Spring clean your nutrition now so that you can head into spring break feeling your best
Are you thinking about spring yet? If I have learned one thing as a mama, it’s that time passes so quickly and before we know it spring break is going to be here! If you have spring break plans that you want to feel good for and look good for, then you need to start cleaning up your nutrition now so you’re not scrambling in a few weeks! Spring cleaning your nutrition now will help you reach your goals faster so you can feel great for spring break!
I just got back from my birthday trip to Cabo, where I spent basically all day in a swimming suit. Before I went I knew that I wanted to feel my best on vacation. I didn’t want to be obsessing about how I looked in my swimming suit. I wanted to be able to feel confident no matter what I did or what I wore. So about 4-6 weeks before my vacation I started honing in on my nutrition to prepare for that trip.
I know after seven years of coaching hundreds of women that you can’t just drop weight by starving yourself the week before a vacation. It doesn’t work. It causes so many problems and it’s just not worth it. Trust me!
If you want to look good and feel good during your spring break vacation, then you need to start taking action today! The best way to do that is to do a little spring cleaning and get your mind and your kitchen ready to make healthy living a priority.
Do a nutrition self-assessment
First things first, you need to assess where you’re at in your nutrition. To be successful in your nutrition, you have to start with where you’re at and not where you wish you were at. One easy way to see where you’re at in your nutrition is to record your food for a week and then assess what your nutrition currently looks like.
If you eat out multiple times a week or drink soda every day, that’s ok! You just need to be aware of where you’re starting. Once you know what your nutritional habits look like, you can determine where to start making changes.
Next, you need to a set realistic goal that fits in your timeline. You’re not going to be able to drop 50 lbs in just a few weeks - especially if you want to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable way. But you can aim to cook 3 times this week instead of going out. Small changes will help you feel in alignment with the new healthy version of yourself that you’re creating so that you stick to these new habits instead of getting overwhelmed and giving up in a week!
That being said, if you have big goals and feel intimidated by them, then it might be worth it to hire a coach.
I have found that no matter what aspect of my life I’m working on, my health, my mindset, my business, a good coach saves me so much time and stress because a coach can guide me through the process.
A coach can take your hand and lead you down the path. They can help you jump over obstacles and cheer you on when you can’t see the light.
I am a huge proponent of getting help when you need it. This should always apply to your health! Investing in your health isn’t a burden on your family, it’s a necessity! Because if you aren’t healthy you can’t care for the rest of the family!
Once you know where you’re at, where you want to be, and how fast you want to get there, it’s time to create a plan to accomplish your goals.
Plan, prep and protect your nutrition
There are three steps to creating healthy nutritional practices and those steps are plan, prep, protect.
Plan
A plan is essential to healthy eating. If you’re on a health or weight loss journey, you can’t just eat whatever is convenient or whatever you’re in the mood for. If you’re relying on feelings or convenience for a healthy diet, then you’re going to fail. Because broccoli never just sounds good!
When you don’t have a plan, you let food control you. If you’re running around dropping kids off and picking them up, running errands, or stuck at the office late, then grabbing a pizza is always going to win instead of cooking. However, that’s the plan that got you to the place you’re at now.
Planning your meals ahead of time doesn’t mean you have to cook a homemade meal from scratch each day! Planning ahead allows you to plan out which days you’ll cook that gourmet meal and which days you’ll opt for quick dinners that you can eat on the run.
If you spend half an hour a week creating a meal plan, not only will you find success in your weight loss, but you will save yourself time, energy and sanity!
My favorite strategy for meal planning is my backward meal design. You can get access to my free training on it my Facebook group, Busy Mom Simple Nutrition. This planning strategy allows me to cook one meal for the whole family that not only fits into my nutritional needs but it also fits my kids’ picky tastes!
Prep
Meal prepping is another useful tool for busy mamas, but we often claim that we’re too busy to meal plan. It sounds like a catch 22, but I promise that if you set aside a few hours on the weekend, meal prepping can save you so much time throughout the week!
Making a nutritious dinner usually means you have to spend at least an hour chopping fruits or veggies and combining spices - not to mention you have to remember to pull frozen meat out of the freezer hours ahead of time. So the quick 20-minute meal you wanted to make for your family has hours of prep work.
Imagine if you could go to the fridge and pull out pre-chopped fruits or veggies, throw your meat and spices in and have your meal ready to go in just 20 minutes! It would be a stress reliever, right?
Well, if you spent a few hours on Sunday chopping your veggies and even putting them in a tupperware that had everything else ready for your meal, you would save so much time making dinner on Wednesday night! The dream is a reality that’s possible if you plan for it!
One last note if you’re still resistant to meal planning and prepping. Instead of saying, “I don’t have time to meal plan or prep.” say, “Meal planning and prepping isn’t a priority for me.” If you feel guilt or embarrassment about saying it’s not a priority, then it is a priority for you and you’re just choosing to ignore it! If you feel 100% comfortable with that statement, then you’re not at a point where you’re ready to meal plan or prep. Both of those are ok, but you need to know what is right for you.
Protect
I’m sure you’ve tried meal planning and prepping before. It may have felt so good to have all your food ready for the week, but then when the weekend rolled around you were too tired to meal plan and prep again. And you quickly fell back into your old patterns. The reason you fell back into that habit that wasn’t serving you was that you didn’t protect your plan!
Protecting your plans is probably the most difficult part of nutrition because it’s easy to let life get in the way. You might assume that you need to protect your plans from other people, but mama, 99% of the time you actually need to protect your plans from yourself.
If you want this to work, if you really want to lose weight and feel good in your skin then you have to stop saying yes when you need to say no.
When you make a plan to cook dinner on a Friday night and your kids beg you to eat out instead, you need to say no. Ordering a pizza might be so much easier, but you need to hold strong and say no because a pizza doesn’t fit into your plan.
When you’re feeling tired on Sunday morning and you’d rather stay in bed than get up and prep your food for the week, you need to say no to sleeping in. Because prepping your food is how you’re guaranteeing your success this week.
You are in charge of your choices - no one else. You have to take ownership for taking the easy road out when you know it doesn’t take you toward your goals.
Protect your plans and you’ll see the results you’re looking for. I promise.
Pay attention to all areas of health for best results
Finally, if you want to get spring break ready, you need to look outside of just your nutrition and find out what other areas of your health you can improve.
I have my clients look at a lot of different aspects of their health so that we can get the best results. We look at
Sleep
Exercise
Alcohol consumption
Menstrual cycles
Water intake
Fiber
But the most important aspect is one that almost every other nutrition coach misses, its mindset. How you think and feel about yourself, your food, your body, your ability to make good decisions will be the biggest game-changer.
If you’ve been stuck in the diet hamster wheel for years, I guarantee it’s because you’re thinking about your nutrition in a way that’s hurting you.
This is one of the key aspects that I help mamas in the Macros Made Easy Program overcome. And it’s one of the most rewarding aspects of my job. I get to help women uncover what is holding them back and then together we unravel it and overcome it.
If you’ve tried diet, after diet, after diet and they don’t work for you, then let’s take a look at how you view food.
Do you think there are good and bad foods?
Do you punish yourself or talk down to yourself for indulging in dessert?
Do you think you need to work off the food you eat?
If you answered yes to any - or all - of these, then let’s talk.
Because all of those are false beliefs! They are the beliefs that are holding you back from becoming the healthy, confident woman you want to be!
In the Macros Made Easy Program, I’ll help walk you through each of the steps we’ve talked about so that you can head out on your spring break vacation with confidence. Schedule a free discovery call today to get started. You deserve this, Mama!
