Episode 338: It’s OK to Loosen Up Your Diet on the Weekends

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:

Hello, friends, welcome to today’s episode, and welcome to the podcast. If it’s your very first episode, I am super happy you’re here. And I’m excited to chat about something I get asked a lot, especially when working with clients in within a program or sometimes I get DMS about this too, like, hey, whatever you eat really healthy during the week, but I loosened up on the weekends. And more often than not, it’s not even worded like that. It’s usually more of a guilt shame thing of like I do really well during the week. But on the weekends, I just go off the rails, that’s derailing my progress, and yada yada. So we’re gonna dive into that today and talk about what is actually okay, what’s not and how I advise structuring your week and kind of managing all that all very normal. And the good news spoiler alert is that you can you can loosen up on the weekends and still make progress towards your goals. Totally fine to do and it works math wise as well. So we’re gonna dive into that. And if you have not worked with me before, and you’re looking for learning the whole foundation to everything I talked about on this podcast, but with me coaching you through it personally holding your hand making sure you understand it, checking your personal food logs, checking in with you, making sure you get your workouts done each week, we are doing the eight week group coaching program I only offered a couple times a year, there are a limited number of spots, only 20 Ladies per round, so that I can give you really great personal attention. And I just walk you through all of this all the things I talked about on the podcast all the time, what to eat for your body, and I’m not going to give you this whole meal plan make you follow up for eight weeks. Instead, I’m going to have you log what you already eat. We start going from there and I just teach you really simple tools like how to balance out your carbs, fat and protein. And tricks for getting that in. It’s honestly ladies so simple as sometimes I will look at a log and be like well, if instead of you know having to exit breakfast, which is what you’re thinking is healthy choice, you could actually do two eggs and two egg whites or three eggs and boom, you just upped your protein for the day like very simple tweaks that go a really long way in maintaining your physique protein gives you a lean body composition. If I just take you and slowly up your protein with little tweaks like that your body can change on its own just from that so less than a week two we kick off September 18 This is the last one of 2023 so if you would like spot if there are still spots left, check it out, go to Brittany. You can email me Brittany and healthy Catholic moms.com to ask if there are spots left. I am pre recording this a bit so I’m not sure where we’re at currently. But we do usually cap out almost every single challenge especially this this time of they’re kind of back to school after summer is when a lot of us are looking to kind of reset or you can try to sign up over at healthy Catholic bombs.com If there are still spots left as well to get in on this round. Okay, so I’m going to chat for just one second about fat loss maintenance surplus okay. If you’re in fat loss mode, you are actively trying to lose fat. Okay, maintenance is you’re good with maintaining the body fat that you have. eating in a calorie surplus is where you’re trying to bulk you’re trying to gain weight gain muscle access Yep, so majority of my listeners fall into either the fat loss or the maintenance category or looking to improve your physique through losing fat. And some of us fall in the maintenance, which is we’re good with the amount of body fat we have, we’re just trying to maintain that. Okay, so and then very few typically fall in the surplus. But you’re all welcome here as well, there are ladies who are, you know, in a perfect spot with their body fat, but are looking to add some muscle and to improve their physique in that way. So, whatever mode you are currently in, you still have the option of laying out your week to work for you to work for your social calendar. And that might look like being able to cut a little bit looser on the weekends, okay, I talked about 8020 eating, okay, I advise 80%, whole clean foods 20% treats, it’s up to you what that truly looks like, if during the week, you want to keep, if you want from Monday through Sunday, let’s say set your whole week or Sunday through Saturday, whatever way you want to look at it. You just want it to all be at 20. That looks like eating mostly whole clean foods. But having some treats worked in there on Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday, or whatever, having your little guilty pleasures each day. And I’ll talk about what that looks like. Like Does that count towards your calories is that over your calories, whatever, we’ll talk about that. But that’s one way to do it. And for some of us, that’s the better route to make sure we don’t just go crazy on the weekends. Like it would be better if we balanced out our weeks, and we didn’t feel deprived during the week. So that then once we get to the weekend, we’re not like wanting to shove our face with everything we didn’t allow ourselves to eat during the week. However, there’s another category of us who don’t really care about splurging on their average Tuesday or Thursday, and they’d rather save all kinds of all those happy calories for Saturday, Sunday, like they’d rather have a couple drinks on Saturday, then have a glass of wine on Tuesday, you get my drift here. And the takeaway is that neither are bad, you could, a lot of this comes down to personality, and the eating style that’s going to work best for you is the one that you can maintain and the one that you can stick to. So even if one had more pros than the other long term, you need to pick the one that’s sustainable for you. And this shifts back and forth. Like please don’t think we have to pick one route and go with it forever. But it’s just something to keep in mind that at 20 does not need to be over the course of one day, it can look like the course of your week, how it all shakes out, okay. So there’s a couple of things. I also want you to know here, how we keep how we achieve fat loss, or we keep that fat loss we’ve been tainted, it’s about calories in and calories out, we want to always be burning more than we are taking in or if we’re maintaining, we are equal there were burning and taking in the same amount. If we want to be gaining weight, gaining, you know, we have to take in more than we burn. It’s all just a math equation there. So there’s some variety there where you can
