Meal Plan & Prep

Sometimes tracking calories isn’t suitable and you need another strategy to keep you on track and mindful of your health and fitness goals.

We can implement these strategies by having general guidelines like on the page above or creating a meal plan of meals were confident in being able to commit to.

We know that tracking calories and weighing out food is the most accurate method, but sometimes what’s optimal isn’t what’s suited for you in this current stage of your life as it would have been a year ago or as it would be to someone else with different responsibilities.

We need to make sure were standardising before we’re optimising. Because optimal isn’t optimal if it isn’t consistent.

A meal plan is where you spend about 30 mins making 3-5 days of meals planned and tracked. If you know you’re supposed to eat 1700 calories and 120g of protein, you track your days accordingly hitting those targets.

The whole idea is by following this meal plan, you know you’re on track with your calories without having to actually open up MFP 3-4 times a day because you already planned it and know what combination of meals will make you effortlessly hit your macros!

To make the most of a meal plan, collaborating with your coach will help to have that insight and see if there’s room to make adjustments.

This method is perfect for those who get overwhelmed with were to start with their nutrition or on holiday because of how it creates mindfulness when eating.

Essentially you’d keep a physical journal or using your notes app on your phone to document everything you eat. Taking pictures is good too, it’s quicker than writing but it can be hard to be able to tell the ingredients/volume of the food in the picture.

From snacks to little bites here and there and meals, all of it is tracked in the journal.

The more specifically you track, the more accurate. When pursuing a physique goal, the more accurate you can be with your tracking strategies, the better we can make more appropriate adjustments!

With the guidelines on page 9. this could be used to pursue specific physique goals, despite it not being as accurate as tracking calories.

This method of tracking is similar to the hand plan in that were using something else to measure the volume of food.

Maintenance would be ∼3-4 plates a day. This also varies depending on the individual.