Option 2 – Creating Menus and Meal Plans
Select this option if:
Welcome to your meal planning nutrition program!
This is the second option you can choose from the nutritional options available. Here you’re going to do a little initial calculation to ensure you are progressing at an efficient rate, and then simply follow the menus and meal planning you create.
Using this option, you will become healthier and happier with yourself and your body, while looking better than ever before. We will use these menu plans to achieve the weight you want while not even feeling like you’re on a diet. That’s the trick. We are going to make these changes in such a stealth manner, your body won’t even realise what’s happened until its all over and you look and feel awesome.
You’re not going to starve yourself, you won’t have to give up any of your favourite foods, and you can use these principles into your next phase where you can easily maintain your new physique because we aren’t going to do anything weird or extreme to do it.
You’re going to set up a daily meal plan as your eating goal for the day. This means you only have to count your calories once for each meal plan that you make. This method is proactive instead of reactive, because you’re writing down and planning what you’re going to eat first, then you eat it.
If you get bored, you can create multiple menus, substitute different foods and choose from a limitless verity of food combinations. These menus will cover all the essentials of healthy nutrition and find a comfortable balance to meet your calorie and macro target for the day. You will be able to apply these menus quite happily throughout your daily life, and you’ll achieve a comfortable transformation towards a more enhanced physique and all without turning your life into a potentially obsessive science math equation.
Are meals plans right for me?
Studies show that by changing the foods you eat every week or so, you could lose more weight. If you’re the type of person who gets bored eating the meals every day, and if boredom causes you to go off your diet and binge, then these weekly meal plans will keep you interested and compliant with your meals.
However, greater variety does not automatically translate into better results. If calories remain equal, then “more variety = more results” is not true. Many people inadvertently eat more calories as a result of following the food variety guideline too literally without paying attention to portion sizes. There’s a large body of evidence showing that if you have less variety in your diet, you will usually stay more compliant and get faster results!
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, numerous mouse studies demonstrated that by increasing the variety of foods available to the animals, it led to an increase in the amount of calories they consumed. Based on the animal research, scientists hypothesized that the same thing would happen in humans, and it did!
In a study from Tufts University, 71 men and women, with ages ranging from 20 to 80, were analyzed for their food intake behaviours and their body compositions. They discovered that more variety in their diets led to a higher caloric intake. As you might expect, having a wide variety of sweets, carbohydrates, condiments, entrees and snack foods were what mostly caused this increased calorie consumption.
Research from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island studied weight loss maintenance in a group called the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) who are the largest ongoing observational study examining long term weight loss maintainers. These people who could maintain their healthy weight easily, consume a diet with very low variety in all food groups. The only exceptions were fruits and vegetables. From this, the researchers concluded that restricting variety may help with consuming a low-energy diet and maintaining long-term weight loss.
Why less verity sometimes lead to better progress
Dieticians call this effect “stimulus narrowing”. If you think about it, it’s a lot easier to keep track of calories if you eat the same thing every day. Also, eating the same (or similar) every day quickly becomes habitual and these habit patterns run unconsciously without much work or effort. If you find you spend a lot of the day worrying about what you’re going to eat next, then this planning will remove that stress almost entirely.
Eating the same when you start a nutrition program for the first time also helps you establish a baseline very easily. When you have a baseline, it’s easy to make changes one at a time and measure the effects of those changes in a systematic way. This is helpful in the early learning stages. If your nutrition is random – the foods you eat, your meal frequency or anything at all – it’s difficult to keep track of calories unless you faithfully log every morsel into a written or electronic meal plan. It’s also harder to track the effects of dietary adjustments because you never had a baseline in the first place.
Another phenomenon we see in the research is what scientists call “the buffet effect,” which means that if you’re given a lot of choices at one meal — literally, as at a buffet line, a potluck dinner or even a menu that stays on the table (think “sushi bar”) – you almost always eat more. Researcher Brian Wansink and his team from Cornell University food and brand laboratory observed the eating behaviors of diners at 11 all-you-can-eat buffets. As you might guess, the subjects all ate more and ate more quickly. Calorie intake was also positively associated with being seated nearby and facing the buffet.
