Week #38: Be a Weekend Warrior!

Fitting that I'm posting about this on a Saturday morning. It's the weekend! And as many of you related this week, the weekends can be a challenge. There's less structure, more things that need to get done, more running around, socializing, eating and drinking.

Dealing with the weekends is honestly something I still have to work on. I've tried lots of things over the years, including giving myself Saturday as a "free day", but then I ended up using the remainder of the week as damage control to make up for one day's eating. Not a good way to lose weight, that's for sure!

One thing the weekend allows me to do is get in a lot of activity. I've shared with some of you that I have been training for a half marathon (that was supposed to happen today - but got cancelled, and the less said about that THE BETTER). To do that, I've got to make sure I get up on the weekends and get those training runs in! That helps me get a healthy start to the weekend. I can't be eating trash on Friday nights and expect to get up on Saturday morning and do a long endurance workout. And being able to sit here at 10am on a Saturday morning having already met my ActiveLink goal for the day is pretty cool, too.

A topic of discussion this week related to weekends was trying the Simply Filling Technique as a way to continue the healthy eating patterns on the weekend with perhaps less burden of tracking when there's not as much time for that sort of thing. Many of you seemed pretty interested in it, and I think that's great!

Simply Filling Technique (in which you eat Power Foods until satisfaction and need not count PPV of those foods) is almost like what I think the ideal eating habits would be. Focusing your calorie intake on fruits, veggies, lean proteins and whole grains? Staying away from lots of sugar and fat-filled snacks? Learning to obey your hunger signals and stop before you're full? GENIUS.

If the "eat until you're satisfied" part sends chills down your spine, here is something to think about. When you walked through the door on day one, did you know everything you needed to about how to lose weight? Most likely not. You had to practice changing habits, learn some new things, and figure a few things out about yourself. This is another one of those things. Sure, you may not be able to stop at satisfaction TODAY, but that doesn't mean that you can't practice that skill and master it over time.

If you knew how to stop eating before you were full, wouldn't that make all the difference in the world? What's stopping you from trying to master it?