By: Tricia
Hey, everyone. Welcome to health tip Tuesday. I’m so happy to have you guys here today on the agenda for today’s episode, we are going to talk about meal planning, and I know that it’s not at all glamorous and it’s probably not something that you’re like, Ugh, I really want to be here talking about, but I want it to kind of talk about meal planning because I believe that meal planning and meal prepping are really important when it comes to creating health and fitness goals. And having you stay on track with them. I did an earlier episode about meal prepping. That was episode nine, I believe, I believe. And we talk a lot in here about developing a plan, but I don’t, I realized that I never really talked about what meal planning is. I’m in the middle of a meal plan challenge.
So I think that’s why it came to my attention. So when we talk about meal planning, we are talking about planning your meals out for the week and really figuring out what you’re going to eat on each particular day meal planning is in itself is really helpful because it allows you to have much more control over your food. It helps manage and have a plan for when you’re hungry, as opposed to going to the freezer and just grabbing a bowl of ice cream. It eliminates all food related waste. It helps reduce the stress of eating healthier. I know that’s something that’s really, that can be really burdensome for a lot of us. It keeps you on track again with your goals. It saves time and money. So I really believe in meal planning, I actually do meal planning myself. And, you know, I feel like as a dietician, I have a lot of people that come to me and they want me to create a meal plan for them.
And instantly I want to roll my eyes and put daggers in my eyeballs because me creating a meal plan for you is not what’s helpful for you. And it, and I think you creating a meal plan for yourself is really what gets you ahead of the game in terms of really having a successful strategy for your health. So for instance, I was going to create a meal plan for you. It would be really hard for me to account for all of the things that you like in general, using some kind of generic meal plan can be really difficult because most people are going to say, okay, I want to eat healthy. So I’m going to go out there and I’m going to find a meal plan. You’re going to probably find a meal plan based on either it’s usually based on calorie levels, right? So most people don’t really know how many calories they need, and then they will really typically underestimate the amount of calories that they need.
So they’ll put, get themselves on those really tight meal plan. But what happens with meal planning is especially if you haven’t made it and it’s individualized to you, ultimately, there’s going to be food on there that you don’t eat, that you don’t like, or that seems a little bit like out of the reality of what you would consume on a normal basis. So you may start out really well with a meal plan, but then ultimately you may get off track, right? Because you feel like, Ugh, I can’t eat like that all of the time when you are following a generic meal plan, it’s never supposed to be something that is for the rest of your life. It typically ends up being like, kind of like a quick fix to getting back on track with whatever you feel like you’ve gotten off track with when it comes to your health goals, right?
So ultimately it provides you some kind of structure, but the ultimate goal is for you to then add to the structure of what works on the meal plan and what doesn’t work on the meal plan so that you can live by that for the rest of your life. So the first problem we talked about is that there may not be enough variety, or it might not be the foods that you eat. The next problem is that it could also be very restrictive. So you could end up on this meal plan and because it’s generic and it’s not individualized or personalized for you. And it may not in that meal plan account for what you’re feeling in terms of hunger and fullness. So there may be too many foods on there that you’re too full and to eat all those foods, you’d never be able to do it, or it could work the other way where it may be too restrictive for you where you feel like you’re hungry.
And so by following that meal plan, you’re really not getting in touch with your hunger and fullness cues that you have. You know, previously we’ve talked in here about the hunger and fullness scale, which I believe in very strongly. And I think it can be really liberating instead of counting calories to really get into a place that you feel like you’re starting to recognize when you’re hungry and when you are starting to feel CG, eat it. One of the last things that I hate about generic meal plans are that I think they don’t allow for foods that you may typically like they don’t really allow for what your life is. And I think it takes a lot for somebody to have to get into this mood where they feel like they’re making a health change. And then what ultimately happens with following a meal plan is you fall off of it.
That’s what’s normal because it’s not individualized to you. And so the result of that is then a lot of people feel like somehow they failed, they failed again, and that healthy eating isn’t fun, and that they’re never going to be able to do that. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. Really. It’s just that that meal plan didn’t work for you. So that’s why I am always in this. I always really try to have people create their own meal plan because that’s, what’s going to work because creating your own meal plan is going to be something that is individualized to you. It will include foods that, you know, you need when you’re craving something, it’s going to account for the amounts of food that you need that particular day it’s going to account for your family’s pizza night that’s non-negotiable or the days that you go out for ice cream, which is something that’s part of your family and that you really enjoy doing.
It’s something that you can maintain for the light for the longterm. And it’s something that you don’t have to go on and off of because you know what, it’s much more like your lifestyle as opposed to just something that you’re on and off. So that’s why I created a five day meal plan challenge. And in the meal plan challenge, it’s actually going on right now. So you’re more than welcome to head on over to my Instagram handle. It’s at whole health. You’re more than welcome to go over to my Instagram. It’s at whole health empower, and you can find the link there in my, in my bio, or you can head on over to my Facebook group, which is whole health empowerment project. You can also email me if you just want a copy of the link that is info at Trish RD, as in registered dietician.com.
I created this meal plan challenge because it’s not sexy. It’s not, it’s not something that people ultimately want to do. It’s usually hard and people don’t want to do it because they think it’s much harder than it has to be. And so my goal behind it was to really simplify it so that each day you have a task. So the goal was to simplify meal planning by giving you one tiny piece of homework every day, you get an email, you do the homework, and then the next day you build upon that behavior. So that by the end of the week, you kind of have a meal plan that works for you meal planning in gen general. I mean, I’m a big fan of meal planning. I’ve had periods in my life when I didn’t meal plan. And ultimately I felt like crazy. And like, I didn’t have a routine.
And I felt like it was very hard for me to stay on track with my, with my health goals, because I didn’t have a meal plan. I didn’t know what I was going to eat. Most days, my frigerator would always have things in it, but nothing was prepared. And then it felt like a chore every single night to decide what I was going to cook for dinner. Whereas if I just do it on the weekends, I sat out probably an hour or two on a Sunday and I just prep everything. And then when I come home from work at five o’clock on a weekday and I already have food that’s made, I just have to heat it up. Or I have most of the staples done. It’s so much easier because there’s nothing worse than coming home on a Thursday night and being like, Oh my gosh, what the hell am I going to have for dinner tonight?
When am I going to make for my family? It’s horrible. So again, I really believe in meal planning and I will again tell you the benefits of it that it’s going to help you feel more in control. It’s going to help manage your hunger. It’s gonna just help you navigate and really keep your health goals in check. You know, you take a couple of minutes each day to kind of think about what you’re going to do, and then spend two hours on a weekend, even before the kids are up for first thing. When you get up on the weekend, just meal prep, and then you don’t have to worry about it for the rest of the week. So if you want to join my meal, plan, challenge, go for it. It is a free five day challenge that starts on four 26 to four 30.
I would love to have you there. It would be great again, you don’t have to do anything. You just get an email. And in that email, there was some homework. And if you want to, and you want more accountability, you know, you are more than welcome to post your homework in the Facebook group. And then that will just keep you accountable that you’re doing it. I am here to support you and anything that you need from me. So if that’s something that you want, go for it and I’d love to have you there. So thank you for listening to health tip Tuesday. I will see you back here on Thursday. Have a great week. Bye bye. If you found value in this podcast, please rate, review and subscribe on iTunes. Being a busy woman or mom doesn’t mean that we have to give up on our health wellness or self care together. We can take tiny, imperfect steps towards creating the whole health we desire and deserve. You can find us@wholehealthandpower.com or on Instagram at whole health empower. Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next week.
Resources:
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