If after reading this you feel you need more flexibility with daily choices, then feel free to switch over and have a look at option 3 (Daily Flexible Dieting). Otherwise if this is resonating with you and you want to give it a go, then lets dive right in!
To get rid of fat, you must have a calorie deficit. To grow muscle, you must have a calorie surplus. This means that the number of calories that you take in every day from food and drink must be less (deficit) or more (surplus) than the amount of calories you burn each day (Total daily calorie expenditure). You can create this deficit or surplus by changing your activity, your nutrition, or both.
An average male burns around 2800 calories a day.
An average female burns around 2100 calories a day.
There are lots of complex equations and formulae for calculating calories and macros for your diet, but don’t worry because I’ve done the hard work for you. I’ve created a simple, yet comprehensive calculator for you that calculates your basal metabolic rate (BMR), total daily calorie expenditure (TDEE), calorie targets and protein, carb, fat and fibre requirements all for you, your genetics, activity, experience and preferences. Explanations for BMR and TDEE are included in the calculator tools below.
Click on an option below to calculate your calories.
Using your calorie targets, decide on how many meals you want to have each day. An average balanced healthy meal has between 400 – 700 calories per meal. You can decide to spread out your meals into smaller meals or you can keep them to the conventional three meal system. The choice is yours but I have a few recommendations:
Heres a spreadsheet file I made for you. You can either print it off and write on it, or fill it in on the computer. There are formulas programmed that calculate your totals and percentages for you!
Alternatively, you can use a mobile app. There are lots to choose from but I recommend MyFitnessPal. It’s free, you can program and save your meals and it’s all calculated automatically.
MyFitnessPal
Once you’ve got the layout ready, it’s time to get meal planning!
Select a protein source for each meal. These can include:
Why do I recommend low fat options? Remember we want to control calorie density, and fat is more than twice as calorie dense as protein or carbs, so be careful to not spend too many calories on fats.
Benefits of protein include protection of muscle and reduced appetite. For those that struggle to eat enough calories (naturally skinny people on a bulk), feel free to include the fats in the protein sources and use shakes such as whey protein powders to get enough protein while not feeling too full.
Need help picking a protein powder? Click here for a great article.
Vegetarian? Vegan? No worries. Swap out animal protein sources for vegetarian sources such as soy, tofu, tempeh and vegetarian protein sources.
If you aren’t professionally diagnosed with a lactose intolerance, don’t try and remove lactose from your diet. Lactose based items have lots of nutritional value and removing them won’t help you lose weight any faster.
Look for as many ways as you can to pack in as many fibrous vegetables as you can into your meals. These are natural high nutritional quality foods that your body loves, fills you up and leaves you feeling great!
Asparagus, artichokes, broccoli, green beans, spinach, celery, brussels sprouts, peas, leafy salad greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, mushrooms, onions, zucchini, squash, eggplant, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, the list goes on!
Because these are high in fibre, these foods help you maintain optimal digestion and it helps flush your body of toxins and waste. They are loaded with nutritional vitamins and minerals along with phytochemicals that have many health benefits.
Just like veggies, fruits are loaded with healthy yummy goodness. Aim to get at least 1 – 2 fruits each day.
Some fruits are full of fibre and high in nutritional quality while also low in calories. These include blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, pears, peaches, grapes, pineapples, papayas, banannas, grapefruits, nectarines, oranges, apples and kiwi fruits.
If you have a few grams of carbs left over after your veggies and fruit, use the remaining space to add starchy carbs into the meals without a carb source assigned yet.
Look for all different types of these including yams, potatoes, corn, kumara, pastas, rice, lentils, oats, wheat, whole grain breads.
Make sure these carbs are mostly from natural sources and keep added sugars and processed carbs away from your daily lifestyle and saved for occasional social events. The amount you include in your own personal diet depends on you:
Gluten intolerant? No worries, just stick with fibrous carbs and fruits. If your health professional allows, try spelt or quinoa.
If you aren’t professionally diagnosed with a gluten intolerance, don’t try and remove gluten from your diet. Gluten based foods have lots of nutritional value and removing them won’t help you lose weight any faster.
