How Planning Ahead Can Improve Your Weight Loss Results
There are two tactics that I rank as most important when it comes to weight loss:
Consistency
Planning ahead
Being consistent is important because at the end of the day, you can be great for one week, hit all your workouts, prep all your meals, hit ALL your calorie and macro goals, but if you totally fall off the following week, you’ll negate all your hard work and efforts you made previous to that.
So being consistent obviously matters.
Planning ahead is a little bit more specific and looks different for everyone according to dietary adherence lifestyle and their training.
There are certain factors that will play a role in actually being able to plan ahead, factors such as TIME.
You should consider time when trying to be productive and make some positive changes to your everyday life especially, when it comes to nutrition. First, ask yourself if you have enough time right now to sit down and eat all your meals?
Or are you rushing from one meeting to the next without a minute to use the bathroom in a typical day? If this sounds familiar to you, planning ahead, food prepping and having healthy meals and snacks with you, that you can eat on the go, will go will make a huge difference in your nutrition.
You should try and be one step ahead of yourself and plan your meals the day before to be prepared for the craziness that’s to come the following day. This means fitting food prep into your schedule and/or planning which restaurants you will eat at.
This will eliminate you reaching for unhealthy food options when your starving, and result in you reaching for the healthy food choices.
A few of my favorite on-the-go meals are:
A protein shake
Rolled deli meat with crackers
Sweetgreen salad
Chipotle salad with double protein (no sour cream)
A greek yogurt with fruit
Lox with sliced cucumber
A prepared sandwich you made at home with ezekiel bread and double protein meat
What’s important is you take a look at your current lifestyle and decide what’s realistic for YOU. Then start making small changes and tweaks where you can. Even though these tweaks may be small, they’ll go a long way in the long run and help you build momentum to start seeing some progress.
Ok, so if preparing or bringing lunch with you is unrealistic, consider something you can eliminate from your diet. This might be an easier option for you and one that you can still see positive changes from without it demanding anymore additional time from your already packed schedule.
Something you can eliminate from your diet and reap immediate results from would be the elimination of alcohol, for example. Or that bran muffin you get on your way to work every morning. Or that late night chocolate bar you can’t give up 4 nights a week. Or those damn Insomnia cookies….
Again, evaluate how much time you have in your schedule and make a decision based on that. You want to be realistic with these goals but also want them to be effective.
When it comes to training, If you’re someone who needs to rush to pick up the kids right after work and getting to the gym three times a week as of right now is even a stretch, then you can consider focusing on making improvements to your already existing workout routine without adding in more of a time demand.
Examples of this can be:
Changing your program up
Hiring a trainer/coach
Increasing the intensity of your workouts
Changing up the pairing of your exercises to make them more challenging
I would suggest starting with asking yourself what’s most practical with your everyday schedule. How much time do you have a week to meal prep? Hit the gym? Make a schedule, write it down in your calendar and hold yourself accountable to it!
Sure, we know working out six times a week is more effective than only working out two or three times a week, BUT fitness needs to fit YOUR lifestyle and that’s going to look different everyone.