Eat Your Way Right Habit 1: Create Your Plan

You have heard the old maxim many times I am sure.

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

First hand experience tells me this is right on. There is no better way to set yourself up for frustration, despair and failure (real or perceived) than by not setting anything up at all.

You know the drill. You tell yourself “Self, this is the week I am going to get it together and eat like I should.”

And it doesn’t get any farther than that. Seemingly simple things like “When and how many times am I going to eat?” get left out.

In week 1 we are going to start simple and solve that challenge.

The plan is for the first week?

Plan.

The very first thing you need to do is figure out how many times you are going to eat on a day by day basis.

Some of us do great on 3 squares a day. Others like to snack between meals, so they may be eating 5 times a day. If you are resistance training, how does your post-training nutrition fit in?

This is where the planning starts.

Some of our challenges in the past have been based on smaller more frequent meals, 5 0r 6 a day. Eating this way is thought to stabilize blood sugar and make sure we don’t get so ravenously hungry we go crazy at the next meal. If this works for you, fantastic!

But experience tells us this just does not work in everyone’s lifestyle, and that’s ok. In fact right now I eat 3 times a day, and I love it. I plan exactly in the day when and what I am going to eat, and most of the time that works great. If something comes up and I am off an hour or even two it doesn’t ruin my day. Truthfully that doesn’t happen very often though, because most of us have reasonably predictable schedules, and we usually know what the next day holds by the evening before.

Habit 1 is very simple. Plan the number of meals you are going to eat ahead of time, and then stick to the plan.

Here’s how I do it.

I know that Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are my training days. For me this means I am going to get in 3 main meals and my recovery nutrition. This would count as 4 meals for the day. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday are non-training days. My plan is to eat just 3 meals on that day.

So on my success checklist, if on Monday I ate my 3 meals plus my recovery nutrition, I would mark an “x” in my box, if I missed a meal (or ate or snacked an extra time) I would mark a “0”. Very simple.

Same thing with non-training days. If I eat 3 times I am good to go, if I eat more or less, than I record a miss for the day.

But what if an emergency happens (like Drew going to urgent care a couple weeks ago) and I miss training? Then I adapt, knock off the recovery nutrition, and stick with the 3 meals.

Habit 1 is not intended to tell you what to eat, that is coming starting next week. (I would however recommend you get a jump start on your meal planning by visiting the “Eat Your Way Right ” Resource Page)

Habit 1 is designed to help you be mindful of your eating habits. Too many of  us (yes I include myself at times) just mindlessly reach for the candy dish, cookies or nuts when we really aren’t hungry at all. Or maybe we are reaching for them because we haven’t eaten anything for 10 hours and we are ravenous. By planning ahead of time we put ourselves in the best position to succeed.

My recommendation is that you plan a week ahead of time. The first week you may plan to eat 3 meals a day and find that doesn’t really work for you, and that’s ok. Next week adjust and see if that works better. There are no hard and fast rules with Habit 1. This is your life and lifestyle. Just don’t fall in the trap of being random from day to day. Once you make that choice, hold yourself accountable and stick with it.