Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body, I’m Katy Harvey your host. As you can see from the title, today we’re talking about weekend binges – which might still be happening even if you’re doing really well with IE during the week.

I remember when I was in the thick of my own diet mentality, I would have certain things that I would ONLY allow myself to have on weekends. So it wasn’t like I was totally avoiding these foods and drinks, but in hindsight there were restrictions around them. Like, for example, if I was going to eat out it was only on the weekend because I had made restaurant food “bad” in my mind. Same thing with alcohol. And of course, fun things like going to football tailgates, and to the bars with friends meant food and drinks that felt “extra” and I tried turning it into a weird math equation in my head. 

All of this was so miserable, and I look at my life now where my weekend eating doesn’t look that different from my weekday eating. And sure, I still do fun things on weekends, but the foods involved that might be more novel our out of the norm just aren’t that big of a deal anymore. Lately here this summer with my kids off school and us having been on vacation and having some extra days off work where I didn’t have childcare there were days I barely even knew what day of the week it was, and it didn’t matter in regards to my eating. 

This is an example of having peace with food that will change how you feel about social events and Mondays because you’re not going to feel stressed out ahead of time or guilty after. 

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: Javvy coffee 

You may have seen this, it’s all over social media. They rely heavily on influencers to promote it (which is our first red flag). 

Marketed as a keto friendly w/ MCT oil and no sugar (they use non-nutritive sweeteners), coffee w/ 30gm protein

Claims:
Energy and endurance which is ideal for athletes
Muscle building
Strength and power
Kickstart your day (80mg caffeine, 1C coffee)
Focus and alertness
Stay full and fueled (it’s kind of like the bulletproof coffee)

What’s in it?
Coffee
Whey protein
Prebiotics (from the sweeteners)
MCTs

20 servings for $40

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…why you binge on weekends, and how to stop.

Ever find yourself feeling great all week about listening to your body, but then feeling out of control with food on the weekends, only to wake up Monday in a spiral of guilt, vowing to ‘be good’ and ‘get back on track’?

Why weekends are so triggering

Break down the combination of psychological, emotional, and physiological factors:

• Deprivation backlash: If you’ve been trying to “be good” all week, your body is rebelling. That might mean “being good” in that diet-y sense of good/bad food, but it can also be trying to “be good” with intuitive eating.
  
• Lack of structure: Weekdays are often more routine-based; weekends are looser, which can feel chaotic.
  
• Social settings: Eating out, parties, drinks – foods you’ve labeled as “off-limits” in the past, or that you’ve historically felt more guilty about or out of control with are now available, which can trigger a “last supper” mentality (even if you’re telling yourself you can have this food, and it’s not off limits).
  • Social settings can also make it harder to listen to your body because you’re having fun, or you might be anxious, or more distracted.
  • Drinking lowers inhibitions and can increase appetite
    
• Emotional release: Stress built up during the week gets released…often via food, alcohol, or numbing behaviors. Or you’re out doing fun things like going to parties, or football tailgates, or baby showers, weddings – and we’ve learned to pair having fun with cutting loose with food, and sometimes we lose track of how to listen to our bodies in these situations.
  
• “Weekend mindset”: The all-or-nothing thinking of “screw it, I’ll start over Monday” kicks in.

The binge-restrict pendulum

• How restriction (even mental restriction) during the week builds the perfect storm for weekend binges. 
• Use the pendulum metaphor: the harder you pull it back (restrict), the harder it swings (binge).
• When we have certain foods and drinks that we ONLY allow ourselves to consume on the weekends it gives them “charm” – which creates the compulsion to eat more, and to override our hunger and fullness signals.
• We want to work the “weekend” foods/drinks in during the week to neutralize them. Your eating during the week shouldn’t look much different than the weekend.

Losing track of listening to your body

• It’s often easier to listen to our bodies during the week when we have more structure and routine. (This is why I encourage a consistent eating schedule.)
• Weekends we might stay up late, sleep in, eat at different times than normal, be doing social things or distracted with errands or projects – and it’s harder to listen to your body.  