you know, we can manipulate things a bit. So say it’s about calories in calories out, right. That’s why sometimes like doing an extra workout, yes, I could help you technically burn off the extra calories from a beer or something like that, because you’re still burning more than you’re taking in. People who are sedentary have to take in less calories because we’re not burning as much right? Then we also need to care about what those calories consist of, we need to worry about the carbs, fat and protein breakdown of them because you could be eating 1800 calories. But it’s you know, all carbs and fat and on a protein, your body is going to look different than if you had the protein ratio in there. Okay, so we have to care about the overall calorie number. for fat loss and maintenance, we have to care about the types of calories. And then lastly, because of you know, food quality, and worrying about the vitamins and minerals and things that we’re getting, we also want to worry about, like where that food comes from and what it consists of. So beyond carbs, fat and protein, there’s obviously a difference between the carbs that come from a doughnut and the carbs that come from a sweet potato, right? Because there’s different vitamins and minerals going on there. So that is why my approach is always this 8020 Eating 80% whole clean foods, 20% treats that fits within a macro diet, or here I’m just using the term diet as like a way of eating that also worries about cleaning. So it sounds like a lot of things. It’s kind of like if you are a homeschooler we homeschool like you have the different fusions you’re like we’re classical with a touch of Charlotte Mason with a touch of you. Like you can make your own fusion and that’s how I coach that’s what I’ve done for myself and for all of my clients is it’s not just clean eating like I’m out scrupulous about you can never have a refined sugar or you can never have a processed food But I’m not strictly If It Fits Your Macros either, which is like, Well, yeah, you can eat anything that fits your macros, because it’s just all about macros. I like a fusion for overall health. So that’s my opinion. That’s what’s worked well for me, and my clients and all of that. So all of that laid out, can you eat really healthy during the week, and then go a bit off the rails on the weekend? Yes, you can. So I just advise the following parameters. Want to chat about how you can do this. If you fall into that camp. If you are in the first camp I talked about, like you just like to have everything mixed in all the time, like Tuesday night, you have a glass of wine Thursday night, you have ice cream, and you are working in all on your macros and so that you’re at 20, all week long, and all weekend long. That’s great, keep doing that you don’t really have to worry about the next couple steps, you are fitting everything into your macros, it is 80% whole clean foods, and it is 20% treats. But if you’re the person that wants more wiggle room on the weekend, this is what I advise number one, you’re still working within your macro allotment. So it’s not like you Monday through Friday, eat 1700 calories, and you have X amount of carbs and protein. And then the weekends are just cheat days. That is not what I’m saying. That is what a lot of people do. And that is when a lot of people eat no vegetables, and they are low protein, and they’re dehydrated, and then they come back at it on Monday really strong. And that’s how we yo yo and that’s how we backslide and don’t make progress. So if like you’re taking this permission to be a little more indulgent on the weekends, it’s still asked to work within your macro framework, which means if I want to go have burgers and fries, a burger and fries for dinner, I need to look at what my breakfasts and lunches and make sure that I save enough fat and carbs for that. Okay. Or, like I mentioned, if you want to be able to have to truly cheese or whatever at night, like you need to make sure that you don’t have toast at breakfast, because you need to save some of your calories, some of your carbs for that alcohol later, you see what I’m saying? Now, there’s a tiny little caveat to this, which is, if you are I mentioned how its calories in calories out. And I mentioned how we can manipulate that a little bit? Well, if you look at it more as over the course of your week, than over just the course of a day. If you were say like 1700 calories is your deficit, we have figured out that it’s 1700 calories, that’s where you’re burning more than you’re taking in. Okay, and how do we do that I have a free, figure out your macros download on my website. This is also what we work through in the eight week program. So if that is like completely foreign to you, maybe go start with my freebie, or sign up to me in this next group. Because that’s how we figure out your deficit. But anyway, say your deficit is 1700 calories and you’re actively trying to lose fat. You can eat the 1700 calories, Sunday through Saturday, and it’ll all work out right? Or Sunday, Monday, I’m sorry, Monday through Friday, you eat 1600 calories and save, like the bonus 500 calories to split over the weekend. Okay, that all will still shake out in the wash. If you kind of skim the top. You can’t do this drastically though. You cannot be like okay, Brittany. So what I’m hearing is Monday, I can have 1200 calories and Tuesday I can have 1250 so that on the weekend, I can have 3000 calories like you cannot yo yo that much. But you can kind of skim the top there to save for yourself on the weekend, if that’s what you prefer to do.
