I’ve recently been quite shocking on weekends when it comes to being healthy. For the past year, I’ve been living walking distance from some of my close girlfriends and I’ve developed a bad habit of spending Friday nights guzzling red wine like a blood sucking vampire and then inevitably ordering takeaway for dinner before running down to the bottle-o for more wine. Then I wake up on Saturday morning feeling like a bear shat in my brain. This usually leads to some kind of greasy deliciousness for lunch and a cleansing afternoon beer by which stage I’m feeling much better excepting the fact that I’ve ingested about a weeks worth of calories in under 24 hours. Not good, not sustainable and also not me. I was practically teetotal when I moved to Melbourne 5 years ago and slowly I’ve built up a weekly drinking habit that I’m keen to cut back on. Here are a few tips I use to get me through the tempting weekends without breaking the good work I’ve done during the week.
How To Stick With Your Diet This Weekend
Be Smart About Alcohol
Make good choices with alcohol because it’s the biggest motivation killer known to mankind. I’m not asking that you give up alcohol completely, just go easy on it while your sticking to a healthy eating plan. If you absolutely must have an alcoholic beverage have a vodka, lime and soda. There’s only 97 calories in a shot of vodka and if you mix it with soda water you get extra hydration as you drink. Bonza. There’s about 250 calories in most self poured glasses of wine. Ouch.
Try To Be Social Away From Restaurants and Bars
Be in control of the places you go and stay away from pubs where you might be tempted to snack on salty chips and beer or restaurants where you might inhale a whole bowl of creamy curry. The best solution is to host your weekend get togethers in your own home. That way you can prepare a healthy meal and your guests can enjoy their own BYO bevvies while you sip on fancy mineral water. Easy.
Be Honest With Your Friends
Make sure your friends know that you’re trying to eat better and that no, you wouldn’t like to try that new deep fried meatball place that just opened up in the city. Ask them to meet you at places where you can order something healthy and try to get out of habitually eating and drinking alcohol with the same people every weekend. Having a few drinks with your mates on a Saturday afternoon is fine but if it turns into every Saturday and then every Friday and Saturday and then you start meeting at the pub on Thursdays… that’s where it starts to become a problem.
Plan Some Big Workouts
If I plan to do a serious workout I tend to go easy on the greasy food and alcohol. If you plan a big gym session, long run or an advanced yoga class you’ll be much less likely to give in and go all out on a six pack of beer and a family sized bag Doritos.
Don’t Be Too Hard On Yourself
One little scoop of gelato on a sunny Sunday afternoon never hurt anyone and neither did a shared bowl of wedges with sour cream. It’s the bottle of champagne, 4 slices of pizza, cafe breakfast and burger lunch that does the damage so just be extra aware of what you’re consuming. You can still have fun and you can still have a treat but ‘a’ is the important word there. A treat. As in one treat. Not 48 hours worth of treats.