Why Meal Plans Don’t Always Work and What to Do Instead

“Can’t you just write me a meal plan?”

As the saying goes, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this during a nutrition consultation I’d be rich! But I’d also be not very helpful if I had given in to making those your plans.

How so?

For most people, meal plans don’t work. And my goal is to help a client reach long-term success with their nutrition and health, so it’s in their best interest to avoid giving them a basic piece of paper outlining exactly what to eat.

Meal plans are solely a tool, and in the event you are preparing for a fitness show, or a quick and small body composition goal, I MIGHT (and that is a huge might) write you up something. But if you are one of millions trying to figure out how to eat right for your health and/or you have a significant body composition goal, a meal plan can you set up for complete disaster.

Read on to learn my rational for why meal plans don’t work and what plan of action would be better in place!

TOO MANY HABIT CHANGES

Your eating behaviors are habits you’ve been practicing for years and most likely decades. A new meal plan could contain as many as 100 new habits to master and, for most people, tackling one new habit at a time is enough to chew off.

Think of each preparation step, grocery store purchase and cooking technique as its very own habit to practice.

If you never eat breakfast, and are planning to via the new meal plan, it might be a task in itself just to practice waking up earlier. But now you’ve got to also make something, then pack today’s assigned lunch, etc. This equals too many new things up front.

Instead, I work on one habit at a time with my clients. We might just practice making or preparing breakfast for at least a week before we move on, because there are so many variables and habits to go along with it.

A couple of coaching sessions could be solely spent on what your breakfast looks like in multiple scenarios (traveling versus at home versus workout days) and how-to strategies on planning and being prepared.

SET UP FOR THE SHORT TERM

Think about it.

Are you really going to follow that meal plan, verbatim, for the rest of your life?

Most of the meal plans I cross paths with are written for a day, week or at most, month. Essentially, the short meal plan is just providing the fish versus teaching the person how to fish for themselves.

What happens when holidays come or you get bored with the choices? Or when the season changes, and those blueberries assigned at breakfast no longer are as appealing and cost double because they aren’t in season anymore?

MEAL PLANS DON’T TEACH YOU REAL WORLD SKILLS

Food is a part of our lives. It’s not a separate entity. For long-term success, the best plan is one that sustainable, dynamic (It changes with you) and makes sense in your busy life. If you follow a boring meal plan for weeks on end you never learn how to make healthy, good-enough, real-world nutrition choices for yourself.

You never get the opportunity to listen to your body’s feedback. If you eat spinach and chicken because your coach told you to, but spinach makes your stomach feel weird, should you listen to your coach or your body? If cutting carbs makes you act crazier than bald Britney, should you power through? Spoiler alert: Learn to tune-in and honor the feedback that your body provides. Once cultivated and understood, the feedback is more valuable than any meal plan could ever be.

The truth is, the best healthy diet is one that works for you. That means making the best choices possible within what is reasonably available to you at the moment. That means you don’t have to be perfect; you just have to make a conscious effort to do your best most of the time.

MEAL PLANS PROMOTE ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING

Meal plans promote all-or-nothing thinking. You either are on your meal plan or you’re off. If you mess up and eat something off your plan (we’re human, we all mess up, all the time) you’re more likely to go way off your plan. “I already messed up; I might as well order a pizza for dinner.” What do people say when they mess up on their diets? “It’s ok, I’ll start over on Monday.” Even if it’s only Tuesday.

A meal plan is too rigid and structured for most people in the real world who have health and fitness goals to lose weight, be more active and feel better. Fitness models and professional athletes may follow meal plans to reach short term goals, but for the average person, there is no need to go to those extremes in order to meet your goals. Forget rigid meal plans and instead learn to navigate healthy nutrition in the real world.

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO GET THINGS DONE

Meal plans lay out one way to do things, often not explaining that there are hundreds of substitutions for each of the foods and macronutrients (fat, carbs and protein).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the same meal plan circulating around. You know, the one that has oats and egg whites for breakfast, fish and asparagus for dinner, etc. Sound familiar?

Instead, I coach my clients to first understand the macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) and learn which foods fall within each one of those groups. If we can then outline their likes and dislikes and figure out how to balance the different macronutrients at each meal, there are unlimited possibilities for them.

They won’t get in a rut or think they can’t deviate from the plan.

DON’T MAKE GOOD USE OF YOUR INGREDIENTS

Especially with produce.

Has this ever happened to you? An assigned meal calls for you to eat a 2-cup side salad with dinner, but then the rest of the week goes by and the remainder meals don’t use that spinach/lettuce in your fridge, so it goes bad and is wasted.

It’s better to assess and learn different ways to prepare foods to your liking. That way you can appropriately plan and purchase the right quantity of foods each week.

You might have extra steak from dinner that you’d prefer to utilize for lunch the next day, or you might repeat a dinner later in the week because it was so good. It’s better to “meal plan” for yourself and your family based on how fast you utilize food.

My end goal for my clients is to have them be able to look in their own fridge, and instead of thinking there is nothing to eat, be able to quickly come up with a meal based on the ingredients they have.

BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT TO EAT

I’ve found my role as a macro coach to be much more valuable when I help people strategize how to eat right, versus just telling them what to eat. Although many of us have acclimated to a highly processed and non-healthy diet, we don’t eat these foods because we think they are better for us; they are just more convenient with our lifestyles.

Working with a coach is much more valuable when you are working on strategies to overcome your obstacles to eating right versus just having them tell you what to eat. Although you are in the driver’s seat, choosing someone to coach you on how to do things will better empower and enable you to be a better driver.

SO IF MEAL PLANS ARE NOT THE ANSWER, WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?