If you still have space remaining for fat grams, add some healthy fats. If you have already gone over your fat target, look for the foods you’ve added that are high in fat and either reduce their quantity or swap them for a lower fat option.
When adding fats, look to get quality sources of omega 3 fats throughout the week from fatty fish like salmon, sardines and tuna. Other sources include ground flaxseed, walnuts and dark leafy greens.
Fat is good for you and it’s important to get enough, but not too much (due to its calorie density). At 9 calories per gram, you can easily use up all your calorie budget for the day and risk over eating if you consume too many fats. Yes it can be filling, but research has proven that it’s protein and fibre that are the real secrets to feeling fuller throughout the day.
Have a look at your totals now. You’re hopefully somewhere in the ballpark to your calorie and macros target. If not its time to make some adjustments. If you are over or under on your protein, carbs or fats target then have a look at either adjusting the size of some of the foods or swapping out for different foods. It can take a little time but remember you only have to do this once for each menu you make.
Remember you don’t have to be nit picky when it comes to accuracy. As long as your macros are within 5 – 10 grams of your target then that’s fine. Once they are sorted, your total calories for the day should arrive somewhere close to your calorie target that you calculated earlier. If its 50 or so calories out, thats fine. Remember this isn’t an exact science.
Now you’ve made your meal plan:
Now I’m not expecting you to follow your meal plans 100% of the time. When life doesn’t allow you to practically follow your menu perfectly, feel free to swap a meal on the menu for an “off the menu” meal that has roughly the same calories as the previous menu meal. Just keep in mind that when deciding on your “off the menu” foods, choose natural unprocessed foods 90% of the time. Let 10% of your food basket be your so called “treat foods”. This approach allows for a healthy balance where you aren’t depriving yourself of any of the foods you love, you’re just consciously deciding to enjoy most of your foods from natural sources. How can you tell if the food is truly natural? Just ask yourself:
Did this food from DIRECTLY from a tree, plant or the ground, or did it walk, fly or swim?
If yes, then it’s natural. You’ve seen an apple tree in nature, but not an apple juice tree.
With all this in mind, make sure you don’t wonder off the menu too far. Stick to your planned menus to keep things simple and stress free while continuing to achieve progress with your physique, health and fitness. If you do find you really can’t stay on your menu plans, then consider looking at the option 3 nutrition plan (Daily Flexible Dieting).
Remember that your nutrition is not the whole story. Training along side your nutrition is what is needed for the results you want.
– Your CALORIES will cause your body to either store energy (hopefully as muscle) or use up energy (hopefully from fat).
– Your MACROS will give you the building blocks, energy and healthy function during each day.
– Your WEIGHT TRAINING is what signals your body to store excess energy as muscle or use reserve energy from fat.
– Your CARDIO will keep your metabolism elevated, improve recovery and ensure good health.
Before you start using your menu plan, take a moment to think about how you’re going to ease into it.
It’s usually not wise to make drastic changes to your caloric intake all at once. Now I’ve done all your calorie calculations and determined your optimal calorie level to reach your goal, compare that amount to what you’ve been averaging over the past few months.
If your current caloric intake has been substantially higher or lower than your new target amount, then you may need to adjust gradually.
For example, if your optimal caloric intake is 2600 calories per day, but you’ve only been eating two meals and 1500 calories per day for the past year, your metabolism may be sluggish from the low meal frequency and calorie intake. An immediate jump to 2600 calories per day might actually cause a gain in body fat if your body has adapted to the lower calories. A sudden increase would create a temporary surplus.
The best approach would be to gradually increase your calories from 1500 to 2600 over a period of weeks to allow your metabolism to gradually increase. Simply eat the same foods and the same number of meals, but gradually increase your portions to let your body acclimate.
The reverse is also true; if you’re eating a lot more than your recommended amount, it may be wiser to gradually reduce your calories than to drop them suddenly. Cutting too many calories too quickly often causes diet relapses because the change is too dramatic for some people to handle.
If you need to ease into your calorie and macro targets, simply adjust your menu as needed for your days of transition into the plan.
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