1 Meal planning lie you must stop believing if you want to eat healthier
I work with so many types of women. Some of them are Type A mamas. They love a good plan and checking things off a list. Others love to live life spontaneously, they’re ok with fluctuation as long as they’re enjoying life. But almost every woman I work with has one thing in common: they don’t like meal planning. Raise your hand if that’s true for you too. Mama, I promise that if you stop believing that you can’t meal plan, then eating healthy is going to become so much easier!
I have been a nutrition coach for almost eight years and I can tell you that every single person struggles with meal planning. I can also tell you that the women in the Macros Made Easy program who commit to meal planning lose more weight, more quickly than those who don’t.
So why are people so resistant to meal planning? Because they’re thinking from their toddler brain instead of their adult brain.
Lie: Planning meals is too hard/restrictive/boring/etc.
I have heard so many excuses as to why women either don’t like meal planning or don’t stick to their meal plans.
I didn’t have time to meal plan this week.
I tried to meal plan but couldn’t think of anything to have.
I had a plan, but then my family wanted to go out to eat.
I didn’t have time to cook what I planned.
What I meal planned didn’t sound good anymore.
The excuses could on and on and on. But the truth about excuses is that they simply mean meal planning isn’t a priority to you. And in some cases, you can take it one step further and say that ignoring a meal plan means your health isn’t a priority for you.
However, if you want to lose weight, or eat healthier, then meal planning needs to be your first step. If you feel a lot of resistance to meal planning, then let’s dive into why.
Most of the time, resistance to something that you know will benefit you comes from your primitive brain, or as I like to call it your toddler brain.
The toddler brain’s main goal is reward and pleasure. It wants everything now, now, now and it wants everything to feel good. The toddler brain doesn’t stop to examine the consequences of its actions, it just takes what it wants, when it wants it.
That’s why when you eat from a toddler state of mind, you make choices that don’t benefit your long-term goals. Instead of sticking to the healthy meal you planned, when your kids ask to order pizza your toddler brain goes, “pizza sounds better than chicken!” so you order the pizza, eat half of it, and then spend the rest of the night regretting your decision.
When you let your toddler brain run the show, you’ll always end up feeling guilt, shame and regret because mama, you’re not a toddler! You’re a grown woman who knows better.
Truth: Meal planning is the key to reaching your goals
Here’s the key though, your toddler brain can think all the thoughts it wants, but it can’t take any action. You have to use your adult brain to actually do things!
Your adult brain operates from your pre-frontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is where all logical thinking happens. It evaluates actions and consequences. It determines the best route. It’s how you access the Future You that we’ve talked about the last few weeks.
When you’re thinking from your adult brain you can make decisions that are aligned with the outcomes you want.
When your kids ask you to order pizza instead of cooking the chicken you had on your meal plan, you pause, and evaluate if the instant gratification of pizza is worth putting off your health goals for a few days or if you’d rather stick to your plan and reach your goals.
It seems like such a simple answer, right?
Acting from your adult brain instead of your toddler brain should be a simple process, but we all struggle to do it. It’s because your toddler brain is just that a toddler! And its superpower is to wear down your adult brain until you give in and give it what it wants.
If you have ever taken your kids to Target, then you understand what it’s like to have a toddler brain wearing on an adult brain! It whines, begs, screams and does whatever it can to get you to give it what it wants (and in the case of real toddlers, it’s usually a over priced toy they’ll play with for five minutes and then never touch again.)
Instead of letting your toddler brain runs the show, because that causes pure madness, you need to learn how to recognize your toddler brain, and how to put your adult brain back in control.
Awareness is the first step in any new process, so I want you to start recognizing when your toddler brain starts to speak up, or when she straight up throws a tantrum. You don’t have to make a change when you notice your toddler brain coming out, because right now, we’re just focusing on recognizing it.
Once you’re comfortable recognizing your toddler brain, then start speaking to her from your adult brain. You’ll talk to her just like you would talk to your kids! You’ll explain why you’re not going to let her have her way and why the choice your adult brain is making is going to be more beneficial.
When your toddler brain is telling you that she wants a second, third, or fourth glass of wine, you can calmly tell her that you’re not going to do that because you know you will feel like crap in the morning and you promised your kids you’d take them to the zoo.
Or when your toddler brain tells you that she wants a giant bowl of ice cream, instead of the small bowl you planned for, you can tell her that she’s still getting ice cream. She’s just getting a serving that’s going to satisfy her sweet tooth and not make her regret it tomorrow.
As you recognize and rationalize with your toddler brain it will become so much easier to do things like meal planning! Planning ahead of time makes your life easier and your adult brain knows that. You can start creating the habit of meal planning from your adult brain. And then when on Sunday your toddler brain tries to convince you that it’s going to take so much time to meal plan, you can remind her that it will save you time during the week if you spend 15 minutes to get it done now.
And during the week when your toddler brain tries to tell you that what you planned sounds yucky, you can tell her that this is one meal. It’s already planned and prepped and eating what you have planned is going to save you time and energy, plus it’s going to help you reach your goals.
Mastering your toddler brain is going to be one of the best weight loss tools you’ve ever received! If you want to learn more about how to make healthy decisions simpler, while learning how to eat balanced meals that include some fun foods, let’s chat!
I teach busy mamas like you how to lose weight without having to give up all the foods they love! Schedule a free discovery call with me today to get started!
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