Your Meal Plan Strategy is Broken - Here's Why

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All right. It never fails. It seems to be that time of the year where I'm getting a lot of requests for meal plans.

And today we're going to talk about the two reasons why your meal plan is probably failing you.

But before we get into that, let's talk about the high energy and performance challenge. So I am a high performance nutrition coach and dietician. I work primarily with tactical athletes and high performing professionals. And one of the things that my clients struggle with the most sometimes is having enough energy for training for recovery to get through their day.

So we have started our high energy and performance challenge, and this is your invite to join it. Now what we are going to do is we are going to take seven days. And if you are struggling with your energy levels, if you feel like you could be doing more in your training sessions, you feel like you'd be seeing more progress in your performance.

But it's not just there and you know that nutrition is a gap. We're going to take seven days, you and I, we're going to work together. We're going to develop a high performance Perry workout, nutrition strategy so that you can really make the progress that you want to see so that you can feel really good and so that your recovery can be top notch.

So if you're interested in checking that out, the link is going to be right below the High Energy and Performance challenge.

If you feel like you're dragging back through your workouts, this is the solution for you.

Okay, so let's get back into it. Two reasons why your meal plan is probably failing you.

One, everybody thinks that a meal plan is going to solve all of their nutrition problems. I'm just going to hand you a sheet of paper is going to have your customized calories and macronutrients on it, and then all of your nutrition problems will go away. Your body comp is going to change the way you want it to change.

Your training is going to get way better. Your life is just going to be awesome. Sounds easy right? I just give it to you. Execute. But the problem is, is there's a lot of steps in between implementation of the meal plan and what you have to do to prepare for that.

If you are someone who doesn't typically do a lot of cooking right now, your schedule doesn't allow for a lot of cooking.

You're not always in an environment which is most of you where you can refrigerate your food, microwave it, sit down and eat it. Where you have a structured schedule, then a meal plan is likely not going to fix all of your problems.

In fact, it's probably going to make you feel more frustrated.

You have to think about when you're going to grocery shop.

You have to think about when you're going to cook.

Have to think about where you're going to store the food. You have to think about where you're going to heat it up. You have to think about your schedule ahead of time, which again, for most of you, is not possible.

So just relying on a meal plan is not going to get the job done. Now, knowing general calories, macronutrients, knowing what is serving size looks like for you or what's appropriate for your goals is absolutely beneficial. Nutrition is a skill that we have to develop. So having a general meal plan, having your macronutrients occasionally weighing out your food to see what does my serving size look like

Can be really helpful for those times when you can't follow a meal plan.

If you know what 60g of protein looks like, if you know what 60g of rice looks like.

Then it makes it a lot easier when you don't have control over your food environment to portion out your food properly.

There is also a benefit to knowing your macros. If you have to eat out or eat from a gas station, or you have to eat something packaged.

You can get into the ballpark of what you need to eat, meal to meal to meal without necessarily having to think too hard about it.

If you have a meal plan

And you just can't figure out why, you can't stick to it, why it's not working.

It's likely because you haven't addressed the issues or the barriers that are preventing you from being able to execute that meal plan.

The second reason why your meal plan is probably failing you is because you don't have a backup plan, and this is kind of related to that first thing that we talked about. Your schedule is not conducive to perfect meal plan execution. You are going to be in a situation where you're not going to have access to food. Sometimes you're going to be in a situation where you don't have control over your schedule.

You're going to be in a situation where you sit down to a meal and the tones go off, and then you have to bust out of the door. And then by the time you get back, the only thing that is available is garbage.

If you're working in the heat all day, right, where are you going to keep your meal.

So you have to have a backup plan, right? And we're just not flying by the seat of our pants all the time. Oh, well, I wasn't able to get to my perfect meal prep, so I have to eat fast food.

Or I wasn't able to eat my perfectly prepared meal.

So I'm just going to chug this protein shake and call it good or protein bar or whatever you have.

But you're still not paying attention to how many calories is in it. How many grams of protein you're getting, how much carbohydrate you're getting. And so then when you try to get into a training session or when you're trying to achieve a specific goal, you can't figure out why you're not getting there.

So you have to have a backup plan, right? You always have to have a contingency. And sometimes your contingency needs a contingency.

If you are working with meal plan, if you're wanting a meal plan, by all means I think they're great. I think they can be a great part of your system to help you be more successful.

We love systems over here at Tactical Dietician. It's one of the foundations that we build our coaching program on how to build systems, how to create routines so that you can be successful even in unpredictable environments. But having a contingency plan is part of that.

Make sure you know what that looks like. If you can't get to your meal.

What is your plan for nutrition? Do you have shelf stable items that you keep around? Do you know what you can get from the gas station that's going to fulfill your requirements? If you're not able to sit down and get something, or you're in a car all day long.

What if it's 2:00 in the morning and the really and really the only thing available truly is fast food.

What can you get there that's going to help you stay on track? Because believe it or not, even if you're in a situation where you're trying to cut weight.

You can still eat fast food occasionally and achieve your goals. But you need to have that nutrition skill that nutrition knowledge builds up.

So going down in the comments, let me know what is your strategy for making sure that your nutrition is working for you?

And what are your systems that you use to make sure that you have a no fail plan?