How To Stay On Track With Your Meal Plan

Most people have tried numerous diets and health plans. Many studies tell us that they don’t work because people resort to their old behavior. While this is true, another major component is that eating healthily has become really difficult. Not only can it be more expensive, but unhealthy options have become ubiquitous. It’s extremely easy and often cheap to stock unhealthy food or to have it delivered to your office and home. When you are too tired to cook something inline with your meal plan, it feels like torture to not succumb to the temptation to eat some unhealthy.

One of the major hurdles in sticking with the diet is how difficult it can be for some people to follow their meal plan in terms of access and availability. This is only compounded when they are tired. Further, tiredness and unhealthy food often go hand in hand, due to their rapid effect on blood sugar, forming a vicious cycle. With all that said, it’s not impossible and can be easy, you just need to be strategic! Here are some concepts and ideas to help you to navigate this difficult task.

Reduce And Remove Unhealthy Options

The best way to stay on track with your diet is to make sure that you don’t have any unhealthy options available to you. As you probably already know, when you are tired and hungry, your healthy eating motivationwill fly out the window, and refined, processed, and sweet food will be gobbled up before you can even think about it. Not only does this remove the temptation when you start daydreaming about what you are going to eat after work or your gym class, but this also means that you are more likely to grab something healthy to eat when you get into the red zone and your blood sugar calling to be raised.

Convenience Is Key

Simply removing all the things that you don’t want to eat really can work wonders. But at some point, you are eventually going to be put in the situation where one of your favorite treats is up for grabs. Or most commonly, you live with someone who is not phased about what they eat, think it’s ridiculous that you put yourself through so much pain and deprivation, and eat your favorite treats in front of you.

The key to success here is not only to have healthy options available but to make it incredibly easy to access them. If people are snacking on some chocolate cake in your home, keep some sweet fruits, like dates, for emergencies that will fill that craving. Fruits can also be very high in sugar, but they come packed with fiber (which helps your body to process the sugar and is good for your gut-health) and micronutrients. If your friends are eating take-out or have brought fast food home, make sure you know the different types of on-demand apps for food that can bring you something from a healthy restaurant and have options that are in line with your dietary requirements. For those who have specific health requirements, it’s definitely worth joining a group on social media. Have a look for a group on Facebook with fellow people who follow your diet or have the same goals as you, this way you can learn some new tricks and get some support that makes sticking to your diet not only fun but more meaningful.

The above scenarios are all made that much more difficult to get through if you are feeling too tired to cook something, so you need to be prepared logistically and mentally. The ‘convenience is key’ concept here is to make sticking to your healthy diet as easy as you possibly can. So remember, have healthy options available, have healthy treat alternatives, have ways to access healthy food for when you have nothing on hand. This way, when you are tired, it’s easy to get some healthy food into your belly without succumbing to the cravings.

When you feel inspired after trying out some delicious healthy recipes, and you are ready to attempt them on your own, invest some effort over the weekend by doing some bulk cooking. Cook one or two big meals on a Sunday and refrigerate them to be eaten during the week. Put this effort in over the weekend when you feel relaxed before the business of the week makes cooking seem that much more effortful.

This way, when you are exhausted after work and feel too tired to cook, you already have a delicious meal waiting for you that you prepped when you weren’t tired. This meal will be extra satisfying and you remember how clever you were to have the foresight to cook over the weekend. If you can do this, remove unhealthy options, and make eating healthy food convenient, then you are in a great position to stick to your meal plan at all times.