Want a weight loss superpower?

When I work with clients, I share a simple step to start losing weight: planning our meals ahead of time. 

It’s even the first step in my free guide 5 Super Easy Steps to Lose Weight...and Keep It Off. If you haven’t downloaded that yet, grab it here.

Here’s how it works: 

1. Look ahead at your schedule for the next day, and plan meals that taste good, are easy to prepare (or buy), and give you the energy you need for the day. 
   
   
2. Write down the meals and snacks you’ll eat in a small notebook -- or the notes app on your phone works, too. The method doesn’t matter, the action of planning does.
   
   
3. Eat what’s on your plan. 
   
   
4. Notice when your brain objects to the plan...and consider it your job to notice when and why you object. 

Here’s why it works: 

1. Planning our meals means we decide ahead of time what we’ll eat. We consider our meetings for work, our kids’ sports practices in the evenings, social plans, and so forth...and plan our meals the night before or in the morning before our day starts while our brain is calm. We avoid making decisions about what to eat while we’re hungry or stressed or on the fly (aka while we’re in the drive thru line.) Planning while we’re calm typically means we make better decisions.
   
   
2. When we’ve planned what to eat, we save time. Anyone else spend 20 minutes staring at the open fridge or pantry trying to figure out what you feel like eating or what to make for dinner? 
   
   
3. If you’re a seasoned dieter, like me, you’ve tried lots of programs. That also means you’ve quit lots of programs. We’re better at quitting than we are at keeping our word to ourselves. Planning ahead of time gives us a chance to build our commitment muscle. 
   
4. When we plan ahead for what’s scheduled, what’s easy, and what fuels us, it’s easier to notice when we’re reaching for food at other times and for other reasons. And when that happens -- we get to notice and to work on WHY we’re overeating. 

And that’s the reason that planning is a superpower...planning allows us to notice our patterns -- how we think about food, when we reach for food because we’re bored, and when we eat because, surely, it will solve the problem we’re working on.

New flash: the only problem food solves is hunger. 

Weight loss isn’t about how well we follow some plan laid out for us by someone else. Weight loss is the result of figuring out why we’re overeating and addressing those reasons. 

Trust me, when you start to figure out the simple reasons you’re overeating, you’ll feel like you’ve got a superpower, too.

Wanna try this out? Check out the Daily Food Plan in my free guide 5 Super Easy Steps to Lose Weight...and Keep It Off that you can fill out and get started.