dialed in, sleep is regular and then…

You have a set of habits and behaviours in place from Friday evening to Sunday evening more or less. You’re still in a routine, it’s just that it’s a different one…your nutrition is probably a fair bit looser, your movement may or may not be dialed in and your sleep cycles are almost certainly biased towards a later bedtime and a later wakeup time.

In regards to fat loss, the sleep changes are probably not really moving the needle all that much unless you’re getting such poor quality sleep on the weekends, that it’s ramping up your appetite and resulting in you consuming more calories…but that’s typically not the most pertinent issue.

Movement wise, a fair number of folks actually tend to move even more on the weekends than they do during the week just because they’re not sitting at a desk…they’re out and about with friends and family, maybe going on some walks or hikes and just generally moving around more.

Which leaves us with nutrition and as a subcategory, alcohol.

Nutrition is without a doubt where we want to focus because when it comes to fat loss, it is the most important input by far, it can make or break your progress…you’ve likely heard that you can’t out train a bad diet, that’s true…that abs are made in the kitchen, that’s also true and so let’s dig further into the nutrition piece!

So like we mentioned, you have a set of eating habits and behaviours that you’re engaging in Monday through Friday afternoon that are yielding you results and then you have a different set of nutrition habits that you’re engaging in Friday evening through Sunday that are essentially erasing said results.

If you’re tracking your scale weight, which I would absolutely recommend, especially when your goal is fat loss…you’re probably noticing that you’re the lightest on Friday morning and the heaviest on Sunday or Monday morning and this makes perfect sense given this pattern!

So the question becomes, how do we not just lose and gain the same 2-4 lbs each week and actually make big picture progress?

We have 3 options on the table…

You can keep your nutrition the same as it is now during the week and you can tighten things up over the weekend or…

You can tighten things up during the week even more and keep your weekends the same as they are now or…

You can tighten things up during the week a little and over the weekend a little.

It’s identical to a budget in the sense that in order to save money, we need to reduce spending somewhere, it doesn’t matter where…we just need to do it and so the next question becomes which option should you go with?

The answer is, whichever one fits your lifestyle the best and that you prefer!

How do you know if the approach that you choose to take is working?

Super simple, you track your weight and as long as it’s trending down it’s working, for example…

If you’re 180 lbs today and then you’re 178 lbs a week from today and then 176 lbs 2 weeks from today and so on…it’s working! On the other hand…

If you’re 180 lbs today, 181 lbs in 7 days time, then back to 180 in 2 weeks from today and so on…you’re going in circles.

The most common pitfall in regards to this weekly pattern whether you choose to tighten up your weekdays more, your weekends more or a bit of both, is if you justify more wiggle room at other times and as a result ya shoot yourself in the foot, for example…

If you choose to tighten things up more during the week and then on the weekend you think to yourself, ‘well I can indulge even more because my week was so much better than usual,’ you’re most likely just going to erase that difference that you had made and therefore end up in the same place again.

The opposite is also true in the sense that if you choose to tighten up your weekends more and then you justify more smaller indulgences during the week, that’ll result in a wash as well…

Something has to give or in other words, you have to save money somewhere in order to get ahead…again, it doesn’t matter where, it just needs to happen in order to produce a different result.

The scale is without a doubt the most reliable metric to track in order to assess progress. I also use weekly photos with my 1 on 1 coaching clients, however it’s very difficult to be objective with yourself and photo assessment believe or not is actually a skill and so I’d recommend using the scale if you’re doing this on your own…just be sure that you are comparing apples to apple, for example…

Don’t weigh yourself on Monday morning one week and then compare it to Monday evening another week because you want to eliminate as many external variables as possible i.e. in the morning you have an empty stomach and in the evening you’ve been eating all day.

If you choose to weigh yourself every day that’s totally cool too, just make sure that it’s under the same conditions i.e. first thing in the morning, ideally after you hit the bathroom and before you’ve eaten or drank anything.

If you choose to weigh yourself more frequently so let’s say 7 days a week, don’t let any single day make or break your resolve…instead record your weight daily, add up all 7 days of the week and then divide by 7 and that’ll give you your weekly average.

Whether you’re weighing yourself once per week or once per day, neither is necessarily better than the other, just go with whatever suits you and your psychology. I have some clients that weigh themselves daily, others that do it weekly and everything in between…

Just pick a method and stick with it!

What about alcohol…alcohol contains calories of course but fortunately, you can absolutely still drink and lose fat. The vast majority of my clients drink alcohol on a weekly basis and still get great results because we account for it.

Is it ideal? Not if you’re looking at it purely physically because alcohol is quite literally a poison however…a lot folks like to have a couple of bevies, catch up with friends or family, laugh a bunch and in a scenario like this, one could argue that alcohol has a net benefit!

Having said that, there is absolutely a point of diminishing returns and that point is up to each person individually to identify based on their priorities. Also, something to consider is how your appetite or food choices are impacted by the type and amount of alcohol that you choose to drink, for example…

If you drink 3 glasses of wine, your appetite spikes and all you want to do is crush an entire charcuterie board, but on the other hand if you drink 3 beers it fills you up and it actually blunts your appetite…that’s something to consider!

Also, if a specific type or amount of booze has you feel especially hungover in comparison with another type or amount of alcohol and therefore your food and/or movement decisions are extra impacted the following day, that’s also something to keep in mind.

As a whole, alcohol intake is a very personal thing and in general the more that you drink, the tighter that your nutrition is going to need to be simply because…

Alcohol contains calories and so if you drink a bunch AND indulge in calorie dense meals alongside the booze quite often, it becomes very difficult to maintain a calorie deficit with so many quote unquote ‘empty calories’ in the mix.

Now whether you choose to tighten up your nutrition during the week, on the weekends or a blend of both, if you are not seeing progress on the scale every 7-14 days even if you quote unquote ‘feel’ like you’ve made changes, you didn’t and I say that with love because…

I used to deceive myself in regards to this all the time and the truth is…the body never lies and so if you’ve made legitimate changes, you’ll see them reflected on the scale.

Lastly, something that I’ve examined a lot myself and that I often encourage my clients to look at is how they define enjoyment. For years, I didn’t even really know how to enjoy myself without copious amounts of alcohol and/or funky food and so I think it’s worth reflecting on what enjoying your weekends truly means to you.

Also, there is no right or wrong answer here…to each their own, I just found it helpful to contemplate and you might too!