A very common habit amongst the people who I see consistently achieving the best results is effective planning.
Taking just 5 minutes to plan a day ahead, can go a really long way to ensuring your actions align with your goals and you get results.
A lot of my clients do this within a nutrition tracking app by following our step-by-step guide…
STEP 1: On your homepage, go forward a day to take a look at your calorie and macronutrient goals for TOMORROW.
STEP 2: Now, input ALL the food and drinks you plan to have tomorrow.
As you do this, you will see the numbers in the nutrients remaining section decrease.
STEP 3: Review your all your numbers for Calories, Protein, Fat and Carbohydrates.
How close are you towards getting these numbers down to 0?
Please note, it’s not worth obsessing over a few calories or the odd gram of any of your macros.
Generally speaking, if you are within 100 calories and 10g either way of your macros of your daily goals, you will get results.
If you are a long way away from your numbers being close to 0, take some time to change your meals.
For example, if you are 150 calories and 40g of protein away from reaching yours goals, adding something like a chicken breast could fill this void.
New clients commonly report they are a distance away when they input their planned meals.
This is perfectly normal and as you get used to using the app you will gradually get closer each day.
Be patient, some things take time and the results will be worth it.
The benefit of inputing meals in advance is that you haven’t actually eaten it yet, so you still have time to make changes if needed.
If you wait until you have eaten a meal and then input into the app, it’s too late change it and you could be way out in terms of where you need to be.
Whilst planning for the day to come, you have to look forward in order to manage your time effectively.
Plus, when you use this strategy you are in a very proactive mindset and likely a less emotional state.
Choosing what to eat ‘in the moment’ can be really challenging if you’ve had a bad day for any reason.
There are a few questions to ask yourself to be prepared, such as:
- What are your family, work, social commitments?
- What times will you eat?
- Where are you scheduled to be at those times?
- Do you need to prepare food in advance to take with you?
By developing a process like this you can take ownership of the things you can control and then for the things you can’t, I’d encourage you to make the best of any unplanned situations.
You don’t need perfection to succeed, you need to be consistent.
Thanks for reading, have a great day.
Craig
Do you need confidential help with your health, fitness or nutrition? I have a range of services available, with Personal Training in my Private Gym in Manchester, also at your home or workplace in the surrounding areas. For clients further afield, I provide Online Personal Training, Nutritional Consultancy & Private Fitness Holidays.
