Makes your life easy. When you have everything planned out, it’s one less thing to think about when life gets busy and it also ensures that you have all the necessary items you need for each meal and snack. It also eases the stress of having to “stay strong” when you are hungry or feeling a bit stressed, because you already now what to eat. It takes time on the front end to sit down and plan everything out, but it’s so worth it. Also, we typically eat the same meals and snacks, so once you make a detailed plan once it provides a good framework to use for the future. Planning is also helpful when you are eating away from home. You can research the restaurant you are going to and pick your meal before you arrive, this will help you make the decision you intend to that is aligned with your goals, instead of allowing emotions to drive you. One important note, don’t plan your meals when you are hungry…you may move from the land of thinking to the land of emotions.
Unhooks Food from Feelings– Eating is emotional, for all of us. This is normal, it only becomes abnormal when eating and food, become too intertwined with your feelings and how you seek pleasure and have fun. We are biologically wired to really enjoy eating; it’s a survival thing. But this can become a real problem in our life if it moves from the normal enjoyment of planning and eating, into the land of obsession. We begin to orientate our life and happiness around food and eating, so instead of food simply being a part of and enhancing our life experience. It’s a problem when its role in our life becomes too prominent and thoughts about it take up too much of our mental energy and space. We step over into the land of obsession when we start thinking about it too much, for example, we think about what we are going to have for lunch, right after breakfast; we pin recipes in Pinterest for hours, we plan all social events around eating; or while you drive home you thinking about the snack (or glass of wine) you are going have (even though you aren’t that hungry). When I suggest that my clients find other fun activities not related to food, I can’t tell you how often I have clients tell me “But baking/cooking is how I relax!” and I say “Ok, but how do you think that started? And the goal of our work together is to find other ways of managing your life and emotions in ways other than using food. So you will just have to find a non-food way to have fun and reduce stress.” What if a person had a problem shopping and over spending and they spent hours pouring their favorite stores websites —> it would be hard not to buy stuff, right?
It’s good practice and makes you feel successful. Success increases our confidence and confidence increases our success. Every time we follow through on our commitments, we feel successful and improve our confidence in being able to “stick to it”. This increases our resilience and strengthens our commitment muscle. And resilience and commitment are the most important skills to being able to make real change in our lives. But you have to practice commitment and resilience just like you would strengthen any other skill or muscle. The stronger your muscles are, the easily they are to use, even is tough situations. And you know what makes that muscle really strong? Pulling yourself back on the wagon, after you have fallen off. This is the very definition of resilience. The best part about resilience is that when you improve your resilience in one area, like your diet, you will find yourself being more resilient in all areas of your life, like hearing No in business. Improving one area of your life, improves your life in all areas.
So start by planning out your meals and snacks for a day, and then increase it for 2 days and then increase it to a week.
HERE is a guide on HOW to do it.
And stick to it, even if you don’t feel like having that salad for lunch or the baked cilantro lime fish and broccoli for dinner (make sure you reinforce these choices with positive thoughts) and you will be happy you made these choices. And if you make notes of what you liked and didn’t like, you can always make changes next time.
And if this feels to ridged but believe it or not the structure, planning actually liberates you from having to choose when you are tempted. And not allowing food to be your fun, may make you feel restless, but this is a good thing because you can start getting creative about how to find fun and pleasure in ways that aren’t food related. (this will be a game changer, I promise!)
BE well,
Sally
P.S. Want to learn how to become a planner and start making some real changes in your life? Then you should join my 30day Reset, which starts on April 1, 2017! The 30day Reset is a Clean eating guide, exercise plan and mindset training, that helps you Reset for your body and your life! And speaking of meal planning, it comes with a month of meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Oh Ya, it will be awesome! This program currently has a waiting list, if you want on –> HERE.
But in the meantime, if you are ready to start making some important changes in your life, we can work together 1:1 so I can work with you on your terms, with your individual needs! contact me HERE or schedule yourself on my calendar
