This may be a lengthy story, but hang with me and not only will you see why meal plans are worthless, but what you can do instead.
When I first started my fitness journey I had no idea how much nutrition played into it. Sure, I knew I needed to change the way I ate and definitely needed to stop eating out, but the buck stopped there. Eating out less also meant eating in more and cooking wasn’t really my strong suit. This isn’t to say I was bad at it. I merely didn’t have any idea how to string together a full meal. Cooking things from a bag, box, or that are frozen is easy, but not always nutritious.
I needed to cook real food, but I didn’t know what to eat or how much to consume. There were certain things I knew, such as the fact that I needed protein, but again the question became how much? Are all sources good sources? What about side dishes? Is chicken breast with a side of mac & cheese good enough? I had all sorts of questions.
In an effort to think as little as possible about what I needed to do, I decided to outsource everything to someone else. Think smarter not harder, right?
I paid for a 12 week meal plan. Quite literally everything was laid out for me each day for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. The foods I needed to eat with the amounts were all sitting pretty in an Excel spreadsheet.
That is just one of the three pages of my meal plan. The company utilized a process called carb cycling throughout the 12 weeks. Carb Cycling is exactly what it sounds like – cycling through various amounts of carbohydrates. My particular plan had high carb, medium carb, and low carb days. Although this is a pretty advanced strategy for a beginner, it didn’t matter to me because I didn’t have to think about it. All I had to do was look at what type of day I had and choose the foods for each meal.
Easy, right? A complete no brainer! All the questions I had answered in one fell swoop and I had to do nothing other than fork over a few bucks. Doesn’t get better than that does it?! Not so fast…
If you look at the meal plan image I attached above it may look great to you. There are, however, several glaring issues that may not jump out. Let’s take a quick look:
That doesn’t include other issues such as:
Perhaps the worst part about buying the meal plan? I had absolutely no idea what to do after the 12 weeks were over.
Now, I will say this before I go any further. There is one good thing that resulted in me using the meal plan. It got me in the habit of cooking at home. Although I still wasn’t sure of what to cook, I at least got more comfortable cooking and could always fall back to one of the meals from the plan.
This is honestly one of the biggest reasons why meal plans are worthless. They really don’t teach you anything. That confusion you felt before you got one is still there after the plan is done.
It’s the exact reason why I don’t provide meal plans to any of my nutrition coaching clients. While I provide a framework for you to work within, it’s on you to piece together the puzzle and learn HOW to cook and the value of portion sizes.
It’s exactly like how the old saying goes, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he’ll eat for life.”
By giving you a meal plan, you’ll learn just about nothing. It’s just something you’d blindly follow. By giving you a set amount of macros/calories you begin to learn how to fit foods into your day, how to read nutritional labels, and how big/small portions can be.
I promised you I’d provide some actionable items you can do if you’re not sure where to begin. Since you now know meal plans are worthless, give any one of these a try instead:
And there ya have it! Meal plans are worthless so don’t bother wasting your money.
If you found this post useful please be sure to share it with your friends. If you’ve got questions I’m happy to answer them so don’t be shy – reach out!
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