Easy Meal Planning for Busy Career Women

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Full Episode Transcript:

Easy Meal Planning for Busy Career Women

Ep. 84 – Easy Meal Planning for Busy Career Women

Today, I’m going to dive into easy meal planning for busy career women. Because whether you’re trying to lose weight or you are just trying to change your eating habits, a tool that will help you with both of these is meal planning.

And in this episode, I’ll be giving you 3 tips for easy meal planning that also help to turn it into a habit, plus I’ll enlighten you on a couple solutions for challenges that can come up.

First, I want to define what meal planning actually means, because I know a lot of people can think that it means something very in depth that takes a lot of time. And it really doesn’t have to. It can actually be very simple, quick, and easy.

If you’ve been a podcast listener, or you receive my weekly emails every Sunday morning, or you have taken one of my free courses or read some blog posts, you know that I am all about making it as easy as possible.

Why it’s important to make things as easy as possible when it comes to breaking unhealthy eating habits or creating new healthier eating habits or even just the whole weight loss process, is so you actually follow through on your intentions.

Think about it, with everything you have coming at you in life, busy work schedule, busy home schedule, other people, different emotions, you want to make following through on your intentions as easy as possible for yourself, so that you actually do it.

And that’s why I diets don’t work very well for people. They’re oftentimes not easy to stick to, and so that makes it very easy “fail.”

But the problem is not you, the problem is that the diet was not personalized to your lifestyle and was too drastic of a change.

Also, diets don’t address what coaching addresses, which is the thoughts and the feelings behind the actions. Basically why we do what we do or why we don’t do something. That is all based on thoughts and feelings.

So I’m going to help you with the action part of it in today’s episode by helping you with some easy meal planning for busy career women.

Let’s first just define what meal planning is. In its most simplest form, it’s just deciding ahead of time what you’re going to eat for a meal. And I don’t just mean breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I also mean snacks and dessert.

So if you decide on Thursday that Friday for dessert after dinner, you’re going to have a bowl of ice cream, that is considered meal planning. You are planning your dessert ahead of time, rather than deciding in the moment on Friday night that you’re going to have ice cream.

So why is meal planning important if you want to change your eating habits or lose weight?

Because when you decide ahead of time, ideally 24 hours in advance, you are using the part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex that really has your future goals and intentions in mind. Rather than using the more primitive part of your brain that decides in the moment that it wants the ice cream.

Why it’s more advantageous to use that future focused part of the brain more than the more primitive part of the brain Is that the primitive part of the brain doesn’t care about your future goals or what your intentions were.

It only cares about instant gratification. So if you had a crummy day at work, that will end up affecting what and how much you eat.

Another benefit to meal planning, is that if you did have a rough day or you are feeling fatigued at the end of the day, you don’t have to make yet another decision. You’ve already decided ahead of time what you’re going to eat.

And I know I used the dessert as an example, but oftentimes when it comes to actual meals like breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even snacks, when you plan ahead of time, and you’re using that prefrontal cortex that has your future goals in mind, you’re likely making healthier choices than you would be in the moment.

Because in the moment, your brain is going to go for those higher calorie, sweeter, saltier, more fatty foods. Until you have effectively changed your eating habits.

And that’s one of the ways that I help career women with their eating habits, is helping them with the skill of having an intention and following through on that.

You really get good at utilizing that prefrontal cortex, rather than letting that more primitive part of the brain be the one making the decisions all the time with food.

Because when that part of the brain is the one in control, that’s when unhealthy eating habits occur and continue.

Now a couple of the thoughts that can get in the way of meal planning are that it is going to take too long or that it’s just another thing to add to the list of things to do.

But these thoughts are not really true when you analyze them.

It doesn’t take very long to sit down with a little piece of paper and write down what you’re going to eat the next day, even if it’s just one meal that you’re deciding ahead of time about.

Even if you want to do a few days in advance, it doesn’t take very long to sit and write down a few dinners or a few different snacks.

When you don’t do this, and you end up eating something that you later regret, think about how much time you spend thinking about it and feeling shame or guilt or regret.

Also, when you’re tired at the end of a long day at work, the amount of energy that goes into trying to think of a meal or think about what you’re going to eat, is going to be a lot more energy than the amount of energy you would take to just decide ahead of time and plan a meal or a few out.

So, meal planning means overall less time and energy spent, and more healthy foods being eaten.

Now meal planning can also include meal prep, but that’s entirely up to you and what works with your schedule and your desires.

When I work with my clients, I really make sure to work with their lifestyle and their preferences as far as what they enjoy doing and what they don’t enjoy doing.

For my husband Paul and I, meal prep really just consists of when we are making a dinner, doubling the recipe so that we have enough leftovers for another dinner that evening.

Or sometimes, if I’m making chicken for a dish, I will just cook extra chicken to set aside so that we can use it for on top of our salads that we eat for lunch.

So again, up to you if you want to add in a little bit of meal prep and it can be as simple as what I just mentioned that Paul and I do at our house.

Alright, so here are some tips for easy meal planning for busy career women.

