Hello my friend, welcome back to the Healthy Eating for Busy Women podcast. I’m so happy you’re here with me this week. And I’m really excited about today’s topic because we’re gonna talk about how to handle a weekend with healthy eating without losing progress.And this is a topic I coach on very regularly in my “Own Your Eating Habits” membership with my clients. It’s something that I know trips a lot of y’all up when it comes to finding consistency with healthy eating.

So I want to add a ton of clarity to this. Today really what I’ve done for this episode is I’ve compiled a list of the top questions and coaching I receive about this topic. So I’m just going to go through them. I’m hoping it answers the questions you may have about how to solve this.

Right now the biggest question I think I get is how do I maintain progress over the weekend with healthy eating without feeling restricted. And so what tends to happen is we’ll have this all or nothing relationship to healthy eating where during the week maybe we’ll have it all together, we’ll feel like we’re on our protocol, hitting our plan.

And then when the weekend comes, it just flies out the window when it comes to the weekend.
Why it goes out the window is because we don’t want to feel restricted, we want to relax, we want to unwind, and we don’t want to sacrifice the relief and the good time we feel on the weekends to maintain healthy eating.

Something that I always like to say to women who hire me as their coach or they learn from me is I tell them I don’t want them to sacrifice enjoyment for the results they want with their body. I don’t want you guys to do that. I want you to know that that is actually a healthy standard to have, is not wanting to sacrifice enjoyment with food or in life for the health you want to have. What most of us do is we’ll think we have to sacrifice enjoyment or foods we like in order to have the result. And that we should be willing to do that. But instead, I want you to know that the most tactically valuable thing you can do right now with healthy eating is figure out a solution that doesn’t mean you have to give up those fun times on the weekend. Now to answer this question, how do I stay on track without feeling restricted?

There’s a deeper theme at play here, right? Because staying on track to me as y’all’s coach implies that there is this all or nothing thinking where you do see yourself on track with healthy eating or off track. Even though we might understand all or nothing pattern, really, I want you guys to pay attention to how you think about this area and how you speak about this area, because what does it really mean to be off track with healthy eating?

Here’s what I mostly see is the reason why you feel restricted on the weekends when you want to eat healthy is because to you off track means you have to restrict something you want to do or a way you want to eat. If you feel like you have to give something up to eat healthy, it’s not going to last. And so what I teach is I teach changing your eating behaviors rather than eliminating foods that you actually love.

I will tell you guys and being close to many of these types of people, there are those who have no problem with this. They can have a protocol, stick to it, have foods on the right or wrong list and then just follow that plan. But those of you who resonate with my work in this podcast, you are my people and you’re the people that actually want to savor food, enjoy food and not limit the foods you have. How you eat healthy during the weekends without feeling restricted is really you’ve got to change your definition of what healthy eating even is. You’ve got to get out of the all or nothing where you see it as right versus wrong based on rules that were made up by someone other than yourself.

You’re gonna have to be really honest about what feeling restricted means to you. I’m guessing feeling restricted would mean you saying no to foods for reasons that you don’t like.

So you saying no to a pizza or a margarita or whatever it is you want because you think you shouldn’t–I want you to know that not eating something because you shouldn’t is not a real reason not to eat it.

Not over eating food because it won’t create the results you want with your body is perhaps a reason to eat differently. I want you guys to notice the differences there, and that is how you stop feeling restricted.

Another common question I get is, should I just take the weekend off and start again on Monday? It also kind of touches on this concept of cheat meals or cheat days back in the day.I did do a cheat meal episode, I think, and this touches on that, but I do not encourage any cheat days or meals because to cheat on something is to imply that you’re doing something wrong, right?

It definitely stems from this mindset of right and wrong where morally we see it as shameful to not follow a specific set of rules. And some people love the cheat day and they have a really positive relationship with it. If you have found yourself doing cheat days or taking weekends off and that doesn’t create the results you want, then I want you to hear this.

If you feel like you need a weekend off from the manner of healthy eating that you are attempting, it’s because the manner of healthy eating you are attempting is not sustainable. You are exerting far too much energy. There’s too much pressure and the stakes are too high. I want you to picture a version of healthy eating that you never feel like you have to take time off from. I want you to picture a version of healthy eating where every day feels like a simple yes that you want to partake in. You don’t have to force yourself, you don’t have to use willpower. And if this feels like a stretch of the imagination, I get it. Because you likely have learned how to eat healthy based on following a set of rules which you had no input in. Instead, what I do in my coaching is I teach you how to solidify the basic skills of naturally healthy eating like stress regulation, not emotionally eating, enjoying food without overindulging, things like that. And then once you have those skills, you just get to decide how you want to eat in collaboration with your body and the results you want.

