Today, we will unlock your physique's full potential without being a slave to restriction! I’ll explain why those one-size-fits-all diet plans are holding you back, and arm you with the science-backed strategies you need to customize your own “perfect” meal plan, a dynamic and flexible meal plan, that balances your energy needs, macros and micros, fuels your workout performance, and supports your metabolism.

And it’s not just about food. You’ll learn psychological tactics that will keep you adhering to your plan, smashing those plateaus, and tasting the freedom of flexible dieting. If you're tired of feeling stuck in a meal-planning box and want to turbocharge your journey to your ideal physique without restriction, save this episode as your game plan. Most importantly, listen all the way through because there is so much gold here in terms of strategies plus the exact step-by-step method I like to use to construct the perfect meal plan.
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Today you’ll learn all about:
[2:33] The template mean plan
[5:18] The importance of personalized nutrition
[8:56] Psychological strategies for crafting your perfect meal plan
[10:35] The classic 80/20 principle
[13:17] Default meals as an emergency strategy
[16:26] Batch cooking as an act of self-care
[19:31] Shifting the perception of food as fuel, not a reward.
[21:47] Utilizing social accountability
[22:35] Documenting dietary variables
[23:13] The one more rule, and overcoming decision fatigue
[28:01] Using your app as a meal planner
[29:34] Setting calorie needs, macros and micros
[35:54] Simplifying food choices and measuring portion sizes
[38:17] Map out your meals, including indulgences
[43:47] Listen to your body's signals for dietary adjustments
[47:14] Outro

Episode resources:

• Ep 110: Macros Aren’t Enough – Flexible Dieting vs. IIFYM 

• https://www.witsandweights.com/email – reply to the welcome email and ask for the FREE guides from episode 110

• MacroFactor app – use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to extend your free trial to two weeks (and support me and this show!)

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

documenting things like other variables, other dietary variables, maybe it's hunger. Maybe it's your emotions, mediate your sleep and stress and journaling them in conjunction with your meal plan so that it informs your meal plan. It improves your mindset and your awareness so you can make the choices you want for next week. Simple as that. That way you know that the meal plan you came up with is or is not aligned with the goals. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights

