Our Nutrition Approach Step 3: Planning

As my dad always says: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Originally said by Benjamin Franklin, this quote stands true for many different aspects of our lives, doesn’t it?!

Nutrition is one of them. This is one of our most important aspects to maintaining health, and yet many of us put very little time into learning how to cook or to plan our meals. We (myself included in this!) allow the day to get away from us and before we know it, we never ate lunch and are positively ravenous for whatever food we can scrounge up. Usually, what sounds the best are carbohydrates. Not just any carbohydrates, the sugary the better! Why is that? Well, its because when we are in a state of hypoglycemia, our body is BEGGING for fuel. Glucose is the fastest way to get that fuel and our brain absolutely positively relies on glucose for it to work properly.

• Brain fog during the day? You are probably hypoglycemic.

• Grumpy? You are probably hypoglycemic.

• Cravings? You are probably hypoglycemic.

• Difficulty concentrating? Do I really have to say it?! Yes! Hypoglycemia.

Without regular and consistent fueling, our body starts talking to us by way of symptoms. Not to brag, but people are willing to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure out the root cause to their symptoms. More often than not, after a bit of discussion, I can surmise that they are not eating enough and going too long without eating (or hydrating). We gotta get that in order because we start doing the fancy functional medicine stuff.

So, now that you understand your TDEE and food content, you can think about how to apply this information for your specific lifestyle. This varies widely person to person. Some of us have kids, pets, and other family members to keep in mind when it comes to meals. Some of us have jobs that make it challenging to find time to eat. There are so many scenarios, that I there is no one size fits all answer. However, what I can do if give you some basic tips and guidelines to see how you are able to apply them in your every day life.

Basic Guidelines

Below are my basic guidelines that I feel anyone can apply in their life and benefit from.

• Have 2-3 breakfast, lunch, and snack options planned out for your week when you are the busiest. The weekend may be more flexible, maybe you have a late breakfast and don’t really need lunch. That is okay! Being consistent is key.

• Eat within 1 hour of waking and try not to go more than 4 hours in between meals or snacks. This will significantly reduce the fatigue that hits people in the mid afternoon and the cravings that hit in evenings. This may look like:

  • Wake up: 7am

  • Breakfast: 8am

  • Lunch: 12pm

  • Mid-afternoon Snack: 3pm

  • Dinner: 6pm

  • Optional pre-bed snack if needed: 8:30pm

  • Bedtime: 10pm

• Take one night per week and map out your dinners. My husband and I like to do this on Sundays when we are home and can take some time to think about what proteins we have in our deep freezer, what produce is in season, as well as what ingredients we have on hand or what needs to be used up. A typical plan for dinner each week includes delegating who is going to pick up what, who is going to make what, and we remind each other to get things out of the freezer for the next day! Here is what our dinner outline looks like:

  • Monday: This is Eric’s off day, so he will plan a meal for us to have. Usually some type of stew in the winter, tacos or nachos, curry, etc. Something he can make a lot of because…

  • Tuesday: This day is for leftovers from Mondays! Eric and I get out of work early this day and we love to spend our afternoons doing whatever we want. We have leftovers from Monday that we can warm up quickly for dinner and also not have a lot of dishes to clean up so that we can get in bed early for our long day on Wednesday. We make sure to prep anything that is needed for Wednesday.

  • Wednesday: Crockpot meal. Eric is an early riser, so he will dump all the ingredients in the crockpot so that we have dinner waiting for us when we get home. We are at the office from 9-6, so this is key to have dinner ready to go! Our Wednesday dog sitter will check in to make sure we actually turned on the Crockpot! Since this is our long day, we also will do this as a take out night for something special!

  • Thursday: This is my day that I work from home. I will plan a pretty simple dinner of a protein, veg, and starch. For example, we had chicken thighs baked in the oven, poblano peppers toasted over the open flame of our stove top, and rice.

  • Friday: Pasta Night! Eric and I both do long rides or runs on Saturday morning. We go to bed so happy on these nights! We love a good pasta dish with a sauce PACKED with veggies.

  • Saturday: Family Dinner Night. We usually have dinner with Eric’s family or my family on Saturdays. We do this potluck style and everyone brings a dish. In the summertime, you can find up at the farmer’s market picking up most of our produce and proteins for the week ahead!

  • Sunday: Eric loves to grill and Sundays are his day to really take his time and make a fantastic dinner! I will usually handle the vegetable side whether it is a salad or some other cooked vegetable.

• Avoid being rigid. Sometimes we become so dogmatic when it comes to our nutrition and end up eating the same thing. Or, we get off track and then allow ourselves to fall back into the habit of not eating regularly or going out to eat frequently. Treating each day or week as a new opportunity to prepare on a fresh start is a great outlook to keep in mind.

Remember, meal planning is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the process, and your body will thank you.