If you’re needing to take a weekend off and start over, rather than seeing it like you are not committing or you’re not using enough willpower, I want you to lean back and take a moment and realistically ask yourself, what do I need time off from right now?

What’s the bigger picture? Because I want you to trust yourself a bit more and know that if you need a weekend off, there are valid reasons for it. And this likely is the all portion of the all or nothing that we want to touch on.

Where are the stakes too high? Where are you putting too much pressure on yourself, and where are you believing that higher performance is necessary to see results when really it’s probably not perfection, is not necessary to see the results you want with your body.

So another question I get a lot is what is a realistic approach to eating out or going to events or attending a party. When I hear this question, I feel like it’s you guys asking what can I get away with and still lose weight, which is not a bad question to ask.

It’s really saying “how much can I actually enjoy food though and create the results I want?” And the reason why this feels hard to answer, I think, is because how many of you have been taught to eat healthy is based on what you’re eating.

A lot of you have been taught to eat healthy based on changing the types of foods you’re eating, or following a set amount in the form of a plan or a protocol.

When you have someone like me coming here and saying, well, you don’t have to restrict yourself. You can enjoy food, eat what you want and lose weight. It’s like, well, how far can I actually take that when I don’t have a plan or a protocol telling me what’s okay?

Here’s the thing, you guys. In order to eat healthy naturally, you’re gonna have to stop outsourcing to things like plans, protocols and what someone tells you you’re supposed to eat. It’s going to be a little vulnerable because you’re going to have to start making decisions for yourself and experimenting a bit with what works for your body that being said as naturally healthy eaters. We have been born with a body that actually has ways to tell us what it needs.

And I don’t say this to be sarcastic at all. I mean, none of us are really, really taught this from a young age.

So your body has everything it needs to tell you when to start eating, when to stop eating, when it’s satisfied, when it feels icky and doesn’t like a certain eating experience, when it finds pleasure in food.

It is brilliantly designed for you to never need a plan or a protocol. And it’s not saying that plans or protocols are bad. They can be useful.

But I don’t want you to outsource your bodies to those things. Because when we ask the question, well, what can I really kind of get away with and lose weight? That answer lies in communication with your body and your body telling you what that line is.

And the only way you’re going to figure out what that is is learning how to listen to your body and actually experimenting with it and getting to know it as an eater versus you outsourcing all those answers to a plan or a protocol. If this is something you want to do step by step in a really easy to understand way, my membership on your eating habits will definitely help you do that.So another question I hear a lot is what do I do if I overeat or go off plan during the weekend?

Really the answer to that is nothing. I want you to do nothing. I mean to be fair, here’s what I actually want you to do at the moment. I want you to do nothing. But then later on, yes, I recommend evaluating, thinking objectively about why that happened, for reasons that are valid. And then from that information, you then plan differently for next time.

Nine times out of 10, it’s going to be because you felt stressed and stress regulation needs to happen, or you didn’t feel satisfied from your previous meal. This is all solvable, especially when you learn the skills of naturally healthy eating.

But a lot of the time when I hear this question like, what do I do if I overeat or go off plan? It’s because there’s this mindset of needing to make up for something.

It’s almost this disciplinary, pressuring approach where if we have a human moment and we don’t create a result we want or behave in the way we want, what do we do about it? And I want you to know that you do not do anything in terms of making up for that action. There’s nothing you need to make up for.

To add further context to this, in my membership, once a month, myself and all the other women, we do a monthly review call. And what these calls are, it’s when we all get together and we write out what I call our progress equations.

And this is the only time in the membership when we kind of give ourselves a grade in a useful way. And what we do is all of us we sit together on a call and we give ourselves kind of grades or percentages for where we’re at with the four skills.

So the skills include not emotionally eating, stress regulation, things like that. And the reason why I included this in that program isn’t to trigger this perfectionistic part of our brain.

I actually want the women to start seeing that they don’t need to get 100% in all of the skills for their body to start creating the results they want. What our women start to see is maybe they’ll be 60 in one skill or 50 or 70, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.

