By Master Coach Rick Parcell
Partner & Program Creator at www.thebodycamp.com
If I give you a fish, you will eat for a day, but then you will need me again every day, or you’ll go out begging for someone else to give you the next fish!
Here at www.thebodycamp.com, we would rather teach you how to fish. If you’re a good learner, and you learn how to fish, you will eat well for life. You also don’t have to depend on me, a top class retreat like www.thebodycamp.com or anyone else to feed you in the future.
Because of human nature and market pressures, the diet industry keeps prescribing meal plans. But their business plan is still based on the ideas of bad foods, forbidden foods, rigid food lists, foods to “never eat,” magic superfoods and strict diet rules.
I would rather let you make your own choices inside a structured but flexible framework. If I do show you a sample meal plan (which I know most people will still want to see), I will explain that it’s only an example of how I might eat, or how other people successful at body transformation eat, not a rigid prescription for you. I would tell you that I want you to learn how to create your own meal plans, and I’m simply showing you samples as idea starters.
Bottom line, here is how a meal plan can be flexible: You create and customize your own natural nutrition plan!
Creating your own meal plans also aligns with what psychology research says about autonomy and self-motivation.
If you feel you had a hand in the process of creating your own program (you don’t feel like it was passed down from a diet dictator) you’ll be more self-motivated and more likely to make the changes a lasting part of your lifestyle. That’s because autonomy (your freedom of choice) is linked to intrinsic motivation. This is yet another reason why flexible dieting works, and it has not been discussed nearly enough yet.
Here’s another reason why working off a daily meal plan can work: Who says you have to follow the same meal plan every day?
Granted, I follow the same meal plan every day, more or less, but that’s my choice. I have personal reasons I do that, and there’s also science saying it can help with fat loss. If you don’t want to eat the same thing every day, you don’t have to. Make two meal plans. Make three! Make seven, if you really want to, but you don’t need many. I’ve seen diet books with 12 weeks worth of different daily meal plans. Who in the world buys a diet book and eats exactly what someone else prescribed for 84 days? However, if you simply have two or three meal plans that you created, and you rotate them, that is enough variety to make most people happy. If you have three meal plans with five meals each, that’s fifteen different meals you could rotate!
For those freestyle-loving people, you can make substitutions off one meal plan – food by food or meal by meal. With the right meal plan template, it’s easy. Suppose oatmeal, a banana and scrambled eggs is on your breakfast meal plan, but you don’t want oatmeal yet again this morning. If you understand nutrition, like we do at www.thebodycamp.com, you know that all you have to do is swap one food with a different food from the same group and your calories and macros for the day will automatically be all good.
Lets suppose you were eating ½ cup (40g) of oatmeal. That’s 150 calories. If you swap for 2 slices of Ezekiel bread toast that’s 160 calories. Close enough – you’re done! What could be easier than swapping starchy carb for starchy carb or protein for protein? This isn’t rocket science and it isn’t new. In fact, good dieticians have been teaching food exchange systems for as long as I can remember. This is simple stuff! It’s only hard if you make it so by accepting the wrong (rigid) rules or trying to micromanage.
Why following a structured, yet flexible meal plan is the most powerful nutrition strategy.
There are things I’ve changed my mind about over the years, but nothing will ever dissuade me from my belief that working from a daily meal plan is a great way to transform your body and health. You don’t have to adopt rigid rules. If you are paleo, go ahead, follow paleo rules. If you are vegan, follow vegan rules. If you are gluten intolerant, follow gluten intolerant rules. If you are low carb, follow your brand of low carb rules. These things don’t matter when creating meal plans. What matters is that you do create a meal plan and follow it.
There are things I’ve changed my mind about over the years – but nothing will ever dissuade me from my belief that working from a daily meal plan is a great way to transform your body and health.
When you create your own meal plan, it’s yours, and that makes it flexible to begin with. It’s flexible if you learn how to make changes for day to day variety. It’s flexible if you learn how to make food or meal exchanges on the go. If you eat mostly healthy, natural foods but leave room for your favorite foods and treats on special occasions by earning them with a great workout, it works!
