How to balance a social life and eating healthy.
It can be really overwhelming and challenging to balance your social life with healthy eating. Especially when it seems like just about every weekend there is an event to go to!
Just because you are working towards a health goal, doesn’t mean you have to give up going out! You CAN strike the right balance between your social life and a healthy lifestyle.
Here are my top tips for balancing healthy eating with your social life so you can still enjoy life to the fullest!
Ditch the 'all or nothing' mindset
When you are constantly striving for perfection and have an ‘all or nothing’ mindset, it actually makes it harder for you to reach your goals. It is NOT about being 100% perfect with your food, it’s more important to be consistent!
Memories > Macros!
My biggest advice is to truly allow yourself the freedom to enjoy the foods YOU want to eat on your nights out. During the rest of the week, try to continue eating as close to your nutrition goals as possible so that everything balances out in the end!
Be mindful of food portions
You can still enjoy the foods you want to eat without going overboard. It’s still a great idea to keep healthy portion sizes in mind, especially because a lot of restaurants tend to serve larger portions as a way to make it seem that you are getting value for money.
The best way to practice this is to actually be mindful and stay in tune with your body as you eat. Are you getting full? Then that's your cue to stop! It’s no big deal if you have leftovers. Simply ask for the leftovers to be placed in a container for you to take home and enjoy another day!
Say goodbye to guilt
There is no need to feel guilty for enjoying food that isn’t on your meal plan or not on track with your macros. Food is meant to be enjoyed!
There is no such thing as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods. Foods do not have a moral value.
The best way to eliminate those feelings of guilt is to give yourself permission to enjoy all foods and then move on. As long as you keep up your physical activity, and eat in line with your nutrition goals most of the time, then you will still make progress!
Plan your week out by allowing for more calories on the weekends.
This strategy can be great if you have a specific goal you are trying to achieve.
Much like our calorie budgets for the day, we can accumulate calories and “save some” them for the weekend.
For example: Let’s say you have 1750 calories per day.
If you have an event on on the weekend we might want take 50-100 calories per day to then have 1600 calories on Monday - Saturday (6 days of the week), that way we have 700 calories “spare” for our event, meaning we can have a high day of 2650 calories at the event.
What matters most is your weekly budget of calories, not what you do on one day, so if you are still hitting on average 1750 calories for the entire week, then you will be within your target.