FRIDAY - Helping you stick to your calories

One thing many of us do is ‘start our diet on Monday’ or simply start tracking our calories at the beginning of the week.

If our daily calorie goal is (for example) 1,500 cals per day, we have 10,500 for the full week (1,500 cals x 7 days)

So – the week starts great, meals are prepped and you’re training is going well. By Friday afternoon you’re on track and things are looking good.

Then..

Does this look familiar?

You get asked if you want to go out for a few drinks and a bite to eat after work. But you’re going out Saturday night for a meal with your family too. All of a sudden those 1,500 calories a day seem impossible.

If you start tracking on a Monday ‘when the week begins’, you may get to the end of the week, sack off tracking and go over your calories. This ruins your progress. You’ll say that you’ll ‘start again monday morning’.

The problem with this approach is that it’s easy to keep slipping up. It’s easy to think that those weekend calories will magically disappear.Unfortunately though, the truth is that these extra calories are ruining your Mon-Fri progress.

The solution? Start tracking on a Friday!

If you start your ‘week of calorie tracking’ on a Friday, this will help in a few ways.

Firstly, you’ll be more wary of your eating at the weekend, knowing that the more calories you consume Fri-Sun, the less you have the follow Mon-Thur.

If you end up going over your targets at the weekend, then you need to hold yourself accountable for it. We’re all adults. This may mean that your calories are reduced and you’re basically eating salads for the rest of the week.

Eating salads aren’t ideal. But if we’ve been big enough to eat and drink ourselves silly at the weekend then it looks like we’ll have to fix it the rest of the week.

Balance is key

We aren’t suggesting you don’t go for nights out or meals with friends. We’d NEVER suggest that. But what we are saying is to try and be smart with your calories.

We wrote a blog here on how to use weekly calories to your advantage so you can ‘budget them’ better, allowing you to go out for meals and drinks and still lose weight.

Start tracking your calories on a Friday. See what it does for you.

Other reading:

What even is a calorie?
4 reasons you aren’t seeing progress when tracking calories