All of us have the best intentions when it comes to our diets and nutrition. In a moment of motivation, you’ll make a goal to eat 3 healthy meals a day every day this week, and make it to the gym after work every day. But then, when it comes time to actually make that healthy dinner, you’d rather just order a pizza. It happens to all of us. So, how do you actually stick to your meal plan?
Meal prep over the weekend
The easiest way to keep yourself from caving and choosing an “easier” option, is to give yourself an easy healthy option. Because then you can’t use that excuse. If you meal prep over the weekend, you can cook lunches and dinners for the entire week so not only will you not have to cook during the week, it will be easy to stick to it.
Stick to a pre planned menu
Whether you are meal prepping at the start of the week or not, you should spend some time before the week starts planning your meals for the week. This is another one of the most common reasons for someone to fail at their meal plan, is the lack of planning. Make sure that you give yourself enough variety throughout the week with your meals, so you aren’t eating the same thing everyday. Otherwise, you’ll get bored of your planned meals and deviate.
Plan for snacks
In an ideal world, you’d just need the 3 meals you planned and you would never crave anything else. But we all know that that isn’t how it ends up working. Which is why you should plan out snacks to keep you going during the days in between meals. If you end up not eating them, save them for the next day! But you should plan a small snack before lunch, and another small snack after lunch. Something like celery and peanut butter, flavored almonds, a greek yogurt, or carrots and hummus. Picking something that has protein will keep you fuller longer and prevent you from making a mid workday run to the gas station for chips.