Philip Pape  00:54

community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. In our last episode 111 The anti diet athlete mindset with Sherry Cheban Sherry and I challenged your conventional wisdom on dating and fitness. As we looked at why diets fail the nuances of transformation versus results and how you can transform your identity into that of an athlete. Today for episode 112 the perfect meal plan, we are going to unlock your physiques full potential without being a slave to restriction. I'll explain why those one size fits all diet plans are holding you back and arm you with a science back strategies you need to customize your own perfect meal plan. A dynamic and flexible meal plan that balances your energy needs macros, micros, fuels your workout performance, and supports your metabolism. And of course, it's not just about food, you'll learn psychological tactics that will keep you adhering to your plan, smashing those plateaus and tasting the freedom that comes with flexible dieting. If you're tired of feeling stuck in a meal planning box and want to turbocharge your journey to your ideal physique, without the restriction, save this episode as your game plan. Most importantly, listen all the way through because there is so much gold here in terms of strategies, plus the exact step by step method I like to use to construct the perfect meal plans. So there's a lot in this episode. With that, let's get into the topic, the perfect meal plan. First, we have the one size fits all meal plan when someone says, Hey, do you provide meal plans in your coaching? Or can I see a meal plan or an existing client might even ask for a meal plan. What they're asking for is a list of meals or snacks with specific foods or potentially recipes, organized by the throughout your day that potentially have calories and macros listed that meet a certain plan, certainly plan for calories and macros. This is what I call the one size fits all meal plan or the template meal plan. And this is the epitome of a singular, rigid method that supposedly can meet the needs of everyone. But we know in fact, research shows quite the opposite both for dieting, for training, and really for anything in life where we're trying to be consistent, and hit a goal and make progress that a one size fits all, where you have rules, good and bad. And restriction is going to cause the opposite of what we intend it's going to cause you to stick to it may be for a month or two is what the research shows in terms of the meal plans. And then you're gonna fall off the wagon, because there is a wagon and we don't like wagons. But that's a wagon. And so I think the research has shown that no matter what diet you follow, in a 12 month period, the first two months, people stick to it, maybe 60 70% of the time, they get to their goal, which oftentimes is weight loss. And then the rest of the year, they pretty much do what they were doing before and if anything they might set start to gain a little bit of weight back. So we know that this idea of a meal plan is going to backfire. From the research. There is plenty of emerging emerging evidence that suggests that anything we do should be individualized based on your individual factors and lifestyle, whether that's your age, your activity level, your metabolic rate, your food preferences, okay? It's something that's very important, but we often throw that out the window when we're saying, hey, just give me a planet. Just give me a diet, right? Yeah, but what if you like pizza and the diet says you can't have pizza right there. We're going to run into a brick wall. And there are plenty of experts out there and plenty of research that shows the importance of personalized nutrition is where it's at and that's where we're at on the show. I mean, you know this even the title, the perfect meal plan. I'm sure it piqued your curiosity and you said what is this guy doing another click Beatty title? Let's see what this is all about. But by the end of this show, you are going to have the perfect meal plan for you. That is where I'm going with this. There There's also this common obsession with macros. And I talked all about this on my last solo episode, which was about flexible dieting, versus If It Fits Your Macros, and it causes us to neglect other things. So you should definitely go check that out. I think it's Episode 110, called macros aren't enough, listen all the way through to get all of the nuances. But when we talk about a meal plan, are we talking about calories and macros? No, we should also be talking about optimal health optimal performance. You're trying to get physique goals, you're trying to work out you want energy on and on and on and on. And the list goes on, it's very difficult to encapsulate that on a piece of paper with a table that says, here's what you eat, unless, again, you have a nutritionist or dietitian, who you're paying to exactly understand what you're going through what you need, and then giving you a meal plan. But even that is is bound to fail. Because it's a restrictive approach. It's a rigid approach. The other thing is you are going to have a different metabolic requirement, and thus calorie requirement that somebody else and different macro needs, right. So even the same meal plan calories, let's say a 2500 calorie meal plan is not going to be as effective for