We’ve all been there.

You start a health plan, get great results, and then a holiday weekend hits. The temptations of savory barbecued meats, favorite snack foods, unhealthy “salads,” tasty desserts, and drinking with friends beckon.

If you are not careful, Monday night will roll around and you will not be feeling great. Worse, you will have lost momentum with your health plan and all the old stories you tell yourself about how you never succeed at a health plan will start nagging at you again. So how do you make sure you don’t lose momentum over a holiday weekend?

Here are some of my top suggestions:

1. Follow the 80/20 rule

Those of you who have done my 45-Day reset program know I am a huge believer that when you want to make dramatic changes to your health, you need to follow a program at 100%. That means you follow it exactly how it was laid out for you. People who get the best results with my 45-Day reset do exactly that.

But once your health is in a great place, you can follow the 80/20 rule. When you are living life from 80/20, it means that eighty percent of the time you eat healthy and twenty percent you do what ever you want. Over a course of a week this equates to about two meals a week.

If you know that you’re going to be tempted by many health-harming food this weekend, commit to the 80/20 rule. This allows you some flexibility, but doesn’t cause you to fall completely off your health plan.

2. Eat more good fat

Good fats are important for your brain and body. Good fats speed up your metabolism, help your brain function properly, and make you less hungry.

If you know that when you go to a BBQ you are easily pulled into the goodies at the buffet table, eat a meal high in good fat BEFORE you go to the event. If you are less hungry when you go, you are less likely to wander off your health path.

3. Intermittent fast

Intermittent fasting is a powerful tool to lower inflammation in your body, reset your metabolism, increase your energy, and stop your cravings. If you haven’t tried intermittent fasting, I highly recommend it.

To get started, simply go 15 hours without food. At first this sounds crazy, but if part of your 15 hours happens when you’re asleep, it’s not that hard. If you stop eating at 7 pm and don’t eat again until 10am, you’re there! If you are doing the 45-Day reset, I recommend you have your first smoothie at 10am and you follow that with your first meal a few hours later.

You’ll be amazed at how this one strategy will put you quickly into a fat burning zone and help you recover from any BBQ-related blunders.

4. Support your gut

My favorite trick for helping my gut deal with any unhealthy food is to keep a bottle of enzymes on hand. The proper enzyme supplement will break down dairy, wheat, bad oils and minimize the damage unhealthy foods can have on your gut.

I recommend taking an enzyme before you go to a BBQ and have a few when you come home. Anytime you leave an event and your stomach is not feeling awesome, pop an enzyme or two and you will be amazed at how quickly you will feel normal again.

P.S. I don’t mean Tums or other harmful antacids! This is my favorite enzyme supplement.

Enjoy your BBQ! You deserve it!