Many years ago, we would offer our members prescribed meal plans to help achieve their weight loss goals. We’ve since abandoned the meal plans and here’s five reasons why:
1. MEAL PLANS ARE HARD TO FOLLOW
Have you ever tried to follow a meal plan? If you have, and you did it with ease – hats off to you!
In our experience, when we offered prescribed meal plans many years ago, recipients struggled to follow them.
Following a meal plan often entails a huge change in the foods you eat and the ways in which you shop, prepare and cook them. Making big changes to your lifestyle and all at once can feel overwhelming. It can also be difficult to keep up. This scenario is not the best way to set yourself up for success.
Aside from the big shift in lifestyle that following a meal plan can involve, there’s also the fact that there can be foods included that you don’t even like to eat.
Yes, making change isn’t always easy but there’s no need for it to be this hard.
We’re not suggesting you throw meal planning out of the window completely. Of course, it makes sense to shop and plan for your meals ahead of time. This can help you to make better choices and prepare and eat more fresh/whole foods. Also, arranging your meals ahead of time can help to prevent those last minute snap decisions to opt for processed/convenience or fast foods due to a lack of planning.
What we do suggest is when making changes to what you eat, doing so in small, incremental steps can be a lot more manageable, enjoyable and therefore, achievable.
Yes, making change isn’t always easy but there’s no need for it to be this hard.
2. MEAL PLANS OFTEN REQUIRE CALORIE AND/OR MACRO COUNTING
You’ll often see targets for calories and/or macronutrients in meal plans. This can encourage you to calculate the calories of every morsel that passes your lips.
Do you seriously want to be counting calories and weighing and measuring all of your food? Yes, it may help you to become a better mathematician, but it’s not much fun is it?
Unless you’re a professional athlete or competing fitness model, you really don’t need this level of detail to get awesome results for fat loss and lean muscle gain. Our members have proven this time and time again, following our guidance and achieving their weight loss and muscle gain goals without counting calories and/or macronutrients.
3. MEAL PLANS ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE
Even if you do manage to stick to a meal plan rigidly and as a result, smash your fitness goals, is it reasonable to continue with meal plans for the rest of your life to keep those results? Even professional athletes do not usually follow such a strict regime on a long term basis.
In our opinion, it’s much better practice for you to learn how to make better choices that support your fitness goals as a life skill. Rather than relying on a third party to calculate your calories and/or macros and provide you with meal plans over and over again.
4. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STOP?
So, you’ve been really good and stuck to your meal plan and achieved a great result. What happens next? Typically, once the meal plan is ditched, you return to eating habits you previously held that do not support the maintenance of the results you worked so hard to achieve.
Returning to previous eating habits can even result in the reversal of your goal and you can end up back at square one. Hence the term “yo-yo dieting”.
Once again, changing your eating habits incrementally can be a much better way to achieve your results and maintain them. Although it may take longer to achieve your results, you’ll be much happier when they last.
5. WE PREFER TO HELP YOU BUILD HABITS
We prefer to help you build eating habits that support your fitness goals for the long term.This way, there’s no need for you to rely on someone else’s meal plans. Ever!
Rather than spoon-feeding you, we teach you how to fish.
The Fit to Last Framework
The Fit to Last Framework is our 12-month nutrition and lifestyle coaching programme based on a series of micro-habits. If you’d like guidance, support and accountability in creating small wins leading to big changes, get in touch.
ABOUT JAMES STARING
James Staring is a personal trainer based in Clapham, London. His methods have featured in publications such as Your Fitness, Hello, Healthy, Daily Mail, Closer, and many more. After giving up smoking and entering the fitness industry in 2009, James has focused on his passion to help others transform their health and fitness. However, James is convinced most people struggle so much more than they need to in an effort to improve their fitness. Through his company, Fit to Last, James has helped hundreds of men and women make small adjustments in their daily habits to transform their fitness and to love how they look and feel.