One of our most frequently asked questions is, “Do you provide meal plans?”
And as a result, one of our most frequently spoken answers is, “No.”
This isn’t because we think meal plans are bad — quite the contrary. They’re awesome. They’re a crucial part of a process that leads to success.
But we don’t create them for you. We can’t. If we created meal plans, we’d be letting you down.
We want to educate and guide you. We want to arm you with knowledge and help you develop new, sustainable habits. We want you to continue making good nutrition choices long after we’re gone.
And the only way this happens is if you learn how to plan your own meals.
There’s no Instruction Manual
We’re all human. We look for the path of least resistance. And with the endless amount of information available at our fingertips, is it any wonder that we just want an instruction manual?
“I want to look like the people in the pictures on your website. Just tell me exactly what to eat, how much water to drink, how much sleep to get, and which exercises to do. Give me the instruction manual.“
But there is no instruction manual. There’s no “one size fits all” plan. If there were, we would just sell you that!
What happens after you finally get all 2,000 pieces of that Ikea desk assembled? What happens when it looks like the “picture on the website?” You probably throw away the instructions, never to look at them again.
But nutrition doesn’t work like that. Your body is never a finished product. It needs constant care and maintenance for the rest of your life.
You need sustainable habits. And no instruction manual can provide that.
Everyone Likes Different Foods
To make long-term health and nutrition changes — for this to be sustainable–you have to eat foods you enjoy eating. If we were to create a meal plan for you, there’s zero chance it would include your favorite dishes. Instead, it would be simple, basic, and BORING.
Do you really want us to tell you to eat chicken breasts and steamed veggies seven days a week?
Meal Plans are Restrictive
If we created a custom meal plan just for you, then you’d have no room for error. All of the meals would be designed to hit your macro goals each day. But what if you don’t like one of the dinners? What if you forget to grab your lunch out of the fridge before you leave for work? We want you to learn how to be flexible — to adapt to sudden changes.
And besides, isn’t life a little more enjoyable when you have margin and wiggle room?
Everybody (and Every Body) is Different
Are you a creature of habit? Do you prefer to keep things simple? If you’re like me, you have no problem eating the exact same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Every single day.
Or, is your life motto, “variety is the spice of life?” Because if so, any meal plan we would create would probably be a letdown!
We couldn’t design “standard” meal plans because every client is unique. They each require different amounts of calories and macronutrients. It would take all the hours for a coach to create a custom meal plan just for just one person, let alone dozens of clients.
We’d have to add another zero to the end of our pricing to cover that! (If you didn’t bat an eyelash at that, shoot us an email and we’ll talk.)
Building Sustainable Habits Requires Effort
New habits don’t form overnight. They require intentional actions performed over a long period of time.
What would happen if we designed a custom meal plan, just for you? What would happen at the end of your nutrition coaching session? Would you instinctively just know what to eat from that point forward? Would you just reuse those same meal plans indefinitely? Or would the weight you lost just stay off, no matter what?
Those things could happen. It’s possible.
But if you’re like the rest of us, you’d probably revert back to eating the way you did before you hired us. You wouldn’t pay careful attention to what you were eating. You wouldn’t exactly know how to continue eating in a way that kept the weight off.
And if that happens, then WE have failed.
You have to learn how to hit your macro goals. You have to learn how to plan your meals in advance. You have to learn how to be agile and flexible so you can still succeed when things don’t go as planned.
And it’s OUR job to teach you how to do that.
This is the first in a series of posts about planning meals. Over the next few weeks, we’ll cover how to plan meals, travel tips, and what to do when things don’t go as planned. Subscribe to the blog below and we’ll send you all the new posts once they’re published!