one person versus another because it doesn't account for the individual macro needs. And let's just face it, we know this, I've talked about it many times that your individual expenditure changes on a daily basis. And so in reality, we are adjusting our macro targets and our calorie targets each week. Meal Plans are not very resilient to that. They're also some nutritional timing assumptions. When we have meal plans, the fact that a meal plan assumes a certain number of meals, certain meal frequency certain meal timing. First of all, we know that meal timing is somewhat important. It's not as important as the basics, energy macros, even micros. And, but it is somewhat important depending on how much you care about your performance and your workouts and so on. Here's the thing from day to day your life changes, things happen, the nutritional timing needs to be flexible enough to account for that. So timing in a templated, one size fits all meal plan becomes another barrier to adherence is my point, it becomes another thing where if you don't quite hit it, what do you do? Right? And what if you miss a piece of a meal or a piece of a snack? Where does it go in the day you've you've just succumbed to the all or nothing thinking, which is exactly what we try to avoid what we do avoid here. There's also food quality, right? A meal plan doesn't always account for that. I mean, to be fair, I get that if somebody is giving you a meal plan, and they're an expert, you know, they've probably including lots of Whole Foods in there. But that brings up another challenge of what if you don't want all Whole Foods and you want a little bit of, you know, some of the something a little indulgence here or there, you want some flexibility to substitute something out, it really doesn't account for the the quality quantity indulgence part of that without sacrificing something along the way. And then meal plans don't let you learn. It's like giving somebody a fish instead of teaching them to fish, right learning to track and adjust and become intuitive over time. Because I think ultimately true Intuitive Eating is within your grasp. But most people fail to go through the initial process of developing the intuition. And a meal plan is just another way to say here's the answer, maybe. And it's not even close to the real answer, instead of teaching you the skills, right. And I always like to say that with my clients, it really isn't about coaching. It's about teaching skills. Coaching is just part of the process, but the skills are what you take for life. And then finally, no matter how effective the meal plan might seem, it is just not sustainable is really like any diet, if it's not dynamic, then is not sustainable period. Okay, so that's kind of my diatribe to just to get things started. And I could just end the podcast right there and say, Okay, so the answer is there is no perfect meal plan. And it really has to be customized. But I don't think that's very helpful. And that's probably not why you're tuning in, I've actually broken this podcast into three segments. That was the first segment. Now I want to talk about a whole bunch of psychological strategies. And this list was a lot of fun to put together because I've been thinking a lot about this topic lately, posting on it, listening to other podcasts, doing research, and at the risk of overwhelming you. I want to give you some things to think about in the mindset department that have nothing to do with food. I mean, food is involved, but they're not like food choice. So that if one of these really resonates with you and you hadn't considered it before, I've just added something in your repertoire that you can use when constructing your meal plan because the last part of the podcast please stick around is going to be step by step how do you do it? Right How do I do it on my clients do it and so on. So psychological strategies for success with meal planning. Here we go. The first one is surrounding consistency. Okay, consistency is King regular meal timing. That is having a routine every day the same types of meals. Mainly the timing of the meals is what I'm talking about has been shown to increase metabolism. and regulate your hunger signals, the idea that you eat roughly the same time every day, just like when you go to sleep the same time every night, is now aligned to your circadian rhythm. And that gives your body a sense of relief, that it doesn't have to fear scarcity or a lack of food. And therefore it kind of relaxes on its conservation of energy, therefore burning more calories. So you don't just eat the same food every day necessarily. But if you keep your meal timing consistent, it can help. So that's the first one. And all of this is going to come into play when you put together your meal plan, because you're going to think, Okay, how do I make it adhere to some of these strategies? The second one is the classic 8020 principle, the Pareto Principle, right? If you can select 80%, whole nutrient dense foods, and leave 20%, or you can do 9010, but 8020 20% of indulgences, that is going to go a long way toward a sustainable planet just is, it just is because the first thing that happens when you go on a restrictive diet is you cut things out, and guaranteed one or more of those things are things you like, and there's something just wrong with that.

