How to Salvage A Day Of Eating Gone Awry
If your diet has gone wild, here’s how to rectify the situation. (Photo: Getty Images)
For many of us, the routine of the workweek lends itself to a reasonably predictable pattern of eating. This predictability is particularly helpful when trying to follow a healthy eating plan for weight management. But for many of us, weekends can feel like a free-for-all, packed with lots of social commitments at which we have limited control over what foods are available. As a result, efforts at weight management may seem to be a Sisphyean endeavor: We take two steps forward from Monday through Friday, only to fall three steps back from Friday night to Sunday night.
To make matters worse, when a weekend meal (or two) has stretched the limits of your usual diet – either by volume, dessert calories, carb content or alcoholic drinks – it’s easy to succumb to “black and white thinking,” which writes off the entire day as a failure. “I’ve already messed up by overeating,” the devil on your shoulder reasons. “I might as well go crazy for the rest of the day and start with a clean slate tomorrow.”
But don’t fall for this faulty line of reasoning; the energy balance that dictates your weight doesn’t automatically reset overnight. Rather, your weight represents the long-term balance between calories in and calories expended, meaning that the sooner you rein in the excess, the quicker the equilibrium will be re-established. Therefore, your next eating opportunity is the best time to start bringing your body back into balance – and the sooner you correct course, the less ground you’ve lost in your weight-loss journey.
Getting back on track after you’ve gone overboard can be tricky, but having a plan for doing so is a great first step. Here are some approaches I recommend for rectifying days of diets gone wild:
The Bridal Shower Brunch Bender: A gaggle of girlfriends is assembled around pitchers of mimosas, a cupcake tower and a carb-heavy meal that stretches for three hours or longer. By the time you leave the table, it’s close to 3 p.m., your buzz is wearing off and you’ve just consumed more bread than you typically do in a week. In my experience, patients handle this situation in one of two ways. They either swear they’re not eating anything else for the rest of the day, or they decide to double down on the party and have Chinese for dinner.
In reality, there’s a third option: Skip lunch and plan for a light, low-carb dinner to help level-set your soon-to-be-crashing blood sugar levels so you start tomorrow back on an even keel. Some low-effort options include: an egg-white omelet with spinach and cup of butternut squash soup; heating up a frozen salmon or turkey burger to serve with a bag of frozen vegetable steamers; and ordering in some Naruto-style sushi rolls, which are sushi rolls wrapped in cucumber rather than rice. These nutrient dense but light meals are the perfect way to address the inevitable (but unwelcome) hunger you’re likely to feel several hours after a high-carb, high-calorie brunch without contributing too much more to the day’s calorie overages.
The Booze-Fueled Late Night “Fourth Meal:” Chances are, if you’re up past midnight, dinner has started to wear off and hunger starts calling. If there’s been alcohol involved, inhibitions may be particularly low, and all of a sudden, pizza or diner fries don’t seem like such a bad idea at 2 a.m. When you wake up the next morning, however, you may feel like you’re starting the day off already behind the eight ball – and that eating anything at all just puts you further behind. (You may also feel a little nauseated.)
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The best thing to do in this scenario is to re-establish balance as quickly as possible with a nutritious, well-rounded breakfast. Resist the urge to revisit the scene of the crime with a greasy hangover breakfast out, and seek out other ways to calm a queasy stomach than with an oversized bagel. Home-made scrambled eggs with fruit and whole-grain toast will give you a balanced dose of fat, healthy carbs and protein to recalibrate your appetite. A plain Greek yogurt with berries and a sprinkle of nuts offers a similarly balanced way to start the day. Other well-balanced options include smashed avocado on whole-grain toast with turkey bacon; a yogurt-based smoothie with peanut butter, cocoa powder and banana; or some Scandi-style crispbreads with lox, cucumber, tomato and a shmear of goat cheese. Be sure to drink a nice cup of coffee and plenty of water with your meal. Proceed onto lunch and dinner as normal.
Your Kid’s Back-to-Back Birthday Party Buffets: Got kids? I do. And Sundays can be a birthday party minefield, often involving back-to-back commitments in which juice, cake, pizza, pasta, crackers and cheese are pretty much the extent of what’s on the menu. I may be a dietitian, but I’m not one to rain on my children’s parade by forbidding them to enjoy what’s on offer at a party. Rather, I do my best to make up for the missing food group(s) later that night … and that week … to bring things back into balance.
After a day where flour, fat and sugar marked the majority of my kids’ intake, I’ll be sure to serve something high-protein, high-fiber and sugar-free when we get home at night. Typically, they’re a little peckish after a long party day, but not particularly starving; therefore, I look for light, non-elaborate meals that don’t require much prep effort on my part. This past Sunday night, for example, I scrambled some eggs and served them alongside a tray of crispy baked edamame as a light supper for my party-weary kids. Other times, I’ve offered leftover lentil soup or a baked falafel platter served with hummus and sliced cucumbers (hold the pita!). Once Monday morning rolls around, we get right back to our usualhealthy diet – with no guilt and no long-term damage done.
We adults often find ourselves in similar situations after festive family or holiday gatherings. On these occasions, we may find ourselves grazing all afternoon at the buffet table, only to return home in the late afternoon without having eaten a truly proper meal all day. If hunger strikes again before bed, the light, low-glycemic meal suggestions from above work equally well. Other good options are an apple with peanut butter; some sliced deli turkey with a handful of grape tomatoes; a frozen veggie burger topped with hummus or a few avocado slices; or some homemade tuna salad scooped onto red bell pepper slices.
By Tamara Duker Freuman
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