Have you ever used a GPS system to get some place? You diligently follow the prompts – the automated voice directing your every turn. Get off course? No problem. You keep going down the wrong road until you’re rescued by “recalculating!” and then obediently turn and merge only as you’re told. You arrive at your destination and have little idea how you got there or how to get back.
Meal plans can be like that navigation system – you put your head down and follow someone else’s directions. Unfortunately, with meal plans, you don’t have the benefit of a voice shouting “recalculating!” to save you if you get off course. While meal plans can be a good starting point, be aware that they can just as easily become counter-productive and prevent you from developing the awareness of your body, your hormones and your needs that is ESSENTIAL if you want to lose weight and have long term success.
Give someone a meal plan and they will go out, spend $100 or more on groceries and various spices and appliances they didn’t have before. They’ll double the amount of time they spend cooking and prepping meals. They’ll eat foods they don’t love because “its on the meal plan”. They’ll wonder “Is this food ok? It’s not on my meal plan”. Going out to eat or to a social gathering can become a nightmare – what choice do you make when you can’t eat what’s on the plan?
Trust me, I get it. You want a plan. I LOVE plans. I’m a planner. I want to know what I’m eating and how much. When I’m exercising and for how long. But I’ve learned that the only plan that works for me is the plan that’s based on me. A meal plan gives you a route to follow but it doesn’t take into account your preferences, your hormone balance, your lifestyle, your flexibility, YOUR UNIQUENESS.
To be successful in achieving fat loss that you effortlessly maintain for life, you need to pay attention. YOU need to chart the course. As you get further and further into your journey, your plan needs to become increasingly customized to what works for you. You want to follow a course by compass, not by map. Your food choices should take into consideration things like:
What foods satisfy your cravings?
What foods send you into a downward bingeing spiral?
What foods keep you fullest, longest?
What foods give you the most energy?
What foods do you look forward to eating?
What are the most manageable foods to prep?
What are the most convenient and satisfying snacks?
If we polled 100 people who have lost 50 lbs or more, I bet they’d all have different answers to those questions and guess what – none of them are wrong!
Meal plans encourage panic. They encourage dependence and they stifle your ability to identify what works best for you.
Now, with that said – everyone needs to start somewhere. I’m an open book about what I eat now and what I ate when I first started losing weight. It’s OK to start where someone else found success but it most likely won’t work for you forever. Pay attention to your hunger, energy and cravings. Pay attention to your mood, your sleep and your stress levels. All of these things are significantly impacted by your food choices and are different for everyone!
Here are a few things I learned about my own food preferences and unique fat loss factors that I really could NOT have learned if I had been following someone else’s meal plan.
I am very sensitive to carbohydrates. Not only do they NOT give me energy, they do not fill me up and they make me retain a significant amount of water. They also increase my cravings for sweets. I have not completely eliminated them from my diet but when I eat them, I’ve found that’s its best to have them with dinner and avoid them throughout the earlier part of the day.
Volume is my friend. I eat a lot of green, fibrous veggies like brussels sprouts and cabbage. It’s not uncommon for me to have as much as 2-3 cups at each meal. It takes me longer to get through my meal and fills me up. This goes a long way towards managing my hunger, cravings and mood.
While protein fills some people up, it doesn’t have that effect on me. I have to be conscious of my protein portions. If I want to eat more, I get seconds on my non-starchy veggies, not protein.
Fat is my friend – within reason. I can subsist largely on green veggies and clean protein for weeks at a time but, when I skimp on the fat for a week or more, I’m setting myself up for compensatory binges later. I try to include healthy fats at least 2 of my 3 meals but I limit my intake of nuts and nut butters because I can easily lose portion control with those.
Bars are a trigger for me. It’s hard to have just one. I’m better off avoiding protein bars completely and if I do have one I won’t buy a box, I’ll just buy one.
Too much exercise is a recipe for disaster. I workout most days but when I start doing too much cardio I find that my cravings and hunger go through the room and my energy plummets. Terrible combination.
You might find some of these things to be true for you. Then again, maybe none of them apply to you. We are all different and in order to find long term success and maintain the physique we want for life, we have to identify and practice our own unique fat loss principles.
Meal plans are a quick fix. Sure, follow a plan and you might lose a few pounds. But meal plans will NOT set you up for a lifetime of success. They will NOT help you create the body you want and help you maintain it forever.
The typical American diet has changed. Drastically. In fact, in wellness circles it’s referred to as “SAD” – the Standard American Diet. Quite fitting, really, when you consider the way we have replaced nutritious, whole foods with processed, chemical-laden convenience foods. If you compared the “Standard American Diet” 150 years ago to that of today it would be like comparing apples to orangutans. Think back on what you ate over the last 24 hours: what percentage of your food came with a label (in a box, bag, can, package, etc)? As our reliance on convenience foods has increased, our overall wellness has plummeted. As a society, we no longer think of food as fuel for our bodies and the cornerstone of our health – but it is!
