Confident. Energetic. Hot. Those are the things most women want to feel like, and often times they think that a weight loss meal plan will get them there.
Hundreds of women a month talk to me about their health goals, weight loss goals and mom-life. The most common request I get is for a weight loss meal plan.
However, I have to disappoint you: I don’t really believe in meal plans. In fact, I very very very rarely make them for my clients. Read on to learn more.
Weight loss meal plans
Ladies, there are so many reasons that I don’t do meal plans.
I’ve made them for clients before, AND I’ve done them myself. Usually, you can download free meal plans from pinterest or google (I don’t recommend this, because you really don’t know if they are safe and effective). Alternatively, pay a certified coach to make them for you. In that case, coaches usually e-mail you a weekly or monthly plan.
These are my top five reasons I don’t give meal-plans.
- You might not like to eat what I like to eat. According to scientific research on weight loss, it’s really important that we LIKE what we’re eating. Long term change is hard to keep up if you hate your food.
- Your FAMILY might not like to eat what I like to eat. Moms, I will tell you one thing: there’s no way in heck that I will make multiple meals for dinner. I’ve met moms who will make one meal for their kids, one “healthy” meal for themselves and a whole other for their “meat and potatoes” hubby. This is NOT sustainable. It makes life difficult, which is a huge reason that many moms aren’t successful with meal plans. Your lifestyle change MUST be something you can do over and over and over and over, for the rest of your life.
- Weight loss meal plans require too much preparation and organization. I often tell people “I used to be really put together before I had kids.” And that’s totally true. I was an organized, on-time NINJA. But now I have three kids. And let’s face it – life with lots of little ones means you have a LOT of curveballs thrown at you. With meal plans, your plans will be botched if you don’t get to the grocery store at a specific time or remember to make your grocery delivery order. Some people do GREAT with the preparation and organization, but I find that MOST women don’t.
- You’re not actually learning anything about what works for YOUR body and YOUR life. Meal plans are a one-size fits all approach and they don’t encourage you to listen to what your body is asking for. With weight loss and even general health, the most successful people learn to evaluate their personal body by recording metrics about their sleep, weight, circumference, energy level, hunger level and more… and then relating those metrics back to what they are eating. You CAN do this with a meal plan, but it’s usually a coach who modifies your meal plan based on the results of your metrics.
- You’re dependent on a coach for life. If you fired your coach, you have only very basic skills for carrying forward your healthy eating. And let’s face it – most of us are not interested in paying for a coach every month for the rest of our lives. You’re also going to be paralyzed in situations where you have to eat “off plan” – like parties, special events, vacations or restaurant meals.
And all of these things, together, often make a recipe for disaster: AKA rebound weight gain. Rebound weight gain happens when you stop working with a coach or stop following a meal plan because you’ve reached your goal weight, then find that the weight slowly creeps on again.
What works for weight loss?
So you may be asking yourself JEEZ, well what works if meal plans don’t???
This is what works: Empowering and education yourself to make your OWN meal plans.
Once you learn the proper portions for each food group that are supposed to go on your plate, you can choose whatever foods fit your own tastes and lifestyle. This might mean having spaghetti and meatballs with a big salad, just like everybody else in your family; Except the portions on YOUR plate look different from what your kids are eating and what your husband is eating. This works at home. It works on the go. It just plain works. It’s what I’ve been doing with dozens of private clients over the last 11 years of working as a fitness and nutrition coach.
The first step is to find out what portions work for your unique body, and you can do that by checking out my program Your Daily Journal.
Try it out, and make sure you tag me in your posts on Instagram and Facebook. I want to see your results and your meal photos!