How to Create a Sustainable Meal Plan To Achieve Your Goals

Last Modified:

February 10, 2023

How to Create a Sustainable Meal Plan To Achieve Your Goals

Last Modified:

February 10, 2023

Creating a sustainable meal plan is an important step towards achieving your health and fitness goals and also is much more simple that what people is used to believe. A meal plan can help you make healthier food choices, stay on track with your nutrition goals, and save time and money.

The word diet is almost all the time misunderstand. People normally think that the word diet means some kind of restrictive eating plan and normally applies to people with an eating disorder, but they are wrong. The word diet only means what you eat in a day, it doesn’t matter if it is a burger a pizza or a salad, it is still your diet.

When aiming for a specific goal, the food can be a great ally in your quest. It can boost your results and also make you feel better in other areas that you didn’t thought about. It is very common for someone who is trying to lose weight based on a meal plan to receive benefits like more energy, better sleep, and even more muscle without even focusing on those areas of the meal plan.

Here is how to create a sustainable meal plan for your health and fitness goals.

Before you create your meal plan, it’s important to determine your health and fitness goals.

Are you trying to lose weight, build muscle, improve your athletic performance, or simply eat healthier? Knowing your goals will help you tailor your meal plan to meet your specific needs.

The reality is that a lot of nutritionist will claim that they can use the same style of diet for different results, as an example I know a doctor that claims that you can use a Keto diet to lose weight and also to build muscle just changing some quantities and foods, but the reality is that yes, you can achieve different results with the same style of diet, but that’s not the efficient way to do it.

You can even mix styles depending on what you are trying to achieve and your time available, but there is a lot of styles depending on your goals. To have a better picture just focus in the next easy steps.

When creating your meal plan, consider your personal preferences and constraints. Do you have any food allergies or sensitivities? Do you prefer vegetarian or vegan meals? Do you have a busy schedule that requires easy-to-prepare meals? By taking your personal preferences and constraints into account, you can create a meal plan that is both sustainable and enjoyable.

This is the core of any targeted diet. Actually is our belief in Simple Ideas that this is the most important aspect of the Diet.

You ask Why?

If you have ever try a new diet before, you know how easy is to cheat on it, get desperate, change it along the way or just leave it. So what is the secret to maintain a diet for the necessary time needed… You have to like what you are eating.

Trust us, in terms of food and quantity, there is an option for everyone so you can be picky.

To make your meal plan sustainable, it’s important to plan your meals and snacks in advance. This can help you save time, money, and avoid making unhealthy food choices.

You might consider planning your meals for the week on the weekends, or setting aside time each day to plan your meals and snacks for the next day.

Normally we recommend that the day before starting the diet, regardless of what day it is, you make a menu style cheat sheet so you can have a lot of ideas even before starting it. You don’t need to be specific, actually the more options you have the more alternatives to mix things up.

Once you have planned your meals and snacks, make a grocery list of the ingredients you will need. This will help you stay organized and avoid making unnecessary purchases.

The idea here is to make a grocery list that can apply to different recipes, in that way you can have like an standard list for all of your weeks and only buy something extra when you want to prepared or eat something special outside your cheat sheet.

You can subscribe to services like Amazon Fresh and receive your grocery list each week without being concern about it.

To make your meal plan more sustainable, consider preparing meals in advance. This might involve batch cooking on the weekends, or prepping ingredients for meals throughout the week.

From cutting vegetables only one day of the week to preparing the entire week food in one day, there are a lot of ways to make this step.

Being successful in this step can guarantee that you will be successful following your meal plan. Here I leave you a video from the chef Joshua Weissman that can give you an idea what or how you can prepare in very short time a lot of food.

Of course, if you are the kind of persons that doesn’t have a lot of time to prepare the meals or just don’t want to do it, you can always use services like Eat Clean, Diet To Go or any other that you can find out there (just look for daily prepared food at your door and compare). There are really affordable, some have even a subscription plan and if your know what would you like to eat, it is the best alternative out there.

While consistency is important for a sustainable meal plan, it’s also important to mix things up to avoid boredom. Don’t be afraid to try new recipes and ingredients to keep your meals interesting and enjoyable.

We always recommend to follow your plan first for 10 to 14 days before mixing things up. The reason for this is simple, with 2 weeks on a new diet you will see changes in your weight, muscle and in some cases even your clothes. After that you will have the motivation but more important a real sense of the quantities and type of food you would like to mix and it will be easier.

Creating a sustainable meal plan is an important step towards achieving your health and fitness goals. I know it may sound complicated but with a good cheat sheet, you can create a meal plan that is both sustainable and enjoyable.

The best Plans depends on your goals and here are some examples:

Build muscle: Check The Bodybuilder’s Diet, from the magazine Men’s Health.
Lose weight: Check different approaches to the keto diet or the Noom program.
Improve your athletic performance: Focus on energy. Follow the UWHealth guide or the BetterHealth Channel guide.
Eat healthy and maintain weight: Follow the CDC Plan for Healthy Eating for a Healthy Weight. Here you can also subscribe to a personalized program if you have trouble following a plan by yourself.

Remember, everything is achievable in your life if you put your head to it, so just take some time to follow this steps. You wont regret it and also remember, you only need to do this once.