In the minds of many people, eating healthily during the week would be enough to counterbalance the excesses of the weekend…
“Since I eat healthy during the week, I can treat myself on the weekend without it making me fat.“. Who has never said that to themselves? In the minds of many people, eating a balanced diet during the week is enough to counterbalance the “deviations” of the weekend or even to lose weight. Can this strategy work? The answer from Dr. Jean-Michel Cohen, nutritionist, author and founder of the Cohen method.
When you restrict your body for 5 days and then suddenly start eating again, it restarts all the systems that allow it to store. And for good reason, when you lose weight, you also “destock” the glycogen contained in the muscles and in the liver.Since the muscles and liver are smart, they will immediately take back the savings they had made. We have about 2 kg of glycogen in the muscles and 1 kg in the liver. These reserves are consumed very quickly at the time of weight loss and in general, once they are consumed, the body remanufactures the sugar from fats. But since we give it sugar again by breaking the diet, the body, which is relatively intelligent, will immediately replenish its reserves, leading to almost immediate weight gain“, explains our interlocutor.
“This means that people who eat particularly diet-like every day of the week and who let themselves go on Saturday and Sunday will, at a minimum, gain back a little of the weight they lost and at a maximum, if the meals were really copious, gain back more than they lost. This then puts them into a vicious circle of not losing weight despite what they think is a diet = frustration = renunciation = guilt = I eat to forget“, continues the nutritionist.
In addition, you should know that calorie counting is not done on a daily basis but over a full week. In this sense, the efforts of the week do not compensate for the calories ingested during the weekend. If you reduce your rations during the week and “stuff yourself” on the weekend, the total number of calories is ultimately well above that necessary to hope for weight loss. It is difficult to swallow, but following a slimming diet during the week and letting go on the weekend does not work. Worse still, it completely cancels out the effects of the diet. To avoid the yo-yo effect, it is essential to follow your diet to the letter, then respect a stabilization phase by gradually increasing your intake in increments of 200 calories, week after week.
If the deviation from the diet only occurs at one meal, there are systems to eliminate this “deviation”. In practice, it is enough to considerably lighten the following meal.What I suggest in these cases is to follow the famous egg diet because the combination of egg white and yogurt is the most beautiful combination of proteins that can exist.” :
→ 2 hard-boiled egg whites
→ 1 yogurt
→ A plate of fat-free vegetables
→ Or a vegetable broth (to capitalize on the vitamins and minerals contained in vegetables)
Thanks to Dr. Jean-Michel Cohen, nutritionist, author and founder of the Cohen method. www.savoirmaigrir.fr