You may find it quite difficult to stick to a meal plan due to your love for variety or the difficulty to change old habits of eating just anything you feel like eating.
Here are some tips to help you stick to that meal plan you took so much time to prepare. I know you do not want to see your efforts go to waste, so here I am providing you with workable strategies to eat healthy.
1. Identify the why
Why did you prepare a meal plan? Is it to eat healthy? To improve your cooking abilities, to lose weight or to reduce expense on food shopping? The reason will serve as a reminder and motivate you.
2. Get creative in your meal preparations
For you to stick to your meal plan, you have to be creative in meal preparation. Prepare your meal in an attractive way that will make you stick and not cheat. These are several healthy meals recipes to inspire you. Just ask Google.
3. Include food that you love in your meal plan
For any reason, you first have to have love what you eat. Adherence to your plan can be achieved when you include food that you enjoy eating. However, if you are trying to lose weight and the food you love is unhealthy, then you have to look for the healthy options that will help you achieve your goal.
4. Try to be accountable
Try as much as possible to be accountable to someone on how you stick to your meal schedule. So you need to make it a family affair. Involve your partner and kids in the type of food you eat. In addition, try to get a partner that share the same goal of conscious eating.
5. Plan ahead for cheat days
Festivities such as birthdays, anniversaries and private dinner with friends are good examples of cheat days. So, you need to plan ahead not to be caught unawares in terms of what to eat.
6. Don’t starve yourself
Try not to starve yourself in the name of sticking to a meal plan. If you notice that you get hungry a lot lately then you have to work on your portion and look into your meal components. Improve on the plan to prevent yourself from cheating or looking malnourished.
7. Don’t remove calories from your meal
Do not forget that calories produce energy and prevent you from starving. Removing calories from your meals will make you hungrier and weak, thus tempting you to eat unhealthy foods. To avoid this misery, consider eating sufficient calories of healthy and nourishing foods.
8. Carry a healthy snack
Sometimes sticking to your healthy meal plan can be quite difficult especially once you are outside your home. Therefore, you will need something to snack on to prevent you from going for unhealthy options. You can snack on healthy high-protein snacks or fruits. This will help keep your appetite in check until you’re able to have a full meal.
9. It takes time before you totally change your habit
Researchers have found that it takes about 66 days on average to make a new behavior a habit. Therefore don’t feel terrible if it feels difficult to drop your old habit and stick to your new healthier way of eating.
10. Make sure you figure out what works for you
Figure out what works for you and include it in your food options, just make sure it is healthy and not full of junks. This will prevent you from cheating.
So you are now aware of the above tips and you don’t even have a meal plan? No worries, download one from here for absolutely free of charge.