You start Monday with good intentions. Your meals are planned, you’re making better food choices, you might be training or walking more, and you generally feel like you’re back on track with your weight loss. Tuesday goes well, Wednesday goes well, and by Thursday you’re probably feeling quite pleased with how the week has gone.
Then Friday arrives.
The working week is almost over, you’re tired, and you’ve spent several days keeping on top of work, family life and everything else that needs doing. Somewhere around Friday afternoon, your mindset starts to change. You’ve been good all week, you’re ready to switch off, and suddenly the same rules you’ve been following since Monday don’t seem quite as important.
Friday night becomes a few drinks and a takeaway. Saturday might involve going out, eating whatever you fancy and having more alcohol. Sunday then becomes the recovery day, which can mean convenience food, another takeaway and very little activity.
Monday arrives and you start again.
If this sounds familiar, it could explain why you feel like you’re doing everything right with your weight loss but seeing little to no progress. The problem might not be what you’re doing Monday to Thursday. It could be what happens during the other three days of your week.
The Monday to Thursday Weight Loss Trap
One of the biggest problems I see with weight loss is that people mentally divide their week into two completely different sections. Monday to Thursday becomes the part of the week when they’re “on it”, while Friday to Sunday becomes the weekend, when they give themselves permission to relax the rules.
During those first four days, you might be disciplined with your food, alcohol and exercise. You’re making decisions based on the result you want, but as Friday approaches, you start negotiating with yourself. You tell yourself that you’ve been good all week, that you deserve a few drinks, or that one takeaway isn’t going to hurt because you’ll get back on track on Monday.
The problem isn’t necessarily having a takeaway or enjoying a drink. The problem comes when one decision turns into an entire weekend of completely different behaviours.
If you spend four days creating progress and the following three days undoing it, you can easily end up going nowhere. Repeat that process for weeks or months and it becomes much easier to understand why your weight isn’t changing, despite feeling like you’re doing everything right most of the time.
Why Weight Loss Gets Harder at the Weekend
For many people, Friday represents relief. The working week is finished, or nearly finished, and you can finally switch off from the stresses and responsibilities that have been building throughout the week.
Food and alcohol can easily become part of that process. You’ve had a stressful week, so you have a few drinks to unwind. You don’t want to cook, so you order a takeaway. You’ve been disciplined since Monday, so you convince yourself that you’ve earned the right to let go for a couple of days.
Over time, this can create an association between the weekend and escaping from everything you’ve been trying to achieve during the week. It isn’t necessarily because you lack motivation or willpower. You’ve simply created two different sets of rules for two different parts of your week.
The Monday-to-Thursday version of you is trying to lose weight and improve your health. The Friday-to-Sunday version of you is trying to escape from work, stress and responsibility. When those two versions of you are constantly pulling in opposite directions, making consistent progress becomes much harder.
Can Three Days Really Stop You Losing Weight?
Your body doesn’t know that Saturday is the weekend. It also doesn’t reset everything you’ve eaten and drunk when Monday morning arrives. Your results come from what you consistently do across the entire week, not simply what happens on your best four days.
Imagine that from Monday to Thursday you create a reasonable calorie deficit through your food choices and activity levels. You then significantly increase your intake on Friday, Saturday and Sunday through alcohol, takeaways, meals out, snacks and larger portions.
Those additional calories can quickly reduce or completely remove the deficit you created earlier in the week. Instead of losing weight, you might simply maintain it.
This is where frustration can creep in. You step on the scales and wonder why nothing is happening because you remember all the good decisions you made during the week. You remember the healthy meals, the workouts and the things you turned down.
What you might forget is that your body experienced all seven days, not just the four you’re most proud of.
Do You Need to Give Up Your Social Life to Lose Weight?
This is where weight-loss advice can become unnecessarily restrictive. I don’t believe somebody who enjoys having a drink should automatically be told that they can never drink alcohol again. I also don’t believe you need to stop going to the pub, turn down every meal out or distance yourself from your friends and family.
Instead, you need to understand how your choices affect the result you’re trying to achieve. Once you understand that, you can make an informed decision about what you’re prepared to change.
If you regularly have several alcoholic drinks on Friday and Saturday, for example, you could experiment with replacing some or all of them with zero-alcohol alternatives. I’ve tried plenty of these myself. They’re obviously not identical to drinking alcohol, but some taste surprisingly similar and still allow you to have the experience of sitting down with a drink.
You can still go to the pub. You can still be part of the conversation. You can still enjoy the social occasion. You’ve simply changed what’s in your glass.
That’s very different from believing that losing weight means you have to sit at home while everybody else enjoys themselves.
You Don't Have to Give Up Takeaways Either
The same principle applies to food. A takeaway doesn’t necessarily have to mean ordering the biggest meal you can find and deciding that the entire evening no longer matters.
