Battle Cry to all of the Weekend Warriors out there!

Monday to Friday afternoon your fitness and nutrition regime is near perfect....wake up at 5:30am so you can hit the gym before work, armed with your post-workout protein shake and packed lunch. You snack on almonds, don't indulge in alcohol, sleep at least 7hrs a night and overall treat your body as close to a 'temple' as is possible in your busy life.

Fast forward to Friday at 5pm....all of a sudden it's happy hour at work, dinner out with friends. Wine and beer, wings and desserts are flowing. Out until the wee hours of the morning you 'need' to let loose - afterall, this is your time to do whatever you want without the commitments of work. You 'deserve' it right?

Fast forward again to Monday morning. Alarm clock goes off at 5:30am - you (being used to sleeping in all weekend) roll out of bed and drag your heels to the gym for a workout (although it's lethargic at best). By Tuesday you're fully back in the swing of things ready to work hard all week again until Friday night.

Who are you? You ARE the Weekend Warrior.

You may be asking, what's wrong with that? You may also be wondering why you aren't getting the results that you want from the gym. Let's start off by saying that it's more than likely that these things are related. I used to be a champion weekend warrior. I never saw much in the way of results at the gym. Then finally I started a challenge where it required 7 days a week of being 'on plan'. Amazingly, I saw greater progress on my fitness goals in those 6 weeks than I had in the past year. What had changed? I wasn't derailing all of my weekday success with going overboard on indulgences in the weekend.

Let's take a closer look at what's happening on those weekends. Just say for example (and I hate calorie counting because it's not the same for everyone - more on that at another time - but it's an easy way to make a point), you are reducing your daily intake of calories by 500 in hopes of losing a pound a week. You do this Sunday-Thursday - but Friday and Saturday you go out for dinner, drinks and the infamous hangover breakfast - going over your calorie goal by 1500/day (and to be honest that's likely an underestimate for most people when you take into consideration that a beer is 150 calories, HALF an order of nachos can run you 1200-1500 calories, or that Denny's Grand Slam breakfast - 795 calories - at a minimum). Even if you are eating good quality food, if you are going out for meals and at lots of social events (even without the alcohol) it's likely that your calorie intake is dramatically increased. So in those two days, you've gone over your goal by 3000 calories - WELL OVER the reduction in 2500 calories you managed to secure Sunday - Thursday. At this point, reaching for your fitness goals is a stretch - in fact, you're lucky you're maintaining at all!

Of course, it isn't all about calories. Let's talk about sleep. You sleep as best you can during the week - hitting the pillow at 10:30 giving you 7 full hours. But the weekend comes, you're up hours later than normal, sleeping in Saturday and Sunday and Monday when your alarm goes off, the feeling is reminiscent of getting hit by a truck, making the rest of your day a struggle.

Now I'm not saying to never have a night where you cast your regime aside and have a night where your focus isn't primarily on your fitness goals. But the faster you want to reach your goals, the less often these nights can be part of your life. It's all a matter of choice, and if you want to reach your goals but aren't getting any closer to them, it's time to take a look at what you're doing in your 'off-days' and see if maybe they offer a clue into why your body appears to not be reacting to all of the hard work you've put in. After all you do during the week, you owe it to yourself!