Why it’s not about willpower

• Diet culture teaches us that we just need more self-control, but that’s never been an effective long-term solution.
• What we need to do is help you be able to still use all of your IE skills no matter what day of the week it is, or what situation you’re in. That’s what’s cool about IE – it can be a superpower that you take with you wherever you go.

What to do instead: Intuitive eating tools for weekends

Check in before the weekend begins

• Ask yourself: What do I need this weekend: physically, emotionally, socially?
• Make a loose plan that includes meals, snacks, rest, joy, and connection.
  

Let go of the “last chance” mentality

• Permission to eat doesn’t expire on Sunday night.
• Repeat: Food will always be available. I don’t have to eat it all now.

Loosely plan your meals and snack options for the weekend

• Try to keep a similar eating schedule to the weekdays
• Don’t have separate foods for weekdays vs weekends
• I have a great resource for this. It’s my menu planning guide where I show you my 6 easy steps to meal planning for intuitive eating, and it comes with plug-and-play templates for your menus and grocery lists. When you follow this system you’ll have weekend plans already figured out alongside your weekday plans, and you can really intentionally make sure that you’re including all types of foods across both week days and weekends. 

Anchor yourself with gentle structure

• Structure isn’t the enemy, rigidity is.
• Regular meals and snacks still matter on weekends, even when your schedule is different.

Practice neutrality in social situations

• Remind yourself: Food is food. No moral value.
• Get curious, not judgmental, about what feels satisfying and how you want to feel afterward.

Practice staying connected with your body

• When you’re going to a social situation, check in with your body before you go to see how you’re feeling, and where you’re at with hunger/fullness, as well as thoughts/emotions about food.
• Try to remember to check in with your body during social events. 
• Reflect afterwards – not to judge, but to learn. What went well? What would you do differently? 

Plan for recovery, not restriction

• If you do binge, the answer is never to restrict the next day.
• Instead, treat it like your body is asking for support, and respond with nourishment and self-compassion.

Client story

• Client who used to sleep in on the weekends, and not eat until afternoon, and then would overeat or binge most nights. Here’s the kicker – her dogs would still wake her up at their regular time (because as biological beings like us, they have a circadian rhythm too) and she’d get up and feed them and then go back to sleep our lounge around without feeding herself. 
• Huge ah-ha moment for her when she realized that she was taking care of them without taking care of herself. And that she deserved to be fed her breakfast too.
• Starting off her day with fuel and breakfast on the weekends helped her to eat in more of a similar pattern as her body was used to during the week. 
• The other thing that helped was incorporating her “weekend foods” into the regular week. So instead of only letting herself get takeout on Fri/Sat night, she sometimes had it on a Mon/Tue/Wed. And rather than only having pizza or french fries on weekends, those became normal weekday foods for her as well.
  • And it went the other way too – instead of salads being her usual lunch only during the week, sometimes she’d eat a salad on the weekend, or her favorite apple w/ PB snack on the weekend too, so it wasn’t that all her “fun” foods were saved for the weekend. 
• And then she worked on checking in with herself before, during and after social events so she could stay more connected to her body. 

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Wrapping Up

If you’ve been doing well with listening to your body during the week, only to feel like it all goes out the window on the weekends, just know that this is pretty common, and it doesn’t have to stay this way. This is definitely something you can work on, and it starts with getting curious about what are some of those things that are contributing – whether it’s saving certain foods for the weekends, not checking in with your body during social events, throwing caution to the wind and saying “screw it” every Saturday night, or alcohol lowering your inhibitions, or it could just be the difference in your eating schedule and patterns on the weekends that is throwing you off. Once we have more clarity on what the culprits are here, we can work on evening things out so that the pendulum isn’t swinging back and forth between “I’m doing great with IE” during the week to “I’m failing” on the weekend. 

Don’t forget to grab the menu planning guide to help with this…

In case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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