The Weekend Binger. She’s 50 years old 5’5” and she weighs 150 lbs., she would like to lose 10 to 15 pounds. She is a restaurant worker so she works some late nights. She works out during the week taking classes but nothing on a regular schedule. She tracks her calories at around 1400 during the week and then once Friday comes along she goes off the rails on the weekend. She doesn’t track it all so we have no idea how many calories she’s having. What we do know is that she is restricting during the week and then bingeing on the weekends.
She feels bloated, especially by Monday, and her weight fluctuates by as much as 5 lbs. She’s experiencing acne even though she’s 50, and her PMS symptoms have gotten worse. She’s having heavier bleeding, soaking through several tampons a day and she has painful cramps, especially on the first day, and her breasts are sore leading up to her cycle. These are common symptoms of high estrogen and low progesterone.
The calorie restriction during the week and influx on the weekend is affecting her metabolism and hormones. As the weekend rolls around she’s bringing in a higher volume of food and calories that are generally highly processed. Let’s be honest, nobody is bingeing on broccoli lol.
Foods like sweets, alcohol, pizza, basically heavy carbs, all the foods she’s been avoiding during the week. These carb and calorie heavy days are leading to those symptoms of bloating and fluctuations in weight and hormones as well as affecting her digestion.
For her, I would want to see a food diary of what she’s actually having on the weekends and then we can come up with a 5-2 strategy for her where she can have some extra calories during the weekend and still lose weight. We’ll “borrow” calories from Monday through Friday and bring them into Saturday and Sunday, keeping protein the same throughout and increasing carbs at a moderate level, avoiding those carb loaded weekends. She should start to see bloating and weight gain even out and have less PMS symptoms as her hormones and metabolism improve.
Here is what I would recommend for diet and exercise prescription.
I would set her macros Protein (g) Carbs (g ) Fat (g) to:
5x week Protein 140 Carbs 115 Fat 55 total calories 1515
2x week Protein 140 Carbs 190 Fat 60 total calories 1860
As far as training goes I would get her on a regular schedule incorporating weight training 3-4 times a week as well as hitting a step goal every day through walking. Walking is great because she will also be getting some sunlight and vitamin D which is going to help with her hormones. She should be able to lose one to one and a half pounds per week. That’s 4-6 pounds a month and that would bring her to her goal in anywhere from three to five months depending on her lifestyle.
This isn’t an easy fix, she’s used to this binge and restrict cycle so this may take more time than people might think it would. This is why I encourage people to track their “binges” It’s not to shame them, I don’t care what you had, but ignoring them doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. I’ve been there before trust me, a night with some friends turns into having 3-4 glasses of wine, some buffalo wings and a plate of nachos. I’ve calculated it before, it is not pretty.
If that happens occasionally that’s fine but if it’s every weekend you can bet you won’t lose the weight that you’re trying to lose. Stick to your diet as well as you can, being consistent not perfect. It’s the consistency that’s going to lead to results. Having a regular weight lifting routine and going for daily walks will increase this client’s metabolism. She’ll be able to eat more calories in the long run once she’s done with her dieting phase.
The next scenario I’ll be sharing is the Unknowing.