Girl About Town: The Lost Weekend

In the immortal words of the band Loverboy, “Everybody’s workin’ for the weekend…”

We all know how it is. Friday comes (TGIF!) and a whirlwind of freeform activity ensues: dinners with friends, birthday parties, watching “the game,” Brunch (with a capital B), not to mention all-day affairs like weddings, family parties, etc. These types of weekend activities tend to involve lots of eating (and drinking) and not so much exercise (unless you count raising hand to mouth, holding drinks or forkfuls of food, as weight-bearing reps – and that really doesn’t count – trust me, I’ve tried).

Anyway, you know what I mean. We’ve all been there.

It happened to me last weekend, and I had to pull myself up by the bootstraps come Sunday night. Here’s what I did to get back on track Monday morning:

Make a Plan
I needed to balance out an over-the-top weekend of eating and drinking with a very structured couple of days (meaning lots of veggies and fruit with HMR meals and shakes). So I wrote down a detailed plan for meals and snacks, as well as exercise.

Pack it Up
Since I was going to be at work all day, I made sure I brought everything I needed to eat healthy all day. I packed an apple to go with my HMR hot cereal, veggies for my lunch (I’m currently loving broccoli slaw with the HMR Pasta Fagioli Entree), and an instant coffee packet to go with an afternoon shake, for a frappucino-style mid-afternoon pick-me-up drink.

For dinner that night, I’d planned another HMR Entree (Cheese and Basil Ravioli) with a full box of frozen spinach, steamed (it shrinks down quite a bit when cooked). And for dessert, a butterscotch shake (YUM!), made with HMR 120 Vanilla and sugar-free Jell-o® butterscotch pudding powder.

I was full all day and didn’t have to think about what I was going to eat next. Plus, my entire day’s food came in under 1,200 calories! And that is before counting the walk/jog I took after work that burned 320 calories.

Write it Down
Throughout the day, I recorded each meal that I had planned, to make sure I was staying on track. I have to say that seeing all the good stuff I was eating actually made a difference in my ability to stick with making healthy choices for the rest of the week.

All in all, a little extra planning helped to balance out my wayward weekend and saved me from imminent disaster on the scale.

What do you do to get back on track if you’ve gone “off the rails?”
 

by JessieDavenport on 09/12/2011 | Share Story With a Friend

tags: Weight-Loss, Diet Tools, motivation, planning, mood, strategies