We’ve all been through it before whilst dieting, you’ve had a bad weekend, stepped on the scales come Monday, only to be mortified at the number that has been thrown back at you. It’s all too easy at that point to throw in the towel, and completely sabotage your hard work up until that point, because that one bad weekend has done irreversible damage, right? WRONG. The figure below shows you why that should not be the case.

The graph shows my own personal weight loss progression throughout the summer, where I weighed myself almost every day for 11 weeks. You can see where my bad days or weekends occurred but if you look closely, within a few days of these bad weigh ins, my weight had dropped back down to normal. This is because I didn’t just give up when the number on the scales had risen, I quickly got back to my normal eating habits and the number on the scales dropped again shortly after.

Weight loss is NOT Linear, even if you were to maintain a caloric deficit perfectly for X amount of time, I can GUARANTEE that you would still have ups and downs on the scales, it’s just the way weight loss works. This is why being consistent, and using other methods to track progress (photos, measurements) are vitally important when weight loss is one of your training goals.

So next time you have a bad day or weekend, don’t be disheartened. Just make sure you resume your training and eating plan as soon as possible, and the results will soon follow!

Ollie Portch

Better Body Group, Sevenoaks