Dieting on weekdays and eating all sorts of unhealthy foods on a weekend has become a fashion. The misconception behind this is that dieting is a punishment which the individual has been following the entire week and now is the time to enjoy. The weekend celebration can trigger an avalanche in your fitness goals if not done sensibly.
INSIDE Your muscles have been broken from the daily workouts and what they need the most is rest and relaxation and tools to repair and grow. What are these tools – a good sleep, hydration, little exercise and the nutrients.
REAL PROBLEMS While socialising and spending time with friends and family is not at all wrong. Few things that are harmful are as follows :
- FOOD CHOICES
- TIMINGS
- LAZINESS
Lets take them one by one
1. FOOD CHOICES
On a weekend, not eating good foods is being treated as a privilege. Our food choices on a weekend may seem something fancy or sparkling but inside they are low quality, nutritionless and harmful.
ALCOHOL Alcohol contains blank calories and is high on the glycemic index, which means it is stored as fat straight away. It causes dehydration and hurts muscles more than you can imagine. Also the snacks eaten along with alcohol are add ons to the sins. Literally, your worn out muscles must be crying and begging at this moment not to drink. In the hangover of alcohol, hunger and satiety goes for a six. After some quantity, you don’t know what and how much you have eaten. There is always a danger of weekend hangovers turning into alcohol dependency syndrome. The first workout of the next week is not planned and it may get skipped altogether taking you further off the track.
SNACKS Chips, nachos, mayonnaise, fried foods, fried peanuts are often the snacks consumed with alcohol. These conatin the calories equal to what you consumed in entire day during weekdays. You may have created a caloric deficit of 200 Kcal per day or 1200 Kcal in the week. The combination of alcohol and snacks brings the stats back to normal over even outrun the deficit created by religious dieting during the week. A bad diet can’t be set right by just working out extra. The high glyhcemic foods that you ate on a weekend went straight away to the fat storage and can’t be burnt now by exercising extra because your body burns glycogens not fats for exercising. For burning these fats, (hypotheticallhy) you will have to starve yourself for a long time which is not possible as Ghrelin hormone does its job well in arising hunger once the stomach is empty. This weekend food sticks to your bellies, butts, liver and intestine and requires good amount of dieting and workout (empty stomach). This becomes a major demotivating factor.
DINNER Having dinner after the drinks is a tradition. Even though you had enough calories in your snacks still dinner is on the way. Dinner often consists of fried foods and desserts which further contribute to the fat storage. Nutritional deficiency is another thing that has happend. Now you are on perfect track of damaging your muscles and cutting down any gains you may have achieved during weekdays.
2. TIMINGS
Weekend parties are often in the evening and extend till late in the night. While everything is damaged by the foods and snacks, remaining damage is done by sleep depriviation which is deeper in the form of stress. Stress triggers cortisol hormone and stimulates fat storage in the region around your belly. Next day, you obviously wake up late and hurry up to finish the remaining tasks. A domino effect in the form of stress, hurry and fat storage takes place. Your body is missing rest and lacking nutrition.
3. LAZINESS
Lack of nutrition, sleep depriviation, and dehydration keeps you lazy the next day. Weekend is meant for two tasks – recover from previous week and prepare for the next week. Also complete your household chores which may have been neglected during the week. All these tasks are left pending and further lead to stress and depression.
Fortunately, celebrating weekend and being happy is not banned. You need to tweak only two things – 1. Food Choices 2. Timings
1.FOOD CHOICE The type of food or drinks mostly depends on the type of activity and the friend circle. You need to make your friends understand what path you are trying to follow and what are your priorities currently. “Healthy drinks” options exist but most of them are full of sugar. Best drink you can have is a lemonade (without sugar) or coconut water or just water. Saying No to snacks is a big step ahead in your mental toughness and fitness journey. You will realise that your confidence and mental resilience have risen manyfolds.
ACTIVITIES A birthday celebration can be some games and a fruit party or lunch party in the sunlight or it can be a fast food & cakes party. A sunday can be spent drinking alcohol or fishing at a pond, cooking and music. Options exist. Only effort we have to put is apply ourselves in being determined and seeking the alternatives. I am not suggessting the type of activity you have to do, you have to find it yourself as per your circumstances.
2. TIMINGS Timing of enjoying should be kept between two tasks that you intend to do so that you are disciplined and strict with the duration of the party. Noctural activities are to be avoided. Timings and sequence of events should be pre decided and planned as per your schedule. Nights are for sleep. Travelling to a spot, games, hobbies and self cooking are the tricks that will reduce the time you spend eating and increase the time you are happily active and learning something new while having fun.
If you just correct these two things, other things for the current week and the next week start falling in line. Adequate rest, hydration and nutrition will fuel you up for the upcoming week and the process of becoming fit will be lot more easier.
STAY FIT ! STAY HEALTHY !
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