Meal Plan
Can you just give me a meal plan?
The short answer is “no.”
The more complex answer is: I’m happy to help you come up with a plan, but I don’t want to give you a pre-made tool that you might receive as the “perfect plan”, try it, feel (at first) seen and supported, move into confusion, and end up frustrated. The ultimate fear I have of handing you a pre-made meal plan is that you will feel like a “failure” if you can’t follow through with it.
I can’t add to the narrative that you are “doing it wrong.” Because, the truth is: You haven’t been doing it wrong, you’ve been given the wrong tools.
This week, one of the dietetic students I have the honor of working with posed a very relevant question:
“I have a few questions for you about designing and building meal plans for people that are out of tune with their hunger cues. How exactly would you go about delivering and preparing meal plans if we don't ask for weight and height?”
I take her question seriously. From my experience, the training to become a dietitian involves a lot of mathematical equations for determining estimated calorie needs, estimated macronutrient needs (protein/carbohydrate/fat), and estimated fluid needs; all of which are based on a person’s height, weight (or, if their BMI is >30, the “ideal body weight”). I was trained to view a client as a height, weight, activity level, and disease state. And, based on this “objective date”, I would be able to generate a meal plan and fit it nicely onto the “MyPlate” tool (a graphic of a plate divided into food groups representing a “healthy, balanced” meal).
Being able to generate an evidence-based estimation of energy and macronutrients needs is a helpful skill to master if you are working in an ICU and are tasked with recommending a tube feeding prescription.
However, I find these math equations, viewing a person as an object, and their food options as a thing to be broken down into a perfectly divided plate as more of a barrier than a help.
When creating an eating plan, here are some steps to get your from “not having a clue” to “knowing a clearer way forward”:
1. Find out what a typical day of eating looks like and go from there.
2. Come up with a time range for several meals and snacks throughout the day (fitted to your awake schedule). Figure out regular intervals (start with eating every 3-4 hours if you need a jumping off point).
3. Try to get "the whole gang" to show up on the plate (Carb/Pro/Fat/Fiber). Reach out if you need help learning about what those are and in which food you can find them.
4. Add on to what you are currently eating. Consider what you can afford, your cooking/food prep skills, the time you have to devote to the planning/making/eating, your culture, the season, holidays, your ethics.
After several meals, days or weeks of this, re-evaluate.
5. Find out where your stuck points are, bringing awareness to barriers that thwart your best intentions.
6. Some days you will perceive that you have eaten "too much" or "too little"; decode this with the help of a safe-other (me?)
How did you know it was too much/too little?
How can we change the label of “I failed” to “this is a learning opportunity to know more about my relationship with food.”
Still hung up on needing a “number” to guide you? I hear you!! It’s hard to shift your energy away from depending on a cold-hard number to measure your success/failure. This drive is braided into us from a very early age.
7. Notice the discomfort that comes from walking away from a number-driven way of eating. Take a really curious approach - there are so many factors that go into the energy our body needs on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. It's variable by a range of hundreds of calories. I’ll be honest. It can take years of re-learning, practice, and trial/error.
Exceptions: Sometimes, we need numbers - if you are newly diagnosed with diabetes or kidney disease, knowing about grams of carbohydrate and protein can help you be strategic in your meal planning to support your chronic condition.
I do feel called to tell a truth as I know it based on my 20+ years of practice and experience as a dietitian: No adult should ever be asked to aim for a daily calorie level that starts with a "1". Due to fatphobia, racism and healthism, the recommended nutrient amounts are often underestimated AND over-valued. This is a dangerous combination.
Often, people come to me in a restriction mindset. They may aim for a total calorie intake that is super low like 1400-1600 cal/d, either in the pursuit of weight loss or as part of their efforts to manage a chronic condition. We are told: weight loss = health.
Weight loss science has shown over and over again that energy (aka calorie) restriction will inevitably end up a style of eating that feels like “what the heck just happened here?!” (aka binge, unconscious eating, mindless eating, eating out of alignment with my values/intentions, “cheating”, and/or “failing” at the diet).
If this behavior (that may be labeled as “failing at your weight loss diet”) has happened or is happening to you, I have one thing to say.
It’s why you are here today, reading these words.
If you have “failed” at energy-restricted dieting (aka calories in < calories out BS), you are not the exception, you are the rule. You are not an anomaly, you are the normal.
Your body is programmed to survive and heal. The human body does not take well to semi-starvation. “Failing” at a diet is your body’s way of staying alive by way of brilliant survival instincts taking over.
Good job, body. Good job, brain.
Your body does not take into consideration the current {extremely high and unattainable} standards of beauty, ability, or even health.
Listen. I’m here for peaceful, respectful relationships with food and body and behaviors that support true wellbeing.
We can’t be in a good relationship with food and our bodies if we are battling against them.
Weight loss is not a behavior. What happens to your body (weight loss, weight gain, no weight change, aging, developing a chronic disease, living with a chronic disease) is not a behavior. Changing the way you eat, changing your sleep habits, etc. are behaviors.
If you are interested in receiving a customized meal plan from me, reach out. I’d love to walk you through the above steps. In the meantime, sign up for my newsletter to receive a weekly resource I call Seven Days of Eating. It may not be exactly what you need, but I promised it will not ask you to view your eating experience and body as a math assignment.