The Primal philosophy is based on embracing a lifestyle that largely mimics the way our Paleolithic ancestors ate, moved and lived. From a nutrition standpoint, it focuses on the types of foods that were available at that time – not man made frankenfoods but whole foods like vegetables, fruits, meat, nuts and seeds.
When I tell people that I follow a Primal way of eating, their first question after I briefly explain it is “So what can you eat?” as if to imply that my options are seriously limited. They’re not! Here’s a quick glance at what types of foods fall into the “Primal” category and which do not. It’s important to note that I avoid or limit some foods which are in fact Primal but don’t help me reach my fat loss goals. This is meant to be a quick overview, not an exhaustive list.
Primal Green Light Foods
Meat (ideally grass fed/free range)
Eggs (ideally highest quality available)
Vegetables (I limit my selection for optimal fat loss)
Fruits (I tend to avoid for optimal fat loss)
Nuts (this does not include peanuts. Peanuts are legumes)
Seeds
Fats and Oils (items like EVOO, coconut oil, avocado, ghee)
Coffee and Tea
Primal Yellow Light Foods – Enjoy on Occasion
Dairy (Ideally full fat, raw, highest quality available)
Some alcohol (primarily red wine)
Primal Red Light Foods – Avoid
Grains and oats
Beans and legumes
Processed foods
So what does a day in the life of a Primal eater look like? Pretty delicious, if you ask me! I’ll admit that it took a while to find my groove but I certainly have and I look forward to every meal and don’t spend hours in the kitchen!
Breakfast: Coffee with almond milk and a veggie/turkey frittata
Lunch: Salad from Chipotle (hold the rice and beans) with chicken, pico and guacamole
Snack: Dry roasted almonds
Dinner: Homemade sweet potato chip and ground bison nachos
Dessert: Mocha Gelatin Snacks
Ultimately, following Primal principles is about improving my health but one of my primary goals is fat loss. I make my food choices based on a couple of key factors:
I eat foods I love. I’ve spent years choking down crap I hate in an attempt to lose or maintain weight. No more. I enjoy every meal. If I don’t like it, I don’t eat it. Food is a wonderful source of pleasure and to adopt a new lifestyle, you have to enjoy what you eat. Take the time to try new things and find foods you love that also help you reach your goals.
I eat foods that make me feel satisfied. I’ll talk a lot about managing hunger, energy and cravings. This is a practice I learned from Metabolic Effect and it has been one of the most important parts of my fat loss journey. Hunger, energy and cravings are powerful tools – they are a few easily observable ways that your body lets you know whether or not your hormones are in balance. Managing hunger, energy and cravings will not only keep you happy, it helps keep you in fat-burning mode. I continuously tweak my diet to ensure that I never feel deprived and always feel satisfied.
I eat foods that don’t require hours in the kitchen. Sure, there are tons of Paleo and Primal recipes that look amazing but I know myself and I can’t follow a plan that requires lots of prep time. I keep my meals simple but satisfying.
For people who have grown up on the Standard American Diet I’m sure Primal can look pretty daunting but no one said you have to dive right in. Pick one meal at a time or eliminate one processed food item at a time. There is no right or wrong way to get started, only the way that works best for you!
My weight has always been a battle. I come from a long line of tall, thin women and I’ve always been an athlete but I have always struggled with my weight. I have lost (and gained) hundreds pounds while frantically attempting just about every diet craze out there.
I remember being on Weight Watchers in high school and eating all 30 of my points in fat-free microwave popcorn and sugar-free jello. Just so ya know, you can eat a freakin truckload of those things and stay under 30 points.
In college I went nearly 2 months eating nothing but protein shakes and chicken broth.
I’ve gone months eating nothing but apples and tilapia and others counting every.single.calorie while crafting my diet around fat-free ice cream and sugar-free cookies.
Then there was the purging. And the days I’d not allow myself to eat anything at all. The weeks and months of barely eating and spending hours a day in the gym. The doctor appointments I’d cancel because I didn’t want to have to get on the scale. The times I seriously abused both over the counter and prescription fat burners, diuretics and laxatives. Seriously.
I jumped from one “diet” to the next – reading about the latest food trend or guaranteed way to drop 10 lbs in two weeks. If someone said it was possible, no matter how weird, I tried it. When someone wrote that grapefruits burned fat, I’d go out and buy a dozen. When someone suggested that carbohydrates were the enemy, I’d eliminate them. I’ve followed low carb, high carb, low fat, no fat, high fat, high protein, low protein, low calorie, calorie cycling, carb counting, blah blah blah.
I was exhausted. I obsessed over food every day. If I was “on” a diet I wouldn’t go out with friends or my husband because I didn’t trust the food choices (not too many places you can ask for an extra large bowl of fat free popcorn and 6 cups of sugar-free jello, ya know?). If I wasn’t “on”….oh man. Bad times. I’d pick up Mexican food on the way home from work and eat it in front of the tv. I’d make a special stop at the grocery store and buy something to address each type of craving: salty, sweet, creamy, crunchy, chewy. Train wreck of epic proportion. No lie.
