Why we hate meal planning and three reasons to love it
Aug 09, 2022Why you hate meal planning and three reasons to love it.
I know everyone hates the meal plan. The one question I get most when I do healthy body coaching is, “When can I stop planning meals?” And I hear you. When I started my weight loss coaching journey, meal planning was the thing I resisted the most. In fact, I didn’t do it for a whole year. I thought I knew better. Why did I hate meal planning?
You change everything all at once.
The first thing I notice is that clients want to change everything at once. They go from eating three meals a day and snacks to intermittent fasting with two meals a day. Or they go from eating all the carbs in the world to no carbs. And this is great for the first few weeks when you are highly motivated. But after the novelty wears off, you start to hate your food. You start to hate the planning process because the food you plan is so restrictive. And so you blame the act of meal planning. But it is not the meal planning process that is the problem. It is the food you are planning and your thoughts about the food.
I would argue that most of you already plan your meals for the week. Most of us write up a grocery list with the food we think we will cook for ourselves and our family, and we go to the grocery store once a week and buy it. What if you thought about your meal plan like a grocery list?
You only plan “good” food.
You plan foods that the diet industry tells you to make. You open the latest fad diet and make recipes for food that is not your food. It is not the food you enjoy. So, of course, you hate meal planning when the food you plan is a salad with no dressing and a dry chicken breast.
You use your meal plan as a tool to beat yourself up.
When you stray from your meal plan, you beat yourself up. You act like an inner mean girl and start with all the negative self-talk. You make your meal mean that you are bad, not good enough, not capable. You tell yourself that you can’t do it or that it is not possible for you to lose weight or that your goals are unrealistic. You create evidence for this. You make it mean that you are bad when you don’t stick to your meal plan.
Well, that is not how we approach our meal planning at Healthy Body. In this program, I will teach you how to create simple, kind meal plans that will get you to your natural weight and stay there.
So how do we use meal planning in this program?
One change at a time.
In this program, you are not going to create unreasonable, strict, restrictive meal plans that are unhealthy and unsustainable. You are going to honestly look at how we are currently eating and pick one thing that you want to change. You will create your plans based on that one change and see what happens. After two weeks, you pick the next change and so forth. In the end, you have created and curated a meal plan specific for you; one that you can be happy eating for the rest of your life. Your meal plan is something that makes your body feel healthy and strong.
Plan real food.
You won’t plan any of this crappy diet food. You are going to plan real food that you enjoy eating. In the beginning, that could look like eating what you are currently eating but making your portions smaller. Or it could be substituted for a healthier option. However, you only swap in a healthier option if you can find a way to enjoy it. For example, I hate chicken breasts. Whenever I cook them, they are dry and tough. But I have found that I like boneless thighs. I can put a little seasoning on them and bake them in the oven, and I actually enjoy eating them. I find my body does not like it when I eat a lot of refined flour. So I have swapped out pasta for zucchini noodles. I like how it tastes with my favorite sauces. But I still eat pasta. I still eat chicken nuggets (they are my weakness). I have just learned how often and how much of those things I can eat through meal planning.
Use your meal plan as a tool.
Looking at the past two weeks of meal plans, you can learn a lot about yourself. You learn what foods make your body feel good. You learn when your body likes to eat. And you learn when and why you emotionally eat.
Through meal planning, I found that I actually do know what to eat. I have uncovered sources of emotional eating and have managed my thoughts around that. When I don’t plan refined carbs, I am more likely to binge on them. So I plan them in my meals. I find that when I have busy days and don’t have much time for myself, I tend to want to eat or drink at night. So I know
I need to do some mind work on those emotional triggers for eating. That is where the coaching and thought work comes into play.
Meal planning has helped me to develop a healthy relationship with my body and food. And that is the real key to this process. Without meal planning, I would have failed at another weight loss attempt and blamed the diet.
Are you ready to try meal planning?
Download my free meal planning template and how this can work for you.
Ten Minute Meal Plan Template