How to beat weekend junk food binges

Every week expert nutritionist and clinical hypnotherapist Lowri Turner answers your health, fitness and wellbeing questions. This week: How to beat weekend junk food binges, plus healthy summer picnics

Q: ‘I find it hard to be consistent with my diet. I’m really healthy in the week, but binge on junk food and alcohol on the weekends. Any top tips?’

A: ‘ This is a really common scenario. Partly, the problem is that at the weekend you have more time on your hands – and ready access to the fridge – and no-one watching. While you would be embarrassed to be seen making hourly trips to the office kitchen for biscuits, toast, muffins etc. at home, at the weekend, there is no such social embarrassment to rein you in.

There is also the ‘I need a treat’ factor. After a long week, it’s tempting to use food and alcohol to de-stress.  Both alcohol and junk foods stimulate the so-called ‘reward centre’ of the brain so they make you feel good. The trouble is if you load up on one or both on Friday night, you can wake up on Saturday (with or without a hangover) feeling a bit low. You then reach for more of those feel-good foods/drinks to lift you back up and so it goes the whole weekend until you pull yourself together on Monday morning and spend the rest of the week trying to right the damage.

One idea is to change your Friday routine, so you don’t get on that junkfood/chardonnay rollercoaster. Instead of going to the pub with friends or work colleagues, book a regular class at the gym. Book it early enough so you don’t even get a chance to step across the threshold of your favourite watering hole or you might weaken. Plus, take your gym stuff to work so you don’t have a chance to go home, where the sofa will beckon, on the way.

If you can’t bring yourself to give up Friday nights out, then shake up the rest of the weekend.  Make a list of five new activities/hobbies/sports that you’d like to try and then book one each for the following  five weekends. Maybe it’s horse riding, or joining a book club, or capoeira…  The idea is both to remove you from an environment where food and drink are available (your home) and to do something that ‘interrupts’ your ‘automatic’ behaviour of over-eating at the weekend.

Remember, habits can be changed. You simply have to provide your brain with an alternative and then use it a few times, so that becomes your new habit. So, rather than spending Saturday morning lying in bed with the remnants of last night’s takeaway, organise a run with a friend. Rather than building your Saturday nights around food and drink, book theatre tickets or go dancing. You’ll feel so much better on Monday morning.

HEALTHY PICNIC FOOD

I had a client come in to see me this week. She was doing really well on the weight-loss programme I’d designed for her, but had had a blip. The cause?  A scotch egg. Let me explain. She’d been to a picnic and had looked at all the food and realised there wasn’t anything that could even vaguely be described as healthy.

Before her was assembled a veritable smorgasborg of white flour and saturated fat nightmares – sausage rolls, mini quiches, spring rolls, tortilla chips, oh and a cheese board. In desperation, she opted for a scotch egg, well the egg from the scotch egg at least. Unsuprisingly, she went home hungry.

‘Barbecues are easy,’ she told me. ‘I just have the grilled chicken and lots of salad. But what do I do at a picnic?’

She’s right, of course. Picnics can be tricky. Too often, they are an excuse to simply raid the pre-cooked snack aisle of the supermarket and that means pastry a-go-go. But, there is an upside to picnics – you can take your own food without anyone thinking you’re weird. So, unlike at a dinner party, you can actually control the food available. Here are some ideas for healthy picnic food.

1. Raw vegetable sticks and either guacamole or tomato salsa. If you have the time to make your own dip, whip up a low-cal tzatziki from fat-free Greek yoghurt, lemon juice, mint and chopped cucumber.
2. Greek salad.  Leaf salads will wilt in transit, but not a Greek salad.  Make in individual pots for convenience. Chop up a cucumber and maybe some yellow or orange papper. Add some baby plum tomatoes and crumble feta cheese on the top.  Take a vinaigrette dressing in a jar, separately.
3. Pitta pockets. Fill wholemeal pitta breads with Greek salad (see above) and add a smear of houmous . Or stick some halloumi on a griddle pan and once cooked add this to the salad.
4. Fruit salad. Don’t bother with apple, strawberries or rasberries as they go brown and mushy in a fruit salad. Take a big bowl of grapes, fresh mango, melon or pineapple chunks, blueberrries or stoned cherries.

If you have a question for Lowri, please email lowr@lowriturner.com

Lowri Turner is a nutritionist and clinical hypnotherapist. She sees clients in North London. To make an appointment, please email lowri@lowriturner.com or go to www.lowriturner.com