Staying on track with your nutrition and fitness can be pretty easy, until Friday night rolls around. That’s when the invites to happy hour start rolling in, weekend dinner plans get made, and you start getting a little tired of the food you meal prepped for the week.

It’s at this point you make the decision of whether you’re going to try to stay on track this weekend, or just say f*ck it. Let us be very clear about something though — you can undo all the progress you made that week with a f*ck it attitude. And if you make that same decision every single week, you need to figure out what in your nutrition protocol is not working for you and figure out a way around that with your coach (that’s what they are there for).

This is the thing: the weekends don’t have to be all-or-nothing. You can break away from your routine, have a little more flexibility, eat out, hang out with friends, change up food choices, and all of that without veering too far off track.

Here’s are our favorite tricks for NOT undoing your progress:

⚡ PLAN AHEAD

Maybe you don’t have any Friday night plans yet, but you know you always end up going out. Account for that early in the day. On Friday morning, throw in the two drinks you’ll have at happy hour first thing in the morning and plan the rest of your day around that. Happy hour going to turn into a night out? Punctuate every drink with a seltzer and lime.

⚡ LEARN HOW TO TRACK WHEN EATING AT RESTAURANTS

We’ve got a whole post on this for you. There’s so many ways to tackle restaurants but the key is really to not stress — it’s okay if you’re a little off but still just being mindful and putting estimations into the app puts you way further ahead than if you were just to say “screw it!”

⚡ BREAK FROM YOUR ROUTINE BUT HAVE A LOOSE GAME PLAN

We typically pre-enter all our food into MyFitnessPal early in the day during the week. That’s because we know exactly where we’ll be and what we’ll be doing. That may not be the case on the weekend so don’t be afraid to let go a bit. It’s okay not to pre-plan and just wing it as the day moves on. The key to succeeding with this strategy is to make your meals look like they normally do when you are tracking. For example, if your typical breakfast is oatmeal and egg whites, don’t have a bacon, egg, and cheese because then you’ll have no fats left for your dinner at the new Italian spot in town.

⚡ KEEP YOUR MEALS WELL-ROUNDED

Piggybacking off our last point, make sure your meals are well-rounded so that you’re not totally out of one macro early in the day. If you’re loosely tracking, you want to put yourself in the best position to succeed and if you end up heading to dinner with friends with 67 grams of protein, 4 grams of fat, and 20 grams of carbohydrates, things are going to get interesting.

⚡TAKE A BREAK FROM TRACKING, BUT STICK TO THE BASICS

Just because we’re breaking away from routine doesn’t mean we throw away the basics.

• Keep at least two of your three main meals really high-quality. Make sure they are heavy on veggies and lean protein.
• Drink half your bodyweight in ounces of water.
• Move! Get in a workout or commit to hitting 10k steps.
• Rule of thumb when making your food choices: if it’s going to hurt your stomach, put you in a food coma, or make you feel like absolute crap the next day, stay away.

Have questions or want to work one-on-one with a coach? Schedule a free introductory call here.