I’ve seen equations from all across the board and they’ll see their body losing weight, or they will see their cravings go down, or they’ll see their body feeling healthier. And this will start to unravel the part of their brain that thinks perfection was necessary to eat healthy and lose weight.

And it also causes them to process the fact that they’re human and 100% performance is never gonna be possible. When I hear the question, what do I do if I overeat or go off plan? Sometimes it is a useful question.

And it’s not that it’s not a useful question. It’s just, is this coming from the place where you think your human error is a problem that needs to be solved for? Are you believing that you cannot create the results you want?

If you have a moment during your weekend where you had the best intentions to eat healthy and then something happened, I want you to hold yourself in a higher regard and know that if you just show up and do your best, you’re not going to take advantage of that and then just milk it for what it is.

And over e all weekend long, I want you to notice that metal where you go in with the best intentions to eat healthy, you have some human error moments here and there.And then you end the weekend knowing you did your best. You’re gonna evaluate why those moments happened, move forward with it, and that’s enough. You’ve done everything you need to do for your weight loss success. And that is the healing that needs to happen.

When that healing happens, how much less pressuring do weekends become? Because so much of the all-or-nothing between weekdays and weekends is the pressure we feel to keep it all together. I kind of think of this like holding onto a steering wheel driving, really, during the week.

It’s like we’ll hold onto the steering wheel super, super tightly to get to our destination and put in a ton of effort, and then by the time the weekend comes, you let go of the wheel completely and then just aren’t conscious at all with the decisions you make with food.

I want you to imagine an experience of healthy eating that you do not need a break from and that you feel like you can enjoy the experience of eating while you’re in it.

That is the experience of driving in the car, leaning back in the seat, comfortable with your hand on the wheel, maintaining control, but without exerting extra effort.

Another question I get asked a lot is how do I deal with social pressure when eating on weekends? I know this is a slightly different question, but I wanna address it because you might be experiencing the same thing people.

Pleasing eating is actually a topic of coaching I cover a lot, I went through it. It’s really, really valid. I can do a whole episode on this, and I probably have in the past, but a few things to keep in mind here.

If you notice during weekends that you tend to not say no, or you want to eat a certain way to please other people.

Notice that you might be believing that your actions actually have the power to control other people’s emotions and spoil earlier. They don’t. You do not have control over anyone’s emotions. That is their business.

And I know this can be easier said than done. But when you really assert with yourself that this is true, it does allow you to start processing those moments better where saying no to a food decision might cause a reaction in someone else.

If they have a reaction, that is their responsibility. It’s not yours. And you are not actually in control of how other people react to your decisions.

Now that being said, I do a lot of deep dive coaching, so I’ve seen it all. Something else I want to offer you, if it fits, is maybe you’re afraid of being judged for your eating decisions when you’re around friends or loved ones or co-workers and you’re socializing.

Maybe you fear that they’ll think, oh, she thinks she’s better than us or she’s stuck up or whatever the case is.

And here’s something else to know about your brain that can truly set you free. When your brain is having fears over other people’s judgments, your brain is actually presenting you with the judgments you already have about yourself. Replay that if you need to, because this is important.

If you are afraid of being judged for the way you eat, it’s because you’re the one who’s actually having those judgments, not other people. A really common analogy of this that you may have heard before is, let’s say someone told me, I hate your red hair.

So if you’re listening to audio, I do not have red hair. I have kind of brunette hair with some blond highlights. So if someone said, I hate your red hair, I wouldn’t feel a charge from that, likely, right? I wouldn’t be triggered because I don’t believe I had red hair. I probably would think that person’s a little crazy.

I’m worried about them. I think something might be wrong here, but I’m not having thoughts about myself.Ideally now if someone said, I think your hair is just awful, and I don’t like the blonde highlights, and I hate your bob, I think it’s tacky. Please don’t do that. But if someone did that, maybe I’d feel a bit of a charge. I’m like whoa okay, that feels a little horrible.

But why that creates a feeling for me is because in that moment I’m having a thought about me that I believe, okay, I want you guys to really consider this concept that if you’re fearing judgments when it comes to your eating decisions, it’s because where are you already judging yourself for that thing.

Again, this is a slightly different topic, so stay with me, but if this applies, I want you to just consider it. Another question is how do I stay consistent with healthy eating during weekends without tracking or micromanaging everything?