I spent most of my time and energy – literally years of my life – trying to find that one diet that would rip all the extra weight off me and keep it off forever. I was so obsessed with this pursuit that I walked away from college scholarship and transferred schools to study nutrition. After graduating with a BS in Human Nutrition, I got a job as a nutrition educator. I simultaneously started pursuing my master’s degree in nutrition. A few years later I got a job in product development working with dietary supplements and weight loss products….I devoted my entire life to finding the Holy Grail of weight loss….the product, the food, the food combinations, oh my word it was exhausting. And I was fat.
Even though my head was stuffed full of information from my degrees plus the bazillion books I read and the trillion blogs and news outlets I followed, I felt like I had no answers, no solutions and no way out.
I was miserable. I was embarrassed of my body. I didn’t feel comfortable going out with friends. I didn’t want anyone to see me – in any way, at any time. I hid from the camera. I’d avoid traveling home to visit my family because I was ashamed of my size. I was depressed. I isolated myself. I was struggling with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and infertility. I really felt completely hopeless.
One day my life changed. I get a lot of questions about how I was able to turn it all around. People ask what precipitating event made me able to transform my life. The truth is: it was an honest conversation with myself while I was driving home from work one day.
I started to think about my recent achievements. Up until this point, I had identified certain goals which I felt would make me happy and I tackled them with a vengeance. My husband and I paid off over $130,000 in student loan and other debts in two years. It took tremendous discipline and sacrifice, but we did it.
I had worked my tail off at work and received a number of promotions. Overall, I was regarded as a very hard worker – a smart woman who gets things done. I had the respect of my peers and of the Executive Management team and I was constantly taking on new responsibilities.
I had accomplished big goals that I felt would make me happy but I was still miserable. That day on the drive home I questioned what would make me happy. I was in such a dark depression that it was difficult to identify anything that might turn things around, but I did know that the thing making me unhappiest was my weight.
As I often do, I had a conversation with myself, aloud, in my car. It went something like this: “Elizabeth, you’ve totally let your health go. You aren’t ok with it. It stresses you out all day, everyday. You’ve harnessed tremendous discipline, will power and persistence in these other major areas of life but clearly they don’t matter to you as much as your health does. You have the knowledge. You have the ability. The only reason you haven’t conquered this battle yet is because YOU haven’t DONE IT yet. You’re the only one in your way.“
It seems so obvious, but in that moment I realized that I couldn’t blame anyone other than myself for my current state. It wasn’t that I lacked discipline or motivation – I clearly had demonstrated that in other areas. It wasn’t that I lacked an understanding of how to change – I knew what it would take. If it mattered to me more than anything then I needed to act accordingly. Starting that minute, getting healthy became my top priority.
I started walking. I bought a treadmill and put it in my home office. If I was on email for work at night, I’d do it from my phone while walking. If I was watching TV, I’d do it on the treadmill. I walked before work and I walked after work. I just walked as much as I could.
I started focusing on clean proteins: fish, chicken, eggs, salmon. I made sure protein was the center of every meal. If I wanted a treat, I’d write it on a list in my phone and promise myself I could have it at that weekend’s cheat meal. Yup, I had one cheat meal every week. Most of the time, by the time it rolled around I didn’t want 90% of the items I had written on the list throughout the week, but it was important to acknowledge the cravings as they arose.
I followed that plan for 3-4 months and lost 2-3 pounds each week but then found that I wasn’t bouncing back after those cheat meals. Not only that but they made me feel like crap. I wasn’t craving that food anymore and was eating it because it was part of my plan. I decided it was time to commit to lifelong health, not short term weight loss. I wanted to create a body that was a lean, strong, fat-burning machine. The solution was obvious – only whole foods go into this body. This is my life, this is my health and my goals are far more important to me than ColdStone Creamery (though that stuff is damn good, huh?).
I started doing some reading about a whole foods based lifestyle – not so much to learn but to find good recipes. It was the right time in my life – I had made the commitment, I was tired of complicated solutions and I wanted to change my body and my life…..it was the perfect time for me to find Primal.
Never heard of Primal? Paleo? Paleo is a little more mainstream and refers to a lifestyle that is aligned with the way our ancestors ate, moved and lived in the Paleolithic Era before the advent of processed foods. As Diane SanFillipo puts it in her great book (highly recommend) “Practical Paleo” – the dietary components of the lifestyle are simply about eating whole foods that fuel your body and avoiding processed foods. Pretty straight forward, huh? Food as nature intended it. It’s hard to avoid becoming a lean, fat-burning machine with the Primal principles.
I fell in love with the philosophy as I adopted it. My energy went through the roof. My skin cleared up. My mood and confidence improved. I was burning fat, building muscle and finally conquering the dietary demons of my past.
I was eating foods I love. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t feel deprived. I was able to eat out and enjoy food with friends. I was exercising more intensely but for less time and seeing fantastic results. I managed to lose 130 lbs! I stripped all the clutter away. All the years of diet news, research, fads and get to the simple truth of a way of living that made me feel good, look great and get healthier than I’ve ever been.