Tip #1 Start small and decide which meal is most important for you, most advantageous for you, and also easiest for you to plan ahead of time.

If you are a career woman who often comes home from work completely exhausted and not wanting to make another decision, planning your dinners in advance might be a really good option.

I don’t think it’s a great idea to plan all of your meals ahead of time if you’re not used to doing that just yet. I think that’s a great thing to work toward.

I suggest to make things as easy as possible for yourself. Just pick the meal or two meals that you feel would be most beneficial to you and also the ones that you feel that you would be most likely to stick to.

This is important, because we want that low hanging fruit. We want to create those easy wins.

When you create those easy wins for yourself your brain actually sees that you’re perfectly capable of setting an intention and following through on that.

You don’t want to start with the most difficult thing and then struggle with that, because then your brain is going to have evidence that you can’t follow through.

Or at least it’s going to think that you can’t follow through or be successful. And that is not the case, so we want to set you up for success and go for that low hanging fruit that you also feel would be beneficial for you.

So maybe that’s just planning what you’re going to have for snack while at work the next day.

Tip #2 dedicate a specific notebook to this.

Or it can also be a template that you created on something like Canva. I use Canva to create lots of things including templates for my clients. Canva is awesome.

I find that when you have a dedicated notebook or template, you’re more likely to stick with it. It’s like your go to and helps to create the habit of doing the action of deciding ahead of time, because it’s the same exact notebook.

So, in order for habits to occur, it helps to do them in the same time, place or circumstance. And circumstance can mean using the same notebook or template each time you meal plan.

That brings me to tip #3 and that is to meal plan at the same time and place. You can do this the night before, the morning of, a couple of days in advance.

Some people find it relaxing and do it in the evening. Some people find that they are most motivated and energized in the morning and prefer to do it then.

Why this is important, is again it helps to create that habit. Behaviors or actions are more likely to turn into a habit if they are done at the same time, place or circumstance.

So let me give you an example. You can decide that every day, after you put on your pajamas, you are going to take your notebook that you’ve dedicated to meal planning, and write down what you’re going to have for whichever meal or meals that next day. It can be as simple as that.

This is also known as habit stacking. If you’re in the habit of wearing PJ’s every night, this is a habit you already have, so you’re just stacking a new behavior on top of it that you’re hoping to create a habit of.

One of my clients really likes this and is doing so well with habit stacking. She’s using it not just for food or eating related things, but her self-care routine. So fun.

Now, if you want to plan several meals or several days in advance, you may want to set aside a little bit more time, if you feel that you need to look at some recipes first.

Thinking about this as something that’s enjoyable rather than a chore is going to help you to follow through on it.

Because you don’t need to do any of this, right? You’re doing it to help make things easier for yourself and to help you reach your eating habit and weight loss goals.

OK, so I do want to also address some challenges that can get in the way of doing the meal planning, and also following through on it. Because you might be thinking “well Kate, I can decide today what I’m going to eat tomorrow, but then when tomorrow comes, I don’t wanna eat that.”

So, one of the challenges is forgetting to actually plan your meal or meals.

What helps with this is setting that dedicated notebook or template in a visible spot to help remind you and also leave a pen or pencil with it, so that you’re not searching for a pen or pencil. It’s there all ready for you to go.

You can also set an alert on your phone, especially if you’re just getting started with this. And then after a while, you probably won’t need that alert any longer.

And if you ARE thinking “well Kate I can decide today what I’m going to eat tomorrow but then when tomorrow comes I don’t want to eat that,” here are a couple of things that can help you with this.

You can write down two different options, or even 3 and then if you don’t feel like one of them, you can do the other. So you’re giving yourself a little bit of a choice but you’re keeping it constrained.

I actually started doing this with my wardrobe after my coach told me that she did this with her wardrobe. I mainly wear neutral colors, so that it’s easy to shop and constrain that way, but also it’s easy to mix and match, because they all go well together.

So I don’t waste time each morning deciding what goes with what and what color I feel like wearing or don’t feel like wearing. It all goes with everything, and it’s all neutral colors, like black, white, cream, beige, and gray. May sound a little boring, but makes my life very easy.

The other thing that will help with when tomorrow comes around and you don’t feel like eating what you decided to eat ahead of time, is to think about it like this. If you are truly hungry, you will eat what you planned ahead of time.

That is a really good test of if you’re truly hungry or not. Or, if you’re eating for another reason, like due to an emotion or just plain old desire. Desire is also an emotion.

So this would just be a time to catch on to yourself and say well if I don’t feel like eating that, then I must not be truly hungry right now. And then just wait until you are hungry.

This is a really big part of losing weight in a sustainable way and developing healthier eating habits.

This is one of the really large skills that I help my clients with. Eating in response to hunger and not in response to emotions or other reasons such as other people or just out of habit, like mindless eating.

Alright, so give those tips a try for easy meal planning for busy career women and if you liked this episode, pass it along to a friend, give the podcast itself a five star rating, you’ll see the little stars in your podcast listening app, and make sure to add the podcast to your library, so that you get new episodes as they come out weekly.

And, check out the show notes for more free resources. Thanks for listening, take care and I’ll talk with you next week.