There are several ways you can approach it differently. You could choose something from the menu that better fits what you’re trying to achieve, change the sides you normally order, reduce the portion, or make your own takeaway-style meal at home.
I do this myself with low-carbohydrate versions of takeaway meals. I might remove the rice, change some of the ingredients and make a few simple adjustments. The meal still looks like a takeaway, tastes like something I genuinely want to eat and gives me the experience I was looking for without needing to completely abandon the way I normally eat.
This is important because if your weight-loss plan constantly makes you feel as though you’re missing out, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually rebel against it. Sustainable weight loss shouldn’t require you to spend the rest of your life wishing you could eat something else.
The goal is to find alternatives and make decisions that you genuinely enjoy while still moving towards the result you want.
Talk to Your Friends and Family About Your Weight Loss Goals
Sometimes the difficult part isn’t turning down the drink or changing what you eat. It’s having the confidence to explain why you’re doing it.
You might worry that your friends will think you’ve changed. You might feel as though you’re going to miss out, or you might be concerned that somebody will question why you’re not drinking, eating the same takeaway or joining in exactly as you used to.
This is where a little bravery can be required.
If you’re serious about changing your health, sometimes you need to be willing to tell the people around you what you’re trying to achieve. You can explain that you still want to go out, spend time with them and enjoy yourself, but you’re making some different decisions because you’re working towards something that matters to you.
The people who genuinely support you should be able to respect that decision. They don’t have to eat the way you eat or make the same choices you make. They simply need to accept that you’re choosing to do something differently.
Once you’ve done that a few times, it can stop feeling unusual. Your friends get used to it, your family gets used to it, and most importantly, you get used to it.
It simply becomes what you do.
What Happens When Your Weekends Start Working With You?
Changing your weekend habits isn’t only about seeing a lower number on the scales. There can be other benefits that start to influence different areas of your life.
If you reduce how much alcohol you drink, for example, you might notice improvements in your sleep. Better sleep can improve your energy and recovery, which might make you more willing to exercise. You could wake up on Saturday or Sunday wanting to train, go for a walk, spend time with your family or actually do something with your day rather than spending half of it recovering from the night before.
The same applies to your food choices. If you’re no longer spending an entire weekend eating foods that leave you feeling sluggish, you might notice that Monday morning feels different as well. Instead of feeling as though you need to recover from the weekend and start another diet, you simply continue with what you were already doing.
This is when something that initially required discipline can gradually become part of your normal way of living.
Sustainable Weight Loss Is About Who You're Becoming
For me, this is where the conversation becomes bigger than calories, takeaways and alcohol.
Think about the person you’re trying to become.
Monday arrives and you behave like that person. You train, make better food choices, look after yourself and make decisions based on where you want to go. You’re building habits that reflect the healthier version of yourself you’re trying to create.
Then Friday arrives and you revert to the person you’re trying to move away from.
You don’t necessarily do this consciously. It can simply be the result of years of associating the weekend with drinking, takeaways, switching off and doing whatever you feel like doing in the moment.
If you repeat that cycle every week, you’re constantly pulling yourself in two different directions.
Sustainable weight loss doesn’t mean being perfect seven days a week. You can have meals out, enjoy a drink, celebrate birthdays, go on holiday and have a social life. There needs to be flexibility because this has to work in the real world.
There is, though, a difference between consciously choosing to enjoy something and using the weekend as permission to abandon everything you’ve been working towards.
What Should You Do Differently This Weekend?
If your weight loss has stalled, don’t automatically assume you need another diet or that you need to eat even less. Instead, look honestly at your entire week.
Think about what happens when Friday arrives. Look at what you eat and drink on Saturday. Consider how Sunday compares with the choices you make earlier in the week. More importantly, ask yourself why those behaviours change.
You might realise that your biggest weight-loss problem isn’t what you’re eating Monday to Thursday. It’s the fact that you’ve convinced yourself that four good days give you permission to do whatever you want for the remaining three.
You don’t need to give up your weekends to lose weight. You don’t need to abandon your friends, stop going out or spend the rest of your life refusing anything you enjoy.
You might simply need the confidence to start making weekend decisions that reflect the person you’re trying to become.
So when Friday arrives and you’re about to make a decision simply because “it’s the weekend”, ask yourself one question:
Does the decision I’m about to make match the person I’m trying to become?
Final Thoughts
Your weekends don’t need to be perfect for you to lose weight. They simply need to stop undoing the progress you’re making during the rest of the week.
You can still enjoy your social life, eat food you enjoy and have a drink if you choose to. The important part is understanding the impact of those decisions and finding an approach you can maintain across all seven days, rather than constantly starting again every Monday.
If you’re struggling to make weight loss work around your career, family and social life, I help people build an approach that fits around real life rather than taking it over.
Find out more about my coaching at J Bryant Coaching
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