I used to have a long-standing love-hate relationship with food. I would constantly try the newest fad diet or quick fix only to be left feeling worse than before. It wasn’t until about three years ago when I found a simple balance between food groups and being able to indulge without feeling guilty that I started to get the results I was looking for. No matter what meal plan that you decide to go with, the most important thing to remember is calories in = calories out. What I mean by this is that you need to have an idea how many calories you are putting into your body and how many calories that you are burning in a day. Once you figure this out, you will be able to create a meal plan to better help you achieve your fitness goals.
There are many different options when it comes to determining how many calories you are eating in a day. My personal preference is the My Fitness Pal app; it is easy to use and has about every possible food item known to man. Another option is using a container system to determine how much to eat daily.
I am most familiar with Beachbody’s portion fix, which has different sized containers for the different food groups. Once you have eaten your max for each container, that is all that you are allowed. The containers can be found through Beachbody, on Amazon, or at Walmart. These are not the only options by any means, but the options that I am most familiar with. Once you get the hang of how many calories you are eating, you no longer will need to track your food as thoroughly.
When choosing a meal plan, it is important to choose a plan that works best for you. If you do a quick Google search, the different diet plans popular right now are intermittent fasting, plant-based diets, low-carb diets, paleo diet, the Mediterranean diet, Weight Watchers, and the list goes on and on. At the end of the day, the goal of each diet is to reduce the calories consumed so that you can lose weight. Personally, if I went 16 hours without eating, I know that I would be the grouchiest person to be around, so the intermittent fasting diet is not for me. Zach and I decided to go plant-based in February of this year. It’s been a very interesting journey, and we are far from perfect, but it has made us both feel so much better. I obviously understand that going plant-based isn’t for everyone and that’s okay, and honestly, we do not follow the diet perfectly. If I told Zach that he no longer can have steak, this train would not have gotten the chance to leave the station so to speak! What I do know is the system that we use is applicable no matter what your diet looks like!
In general, the overall concept of nutrition is super overwhelming. There are so many different ways to track, eat, and just live –it’s exhausting. I am going to help breakdown what system works for both Zach and I that continues to allow us to eat good delicious food (think tacos, pizza, sweets) without feeling guilty or derailing our progress! I am no expert on nutrition! All of this information and future posts are strictly my personal experience and research I’ve done.
Erin
CAN’T WAIT TO SHARE MY TIPS, TRICKS, AND DELICIOUS RECIPES ON THIS PAGE!
