Emotional and binge eating is a train wreck waiting to happen. It’s certainly been a crazy few weeks and saying that things have not been going your way is an understatement. You go for the easy option, the live-your-mood option, the convenient catastrophe. You may have started the day out with your willpower at level 100 and you were all set to climb the elementary school food pyramid, but somewhere mid-day, your energies tanked, your patience grew short, and then your cravings soared.
How do you prevent a crisis like that? You prevent it the way you prevent all crises: a crisis management program or as we like to call it, meal planning. It prevents from derailing from your objectives and gives you easy plans to fall back on. When energies run low and so does willpower, your past self has already figured out things for you. There are a few simple breadcrumbs left for you to follow your way to living the healthy, balanced lifestyle you had set out on when life was all sunshine and rainbows.
Still not convinced on why you should plan your meals to make life easy? Let us break down the possible advantages of having a go at planning your meals.
Energy
Like any of the resources that are integral to our survival, our willpower is non-renewable. We start out our days and weeks with a preset amount of willpower that gets used up rapidly in small decision-making tasks from what we should wear to what we should say. When we resort to cooking up something, we fall back on fast foods and dirty meals.
Meal planning prevents you from crashing midway because you have plan A, B and Z to resort to when you cannot figure what will be healthy and happy for you to have for dinner. Meal planning takes off one thing of your daily to-do list, freeing up time for you to treat yourself with nothing but the best on no matter how hard the day has been going.
Portion Planning
Meal planning allows you to give all the important things their rightful place in your menu. When you plan a menu beforehand, you get to choose what goes in there. Meal planning gives you the opportunity to stick to your New Year’s resolution of treating your body right and having your doctors’ recommended portion of fruits and vegetables. Even on days when you feel like putting no effort into cooking or eating whatever your first craving is, a meal plan reminds you of an alternate meal that you set out for yourself that will not only gratify you in the moment, but something your future self will also be grateful for.
Treat Yourself
Some days right now you will have to piece together any and every crumb you find to just get through the day and eat for the sake of survival. With meal plans, you get to go the extra mile and plan for yourself a meal that you know you will like. This preplanned blessing might just be the meal that turns your awful week around because you planned a meal that was nutritious and a treat to pick you up.
The Tension
When we don’t plan and prep, the more stress we have, and right now even one less thing to stress about will help the days go a bit better. This is why all romantic comedies leave you with a message of going with the flow and throwing caution to the wind. With a meal plan you get the best of both worlds, you can avoid the stress of pondering over “What for dinner?” and replace that with meals that give you zero-stress and maximum gratification and nutritional value.
Need help with meal prep or planning? Let’s hop on a virtual coffee. I would love to help take some of your stress away, at sandi@lifewithzest.com
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