Because, of course, if you’re listening to this, you probably do not want to track everything you’re going to be eating during the weekend. You want to relax and have fun. But I want you guys to think about how you’re defining consistency.

How a lot of you are defining consistency is exactly how I did as a Type-A brain. It was doing it right all of the time. I want you to think about consistency as a set of expectations you’re placing on yourself in terms of your performance.

And when I talked about grading of the skills that we do in “Own Your Eating Habits,” well, not grading, but assigning a percentage, that is because I want these women to see that 100% performance isn’t necessary to create results. And that’s how a lot of you are defining consistency right now.

You’re defining being consistent as 100% performance. So here’s why this matters in terms of weekends. You might be able to be 100% performing during the week, and then when the weekend comes, let’s say you have a moment where you overeat or you pass fullness.

Now all of a sudden, you’re not consistent because you didn’t perform perfectly.

Now the chatter’s gonna come up in your brain. “Well, this doesn’t matter. Anyway, I might as well just start again on Monday.” That matters because this means that you’re going to need to change your definition of consistency.

And I have a whole podcast episode on this in the past, so you can check that out if you’d like. But I recommend defining consistency as just showing up, just showing up. And I know for a lot of you, this is not going to feel like enough.

But I want you to imagine that it is enough for you to make progress with healthy eating and weight loss for you to just show up and have the best intentions to succeed.

Imagine if that was the only effort you needed to put in because so many of you, when you set expectations with consistency, you’re trying to solve for human error. You’re not trying to solve for the result. I’ll say that again, you’re trying to solve for human error and how you perform.

You’re not trying to solve for the result. Because the result that you want with your body and healthy eating and feeling good doesn’t need 100% performance. It just needs you to show up and not opt out of the experience of being your own caregiver.

What makes it easy to keep showing up is to stop placing expectations that you’ll perform 100% of the time. I recommend if you’re having the question, how do I stay consistent on the weekends, we’ve got to change your definition of consistency, right?

We’ve got to change it from 100% performance all the time to just showing up and doing your best and going with the best intentions.

This is something that clients who work with me struggle a bit within the beginning, understandably, right? Because when they do a process where I say, it’s the last time that they’re gonna do this work and it’s gonna serve them for life.

It feels counterproductive to just show up, gain some awareness, practice the skills, and they’re not perfect. They have to be a little bad at it for a while. And a lot of lines in the beginning will feel like they’re failing a bit.

And then what happens–where the healing comes in–is they’ll see their body start losing weight or cravings go down in a way they never did before. They feel less stress and they’re like, “oh my gosh, did I just need to keep showing up sustainably and not push myself so hard that I stopped altogether?”

So I want you to just consider this if you’re wondering, well, how do I keep it together on the weekends or stay consistent, we’ve got to change that definition of consistency.

The last question I wanna address, which I thought was a really fun one is what do my most successful clients do on weekends? I actually specifically had a newer client ask this, and she’s so committed, she’s so devoted to the process of becoming a naturally healthy eater.

And she said, well, what do your most successful clients do on the weekends? Now that they’ve created this result, I always want to give the disclaimer that no healthy eating is the same. None of you will be the same.

If you decide to hire me and work with me, your version of naturally healthy eating is going to be yours. But there are common patterns I see. And I think the biggest, broadest one is that my most successful clients stop solving for healthy eating during the weekends at all. Alright, so they stop solving it as if it’s a problem that they need to put effort or energy or brain space towards. Because when you master the skills of naturally healthy eating where your cravings are down, stress regulated, you don’t have urges to overeat, you can enjoy food without over consuming it and that solid you can just make healthy eating decisions at any moment, in any circumstances, no matter what unexpected changes occur. You’re so adaptable with healthy eating.

And so that means that the week and the weekends don’t need to look like this all or nothing where you feel like you’re holding on tightly and letting go. It all just gets to feel simple and easeful and sustainable. And if this feels far away from you right now, that is so valid.

I don’t want you to try and force a pretty picture if it’s not there, but what if it were possible? Alright. So that’s what I will say and I hope answering these questions was useful for you. I really care so much about helping you with where you’re at and giving you the support you need.

So if you want to take this work further and get under my wing and my community in this area of your life, I of course would love to welcome you into the “Own Your Eating Habits” membership community. You can go to katrentas.com/membership to learn more. And it’s a really beautiful community with women from all around the world mastering this work. Alright, so I hope you have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you next week.