Otherwise, so like I said, first choice there is to just work it into the macros that stay the same every single day, or you can do that kind of shave the top option. Another tip is to keep your during the week, food quality more like 90% so that your weekends can look more like 30 Because remember I mentioned at 20 eating, so if during the week, you make it even healthier, then you can not worry about it as much on the weekend if you if the food quality is not as great. This is actually honestly the camp I usually fall into. So I will make sure that during the week, if I want a treat or indulgence, I’m usually not going to have like full fat, regular ice cream, whatever unless it’s like why my family went out to eat for it or something. I will normally then make some kind of banana protein what I call nice cream and have that as a treat. So that on the weekends I can have things like kettle chips, and I’m not drinking obviously right now because I’m pregnant but like that Saturday night drink with my husband, that kind of thing. So if you want to have more wiggle room quality wise on the weekend and not sweat about it, then I would still that I would just up the quality of your foods during the weeks. Now that being said, even if your food quality is going down a bit on the weekends, you still want to feel your best and you’re gonna feel gross if you have a doughnut and then like a burger and fries and then chicken wings for dinner even if it all fit within your calories and And even if your Monday through Friday was super clean, you’re still gonna feel gross. So I recommend trying to still keep it a little bit between the between the rails and make sure your vegetable intake is there, or supplement with a greens powder. This is another thing like when people travel. There’s other reasons that when you travel, your system is thrown off. But like when we eat off our usual we might not be as regular we’re constipated, we’re bloated. So some keeping the vegetables in there, or a greens powder to just fill the gaps is really helpful. That’s a supplement I’ve talked about that I don’t use a ton of supplements at all I use basically protein powder, and greens powder. And I don’t use it daily, I just keep it for times like that where I know I’ve been low. And I want to make sure that I get my vegetables in. Okay, and next with that same idea here, we don’t want to just throw everything out the window on the weekends, we want to keep our hydration the same. So even if you’re, you know calories went a little bit more, because you’re going a little less during the week, your food quality is a little bit lower than it usually is. You’ve got your vegetables in there and your greens and you’ve got your hydration going, your body’s not going to freak out, you’re going to stay regular, you’re not going to be super bloated and it’s easier to ease back in on Monday. That’s the difference between like just going haywire and having to totally start over on Monday, or having these general principles that you’re always abiding by you’re just loosening up a little bit. Alright, so remember, the biggest thing I can tell you here is you are not deviating much from the macros, that is the big difference. I’m not a proponent of like super restriction, and then a cheat meal. Some people you know, that’s what they swear by is like that’s how they stay motivated all the other days to have their cheat meal or a cheat day. I don’t find that helpful for myself and for most ladies I’ve worked with to then be able to rein it back in. And get back to like the basics that I feel like continues to facilitate the diet culture mentality of super restricting and binging and super restricting. So I prefer to keep it all within some, some guidelines here are mostly sticking to the same macros. We’re just loosening up the food quality a little bit on the weekends, so that you can enjoy life and not feel that just tends to be one or more social. Again, if that’s not you, going back to the very first group, maybe you have a lot of work events during the week, or you have a book club or a girls night or whatever. And it serves you better to work this and all the time, same parameters, then we just go back to keeping everything at 20 and making treats fit within those macros. That’s the really big key. We just finished one of those a week challenges recently when I’m recording this. And that is something a lot of women did not understand or grasp until we walked through it was the Brittany you say we can have treats and stuff like where do I you know, I just have those right? Like it doesn’t have to fit my macros. Yes, it does. If you want to have fat loss or maintain fat loss. It does and it maintenance is a little bit easier maintenance gives us a little more wiggle room. But if you were actively pursuing fat loss, you got to keep it fitting between those parameters, right? Because it really does come down to calories in calories out. All right, I hope that made sense. broke it down for you in a real tangible way. Thank you so much for being here. Next episode we’re going to talk about Early to bed early to rise and why I’m such a proponent of getting up early, going to bed at a reasonable time and we’re going to delve into that next episode. So have a great rest your day I’ll talk to you then.

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