People love meal plans. Check that. They love the idea of a meal plan. I hear it quite often from innocent people who just don’t know any better. “I need a meal plan. I want to know exactly what to eat and how much of it to eat.” Little to they realize at the time that by even trying to follow a “meal plan” they are sending themselves straight to nutrition hell. Who has time to measure out and eat 6.2 ounces of chicken and 1-2/5 cups of broccoli at 10:43 a.m.? Forget the timing for a minute…who has time and the schedule that would allow eating five or six meals a day? IF you followed a very specific meal plan, would you get results quicker? Probably, but you’ll likely only be able to stick to for a few weeks at most. It’s not realistic long term. The most important component to your success on any “diet” is consistency. Good, clean nutrition is important without question but you’re life can’t revolve around your nutrition unless you make a living as a physique athlete or a professional sports athlete.
After working with hundreds of clients we’ve found that creating solid, fundamental habits are key. We’ve also found that “slow cooking” the process usually works better than trying to change everything at once. With a meal plan you’re changing some habits but the focus isn’t on the habit that’s being changed. It’s focused too much on the food. The reason people come to us is in part because they focus too much on food, so let’s change that! The research shows that if you try to change 3 habits at once, the success rate is about 7%. Two habits at once…about 35%. Once habit at a time…about 92%. So it’s clear that making a bunch of changes at once, such as a meal plan, is not the best move. If you slow it down and deal with one habit at a time, success is much easier to achieve.
Each person is a bit different but the best place to start is to pick the low hanging fruit. With our clients, I take refined sugar out first. That’s it. For 1-2 weeks, they’ll go sugar free. They can eat whatever else they want during that time but no sugar. Pick an area where you really struggle and address it. My wife LOVES nachos. She would first cut out nachos. For the record, she’s stays lean and strong as hell regardless of her nutrition, which really sucks for me as I get pudgy just looking at nachos.
Once the low hanging fruit has been addressed, the next habit is really cleaning up the quality of the food. In the excellent book Fat Loss Happens on Monday, Josh Hillis says quantity of food will dictate scale weight while quality of food will determine body fat levels. I would have to agree. Start eating more vegetables and less bread. Start eating more clean meat and few cheeseburgers. You get the idea.
Other habits can include get protein in every meal, drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water and many others. MUCH more simple than a meal plan. The order of the habits really depends on the client. Do you struggle to get enough water? That may be habit number one if so.
Once you’ve picked the low hanging fruit and the quality of the food is pretty high, you move onto caloric and macro-nutrient breakdown which is another post (or 3) all to itself.
It’s important to note that if we slow cook the process like we should, these few steps alone may take 3-4 months and maybe more. And that is a GREAT thing! The further we can get without making the process too complicated the better. We’ve had clients lose up to 50 pounds over 8-9 months without ever counting a calorie. They just slowly and methodically implemented solid habits that made huge changes over time.
Eating for fat loss isn’t always easy, but it’s not complicated!
Ever stronger!
Coach Levi
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