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Preparation and Planning are the Keys to Eating Success

PREPARATION AND PLANNING ARE THE KEYS TO EATING SUCCESS

It’s Wednesday night, and you are running late from work. As a result, you pick up food on your way home. Now you realize that you have just engulfed an entire meat lovers pizza with a super-sized soda. You follow it with a box of your favorite cookies dunked in regular milk. Now let’s fast forward to Thursday. Well, you say, you may as well stop at your favorite fast-food restaurant for a double bacon, egg and cheese on a buttered roll. After all, you have already blown your whole eating plan for the week. You promise yourself that you will get back on track on Monday, but let’s be honest, shall we? Chances are that’s never going to happen.

Where did you go wrong here? You may be shocked to find out my opinion. I do not think you went wrong on Wednesday night when you over-indulged. OK. I exaggerated the food amounts slightly, so a whole pizza and a box of cookies may not be the smartest choice, but I still insist that Wednesday night was not the issue here. The issue is that your food choices were completely unplanned. There is nothing wrong with indulging in your favorite forbidden foods, as long as you plan for it.

Here’s what the same basic scenario would look like, if you planned for it. You would look at your weekly meal planner and see that for dinner that night, your choice was 2 slices of veggie pizza, a salad, and a chocolate fudge pop for dessert. You would also see that your workout planner for that day included extra cardiovascular activity to account for the extra calories that you would be consuming. Instead of buying the whole pizza, you would have purchased only two slices. You can clearly see how the rest of the meal would have gone. The next day, you would have looked at your meal planner and seen that for breakfast, you were still considering the night before. Your planned meal was egg whites and turkey on whole wheat toast. You were right back on track.

The bottom line is this: Plan, plan, plan. There are many forms that you can download for no charge for meal planning. The ones I suggest are the ones that also have a shopping list attached to them. Additionally, you can download filled in eating plans if you need more help. One of the websites I suggest to clients is: Sparkpeople.com.

Good Luck, and Happy Planning!

In Health, Wellness and Fitness,

Shereen Phillips BAS, CPT for Focus and Form Fitness