The importance of meal planning

• Introduction
• I don’t eat much but still gain fat
• Convenience foods
• Too busy to prepare
• Food labelling/ knowledge
• Prepping meals
• Calorie intake
• Food chart

Everyone knows that nutrition is key to making optimum (read ANY) progress when undertaking intense training in sport. But try finding someone that has a proper, balanced, sufficient and manageable day to day eating plan in place.
Everyone loves training, everyone loves to look on social media and implement the strangest new exercises, everyone loves buying the latest kit and equipment and uploading picture after picture of themselves at the gym but ask them ‘what have you eaten today ‘and almost 100% of the time the answer will be ‘Ah, today wasn’t a good day but usually I eat really well etc‘.
When trying to help athletes, or people in general, with their dietary needs, it seems to be the same problems coming up over and over again. Not many people seem to have a clear goal or plan and so don’t prep food in advance. This leaves you buying convenience food which although mostly cheap, is actually quite expensive as it’s usually low in nutrients, protein especially.

Common problems:
After decades of working in the field of nutrition, you soon start to see a pattern of common mistakes/problems/excuses!

‘I don’t eat much and still gain weight ‘.
Usually by getting them to keep a food diary for a few days or asking what they ate and drank at the weekend, it will become clear why they are gaining the fat!
Low nutrient food, hardly any protein, no healthy fats, binging or snacking at night, alcohol and skipping breakfast are all common traits of supposedly low-calorie eaters. Many people don’t register the biscuits had with a cuppa at 10am or the craving a snack at night are a result of bad food planning. Those sugary snacks are just going to make you crave more of the same a couple of hours later.
Firstly, make sure you eat breakfast, even just a shake and a small handful of nuts if you are short on time. This can be prepared the night before, takes about 20 seconds. Both protein and fat are slower digesting so will keep you fuller for longer and will help keep blood sugar levels constant, so hopefully no cravings. The more quality calories you eat during the day the better your body will function and make staying in shape easy. Low calorie eating plans put more pressure on you both mentally and physically.
Firstly, make sure you eat breakfast, even just a shake and a small handful of nuts if you are short on time. This can be prepared the night before, takes about 20 seconds. Both protein and fat are slower digesting so will keep you fuller for longer and will help keep blood sugar levels constant, so hopefully no cravings.

Food Choices
Carbohydrate choices are a big problem too. Products such as bread, milk, pasta and white rice are many people’s stable choices but these can lead to fat gain quite quickly if the rest of the diet isn’t in check. Try to introduce better carb choices such as brown rice, sweet potato, quinoa and gluten free oats.
Speaking of fat, that’s another area that needs addressing in many daily diets. The body loves ‘good’ fat and you really see the difference when introducing it regularly into someone’s diet. Healthy fats help with hormone production, support metabolism and the immune system and can help with cardiovascular health. On top of that, they are also great for the skin, hair, eyes and help to improve body composition. Examples of healthy fats include oily fish, avocados, nuts and in supplement form you have omega tablets and Udo oil.
If you have a little bit of information about good food choices and can read a label quickly, you will be so much better off. Unfortunately, we are bombarded with conflicting information, cheap processed food and a million different ways to order food for immediate delivery.
There will be a food chart available at the end of this article that breaks food into the different groups and separates the good from the bad. Have a look through and you will soon learn to make better choices.

‘Relying on easy, convenience food’
If you ever fill up with petrol early in the morning you often notice the forecourt looks quite busy but once you go into pay you realise a large portion of people are grabbing breakfast not petrol. Pastries, sausage rolls, coffee, crisps, energy drinks, sandwiches, the list goes on. Although as tasty as most of that is, you will be paying a fair chunk for essentially low nutrient, poor ingredient food. Often this first ‘meal’ will set the trend for the rest of the day, topping up on similar food. Even if you put the money into a proper homemade sandwich, using quality bread and ingredients, you’d be paying less and be better off nutritionally.
Unfortunately, daytime takeaway food has become the norm rather than a rare extravagance so if this applies to you, try to move towards making your own food. Both your wallet and your body will benefit greatly.

‘No time or too busy to prepare’
This one you hear quite a lot. Yet there’s time to be on your phone all day, buy the convenience food, watch reality TV, eat snacks, buy snacks, go shopping, beers on a Friday after work etc .If you want it badly enough you will do what it takes, get up 15 minutes earlier, catch that programme another time, cook food in batches and prepare the night before.
Prepping meals gets much easier and quicker after the first couple of goes. You can prepare whole meals or just certain ingredients. Many carbohydrate choices such as rice, quinoa, sweet potatoes can be batch cooked and frozen into portions. Protein tends to dry out if frozen so many clients will freeze the carbs and cook their protein choice every 3 days or so and just keep in the fridge. Slow or pressure cookers are brilliant for meal prep as it makes life so much simpler and quicker to produce batches of food.

‘Food labelling ‘
If you don’t know much about food ingredients then you will be at the mercy of companies labelling and they don’t want you reading the ingredients list. They will try and sell you the product from the front view only, using well known tactics as ‘low fat, low sugar, 33% less sugar, wholegrains, high protein’. Always make sure you take note of the colour schemes on the front. Some companies love telling which ingredients they haven’t used rather than selling the actually product.
Yogurts are a classic one on the low-fat labelling but instead are loaded with added sugar, same with ready-made porridge, granola (most are sugary junk), muesli and the breakfast bars and shakes. You have to hand it these companies really as they know people won’t read the label as long as it tastes nice.

Planning and goals.
Nutrition in sport has come along massively in the past few years. It’s not uncommon to see professional athletes with access to chefs, nutritionists, free supplements and regular nutrition check-ups. Michael Schumacher was having his blood taken during testing to see what nutrients he lacked during a race, this was 20 odd years ago.
For the rest of us, it’s our responsibility to make sure we are covering all the basic requirements. If you don’t have a clear goal in place then planning food intake will be hard as where do you start? Think about both long and short-term goals so there’s always something to be shooting for.
If your main goal is going to take months rather than weeks, break that down further into smaller targets. This will keep motivation going and allow you to continually adjust things if needed. For example, if you had a goal to gain 10 pounds of muscle in a year, you would break that down in 5 pounds in 6 months, 2.5lbs in 3 months. This way you can see if you are going to hit your target and if not, make adjustments with food intake. Same for losing fat, you would check regularly (not 5 times a day!) and make small adjustments where needed.

How to establish calorie intake.
Not surprisingly, this is a confusing subject with many people looking to lose or gain weight. The calculator linked below is a good starting point (and may come as a shock) to the calorie requirements of changing your body composition. Enter your basic details and goals/activity levels and see where you need to be.

https://www.precisionnutrition.com/weight-loss-calculator

Food chart.
Use the food chart below to improve your food knowledge and selections.