If a “what’s for dinner” text immediately gives you anxiety, or if you simply want to automate as much as possible within your week – this episode is for you.

I talk allll the time about automating things within my day and within my week so that I can hit my goals with as little decision fatigue and effort as possible. I mean, it’s still effort, but the effort is done on the front-end, kind of like batch working, versus being done in the moment which oftentimes takes so much longer because you’re having to make decisions on the fly when you are already busy and stressed.

By batch working and doing as many things as possible in advance we are operating from a more calm headspace. A headspace that’s proactive versus reactive. And when we are operating from a reactive headspace we are going to make the easiest decision available to us, which isn’t always the healthiest and therefore probably not the decision that helps us feel our best or work towards our goals.

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First – Grab the Free Resource

Before you read another word, go click this link and download the free PDF framework I created to go along with this post. It helps you plan out 5 weeks of breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinners. I have both a filled-in framework and a blank version you can print off and plug your own meals into. You’re going to want it open while you read.

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I Used to Be Against Meal Plans.

If you never change your mind about some things, are you actually learning or growing?

Meal plans are something I’ve changed my mind about, especially with the 1:1 nutrition clients I attract into my coaching program. I’ve always agreed with the thought: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” And I still stand by that.

You need to learn how to create a well-balanced plate of protein, fiber, healthy fats, and slow-digesting carbs. It would benefit you to read and understand nutrition labels so that you can make educated decisions. You need to understand nutrient-dense versus calorie-dense foods. You need to track everything so that you can feel the difference in days that you hit your protein goal and days that you don’t.

All of those skills will help you more easily navigate both fat loss and maintenance seasons.

And maintenance… oh, maintenance. This is where most people fail and then gain back the weight they lost. Because a calorie deficit is very simple – eat fewer calories than you burn, lose weight. Maintenance is trickier because many think that after a few months in a deficit they have mastered “mindful eating.” Yet I’ve been personally tracking macros off and on for 7-8 years at this point and still can easily eat in a surplus if I’m not actually tracking my food that day.

Not to mention we are busier than we’ve ever been. Tell me the last time you felt like you truly had “enough” margin in your week to check everything off your list of intentions. It’s never ending, or at least it is for me.

That’s where meal planning comes in. I find that clients need more structure versus less, and a meal plan delivers exactly that.

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Why I Don’t Give Clients a Meal Plan in Week One

The women I attract into my 1:1 coaching rarely come in never having tracked macros before. She understands how to track. By the way, if you don’t know how to track macros and claim that’s what is holding you back, then you don’t actually care. Within 3 seconds of an AI search you can have a step-by-step plan for how to track macros. That’s not why people hire me. People hire me because they need more structure and accountability.

And when you think about structure and accountability, meal plans just make sense. But I don’t create one in week one. That’s where the “teach a man to fish” thing comes in. I want to see what they are already eating – what they already like. Because if I sent them a meal plan before knowing what they like, and that meal plan had chicken, rice, and broccoli but they hate broccoli and rice, I’m immediately putting handcuffs on them. Even though she knows how to track macros she immediately doesn’t want to disappoint, so she chokes down the chicken, rice, and broccoli. That’s not only unhelpful – it’s actually taking them a step back!

Instead, I let them track for a few weeks. If I find that they are having a hard time hitting macros, feeling like they need to reinvent the wheel every day, have no structure with meals, or are just busy and want another level of structure – this is where a meal plan becomes so incredibly helpful.

I look at their food logs, find repeat foods they love, find the days where they came closest to hitting their macros, and then create a breakfast, lunch, and snack plan for them to follow. Dinner can be variable. My advice – repeat those meals until you’re sick of them. Maybe change a veggie, sauce, or carb source to make essentially the same meal feel different.

Structure promotes structure. If you feel like you are flailing, try creating yourself a meal plan.

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The Foods You Love Might Be Breaking Your Macros Without You Knowing

I want to give you a real example of what I mean when I say discover the foods you loved but that were absolutely breaking your macro budget.

Let’s say you loveeee a big bowl of oatmeal every morning and it has milk, nut butter, berries, granola. You’ve been eating it for months and haven’t been tracking it. When you go to actually log it you realize you’ve been consuming 200 calories in peanut butter, 150 calories in granola, and next to no protein. You found something you love but it’s most likely breaking your macro budget.

You don’t have to get rid of it! You keep the bowl and change it up slightly. Maybe you cut your milk in half and sub the rest with water. Maybe you warm up the nut butter in the microwave so you can drizzle it over the top and use a quarter of the amount you originally were. Maybe you do the same with the granola. Maybe you increase the berries for more fiber. Maybe you add a scoop of protein powder or a side of eggs and egg whites for more protein.

This is how you find what breaks your macros and make it more macro-friendly, without giving up the foods you actually love.

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On Tracking, Maintenance, and Earning Your Flexibility

The majority of people who track macros have the goal of tracking for a season, hitting their goal, and then immediately flipping into flexible dieting, intuitive eating, mindful eating (whatever you call it).

But you have to spend time tracking at maintenance too, or you won’t even know what that feels like. And I don’t just mean track your food – I mean continue tracking markers like your scale weight and how your clothes fit, because that’s the only way to know if you are truly maintaining versus slowly adding the weight back on because you are in an unintentional surplus. That’s how people end up back where they started and think their body “just gained the weight back.” Maintenance isn’t a free for all, but a lot of people treat it like one.

Then once you have tracked at maintenance for a while and have successfully maintained your results, that is when you start integrating an untracked meal every now and then. Both to practice intuitive eating but also to give your brain a break from tracking.

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Building the Meal Plan: Start Here

Before you jump into the steps, open your favorite AI platform and give it this prompt:

“I want to hit X calories, X protein, X amount of fiber. I like XYZ foods. Please give me a list of breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner options based on these preferences.”

This gives you a starting point so you aren’t staring at a blank page or wasting time scrolling Pinterest and Instagram looking for recipes. If you already have a running list of meals you love and make regularly, skip this step and go straight to planning.

And as you go through these steps, keep this in mind – we are planning meals we actually like. Not meals you view as “healthy” but dread eating. Yes, in seasons of a deficit you will have to say no to some things. But that is the case in maintenance as well. You will not walk away from every meal at maintenance calories feeling stuffed. There is a difference between satisfied and stuffed, and the sooner you get comfortable with that, the easier this whole thing becomes.

The more structure you have to your meals, the more repeatable your process can be. The more automated you can make your goals, the easier they are to maintain.

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The Steps: Building Out 5 Weeks of a Meal Plan

Step 1: Ai Prompt

Step 2: Decide on 3 breakfast options

Step 3: Decide on 3 lunch options

Step 4: Decide on 2 snack options

Step 5: Decide on 6 dinner options – these are meals for the entire family

Step 6: Put together a list of 3 freezer-friendly meal options that create an entire meal

Step 7: Decide on 3 family breakfast options to alternate on the weekends

Once you have this list of meals decided, the PDF framework I created makes the rest incredibly easy to follow. Everything is laid out for you -all you have to do is plug in your meals.

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The Bottom Line

I know we are headed into summer, a season where we all want more margin to spend with our friends and family. Structure like this puts meals on autopilot – one less thing to think about so you can get some time back.

Download the free PDF framework, print it off, plug in your meals, and let’s get your week running on autopilot.