Some of the reasons people “fall off the wagon” and don’t achieve their weight loss goal is simply through lack of organization, which undermines their commitment and will power. If weight loss is your goal, you owe it to yourself to have circumstances working for you, instead of against you.
Some people don’t plan their meals and it reminds me of that old saying that a “failure to plan is a plan to fail.” If you’re away from your home, driving around and hungry, what are the odds that you will dutifully head home versus stop at a restaurant and make a poor food choice?
What if you’re already at home, but living with family members who don’t have the same diet, so you succumb to eating foods that are not on your weight loss program, just because those foods are available for others and your own healthy choices are nowhere to be found?
Stating the obvious, it still takes some concerted effort to sit down, create your menus for at least a week’s worth of meals, figure out how much you need for all the ingredients and then make sure you don’t run out of those items. You may even want to include some sanctioned “cheat” items in order to cater to those moments of inevitable weakness, like the viral Tik Tok recipe for home-made high protein cottage cheese ice cream.
If eating fresh vegetables is part of your menu plan, you can’t exactly stock up on those foods too far in advance because they are perishable. Since I only cook for myself and my dog, I buy MORE vegetables than I can consume in a week, but consciously chop up a portion of those vegetables and freeze them right away. Another staple for me and my dog is eggs, buying more than I need in a week, so that I’m just replenishing the inventory when I can get to the market. Hard boiled eggs are great snacks, easy to take in the car, and even easy to eat while driving!
It’s also good to have a small ice chest and cold packs so that you can take healthy drinks and snacks with you when you are on the road or not at home when you need to eat.
By creating weekly menus, it’s easier to shop and not run out of essentials; it also shows you in writing what you are consuming so you can make sure not to overeat some macros and under-eat others. This can also come in handy for people who are trying to pace themselves when it comes to maintaining a low-oxalate diet. If you plan to vary your diet in any way, adhering to planned menus makes it very clear how to do that. If you can count on certain social eating patterns on the weekend, you can consciously make better choices during the week to compensate.
Another benefit to meal prep at home is that you can determine your own portion control for certain foods. Because you can make some carbohydrates “starch resistant” by chilling or freezing for at least 24 hours, I make rice, pasta, and potatoes in advance and put them in single serving containers to chill or freeze and thaw days or weeks later. This diet tip is a Win/Win because with portion control of “comfort foods,” you can’t easily over-eat them and with the Starch Resistant “hack,” you can actually reduce the available calories from potatoes, pasta, rice or bread.
It’s infinitely easier to stay on your diet regime when you have a framework in place for what you will eat during the course of a week and not run out of the supplies you need to prepare those healthy good choice meals. Someone reading this might think, “Well, all I have to do is buy 42 Jenny Craig or Weight Watcher frozen meals each week and I’m done!” This response, in and of itself is worthy of some kind of intervention because humans should not be dieting exclusively on processed foods, even if the calorie content is admirable. In fact, highly processed diet foods will never allow a person to be free of their addiction to sugar and other toxins pervasive in the industrial food chain. As with any weight loss diet, there should be a built-in progressive system, whereby a person can maintain that diet long term, down the road for weight maintenance. In other words, don’t do a diet you cannot adopt for life.
True story: I have an old friend whose diet was relatively healthy, but she wanted to drop a few pounds. Instead of preparing low-calorie home cooked meals, she opted for a frozen food company and subsisted on those cardboard meals (with all kinds of preservatives) for a matter of months. The end result is that she almost died when her appendix burst. When comparing her previous diet with the frozen food diet, her doctor implied that her medical crisis likely could have been completely avoided.
Another benefit to meal planning is that many people have no idea how many calories they are consuming on a daily or weekly basis. If you have a desire to lose 1 pound per week (3,500 calories), you first have to know how much you have been consuming and then if it is possible to create a calorie deficit that will result in your weight loss goal within the time frame you desire. By the way, for every pound of fat you lose, you also shed about a pound of water.
When you eat restaurant food, you can estimate the calories only if it is a low-fat or no-fat item, otherwise your estimate could be wildly off. I am not implying that you should choose a low-fat diet, especially since the latest research and findings prove that fat is not the enemy. It’s just that fat in restaurant food is so hard to measure.
For example, one time I was adding up the calories in my head for a customized burrito I ordered at Chipotle restaurant. As a calorie counter since I was ten years old, I know that a ½ cup of cooked beans is @ 100 calories, ditto for a half cup of cooked rice. Adding up the calories for chicken and the other ingredients for my burrito, I included @ 200 calories for those giant flour tortillas used. And when I am estimating calories, I always round up…. When I got to the counter and saw Chipotle’s tally of calories listed for their burrito, I had underestimated it by several hundred calories! Why? Because I had no idea how much butter or oil the foods were cooked in. If I had made a burrito at home, I would have known exactly how much fat I had cooked with.
There seems to be no downside to planning your meals, which also helps you organize your time!
Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions ®
From the Tao of Organizing Blog Series