Philip Pape  11:09

Just as a human if you tell me I can't do something, oh, boy. I'm already hitting resistance right from day one. So 8020 is always a great philosophy and a lot of things 80% whole nutrient dense foods 20% indulgences, I will let you decide what that is, depending on what would fit your goals. Okay, for me, the indulgences might include ice cream, you've heard me say that many times before. It might include more calorie dense foods like pizza, a lot of the stuff that many of us like to have as indulgences, maybe french fries are an indulgence for you, whatever. So the 8020 principle, the next one is your emotional inventory. So listening to your emotions, this is kind of a mindfulness thing. But listening to your emotional state, when you're going to eat right before you eat, while you're eating after you eat. And this has to do with differentiating between emotional and physical hunger. Now I do have I have a whole guide on this, it's not very long guide, it explains this, it gives you a scale. And it gives you a little journal that you can use. Many of my clients have found it super helpful. I've given it away many times. So if you want it, definitely sign up for my email list, and then reach out by email, reply to my first email and say, Hey, Philip, you mentioned this hunger guide this hunger scale, and I want it. So let me have it, and I'll give it to you. So the idea here is that hunger is a complicated thing. It is driven by hormonal signals, but it's also tied to our emotions. And so when you're going to eat, being aware of your emotional state when you eat, and potentially documenting and journaling it so that you know whether it's physical or emotional, right, psychological can be very helpful when you decide how to construct your meal plan. Because for example, you might find that later in the afternoon is when you are at most risk of emotional eating of binge eating. And instead of trying to hammer away the problem, you can accommodate the fact that you get hungry that time, and maybe shift some of your calories to that point. Right, that that's just one approach. The next strategy is, I'll call it planning for perfection, but preparing for reality. I've always been conflicted with this idea, but I still stick to it. And that is, we never are going to be perfect. We're human beings. But we can strive for perfection any given day. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think there's anything wrong with going for 10 out of 10 every day, knowing that we might hit nine out of 10, five out of 10, one out of 10 something more than zero and you know what, some days you might have a zero in might happen. It's okay. Don't beat yourself up have some self compassion. But if you have some quality default meals, right, these are like your perfect meals. And I'm sorry, you have you have your perfect plan. But then you have some some quality default meals that you can always fall back on, they may not be in your meal plan. But if the day goes off, like if it goes off plan, you have this little library of a few different meals that can fit in on a given moment, kind of as an emergency so that you don't have to make the choice in the moment or succumb to your motions, kind of tied to the last one. Right? So plan for perfection prepare for reality, always think life is going to happen no matter what, in fact, is the norm rather than the exception. And I don't know if you hear my girls playing their instruments, but you might okay and if you do consider it part of the background music. Okay, so where was I going with this? Yes, always have default meals available. Now these default meals could be for example, a small dish of casein powder with almond milk that you put in the freezer as like an ice cream substitute for when you get a sweet tooth late at night, for example, right? And this is just the idea that if emotions get the best of you, you still have a an emotionless strategy to fall back on. Okay, next one is a goal oriented did mindfulness, right. And what this is, is, each meal is contributing toward something it should be, it should be contributing toward some goal, you have your physique goals, your performance goals, it should be aligned with your existence, your identity as an athlete, like we talked about with Sherry Cheban when she was on, right. And so as you construct your meal plan, and even as you're eating, being aware of how this is contributing to those goals, will improve not only your relationship with food, but your ability to plan for your meals, right. And this is kind of a general principle, but a specific application of that principle would be your workout nutrition. Like for me, I work out early in the morning, right now, three days a week, sometimes it's four, or five or six, depending on what phase I'm in. It's three days a week. So I know on those mornings, I'm planning in a banana and a protein shake early in the morning. Super simple, basic ingredients, it meets my needs. And it contributes to me having energy during that workout session. And I know it works for me and I had to get to that over time, right? Sometimes I tried it completely fasted, I realized no, I don't have energy doing that. Sometimes I tried eating more food, like maybe oatmeal, now the fiber and that causes it to digest too slowly, and I don't have a lot of time before I work out. So that doesn't work. Too much food in my stomach, etc, etc. Right? These are all goal oriented. They're not emotional, or just a I'm just eating to eat. Now, that's not to say that food can't be delicious. I'm okay, if these are these are not mutually exclusive things. Okay, next thing, I really love this one, I want you to think of batch cooking. Okay, meal prep, like on the weekend, when you just batch cook some proteins or carbs or something, I want you to think of that as self care as an act of self care rather than a chore. It's an act of self care why? Because you are eliminating a ton of stress from the week, you're eliminating emotional decision making from the week, and you're creating something that's going to perfectly fit into your meal plan, it's gonna be ready to go, it's gonna be super easy to execute. It's almost like you had a workout plan for the week. And you've actually got all your sets done. And now you just have to kind of log them as you go. Because honestly, eating is not hard as hard as lifting. Right? Okay, so think of batch cooking and self care. Now the act itself of the batch cooking, of course, itself can be a fun thing you can do with your family, you can put on some music, you can have your favorite beverage or snack as you're doing whatever, I don't care, watch the football game, you know, make itself an act of self care. But I'm just saying that the stress you reduce from doing it is also a gift to yourself during the week, I got a lot more for you where this is coming from. So please stick around. This is an epic episode. I don't know if I meant it to be but it will be. The next one is the growth mindset. You might know Carol Dweck, she's the author of oh, boy, is it grit? Oh, man, this is terrible. I can't think of the book. But it's really the fixed versus the growth mindset. To me, every failure in life is an opportunity for growth, everything. So your dietary and food planning mishaps are all opportunities for growth, meaning if you are thinking in a personalized meal planning context, that gives you the opportunity then to try it out. See what you learn. If it doesn't work, great, that's information, learn from it, revise, you can't do that with a fixed meal plan you just can't. So this is the beauty of making your own meal plan. And using that as an opportunity to learn about yourself. Okay. The next strategy is visualization. All right. We know visualization is a motivational tool in different contexts. And I like to use it as well or suggests that you might want to use it by visualizing a successful week, visualizing a successful meal successful day, successful week, and how that all contributes to the goal oriented motivation you had before, right? Because at the end of the day, training, your nutrition, your sleep, all of these things, we want to plan them out. Like we want to think ahead, in our logic with our logical brain, you know, on the weekend, how's this week gonna look. And therefore, a successful week backs into how I want to construct my meals and where I put them and so on. It's kind of a fun process because you're, you're looking at your future self a week from now who's looking back and say, Damn, you did a great job. Coming up with that plan, because it was so easy to follow. I didn't have to think emotion didn't come into it. It had foods I loved the timing worked out. It supported my training. It supported the things I wanted to do with my family, the social events, all that stuff. So that's, that's another good tool. The next one is always important when we talk about food and that is the perception that Food is fuel it's not a reward. Even though food can be delicious. You can anticipate it if you have like a refeed day or a day where you've shifted calories for some fun event. Those can still be fun, enjoyable, rewarding experiences, but not specifically because of the food food is not something you withhold from yourself. Food is something you give to yourself to nourish you and your goals and your values. And because of that, when you do the meal planning, you can then not think of it as Oh, I'm going to save up for a cheat day. So much as on any given day, I want to support my goals. And here's how I'm going to do it within the whole context of the week. And I keep saying a week, because a week is a good timeline. For a meal plan, I wouldn't go beyond that if, if the subsequent week is going to be similar, great, you can reuse the meal plan. And in fact, what you'll find is that in reality, if you're using an app like macro factor, you're going to do a lot of copy and paste because you get into a routine where your meal plan is really just your normal routine. And therefore you could just copy to the future, and not really even have to think about it as much or plan for it as much because you've already experienced the meal plan multiple times anyway, Food is fuel, not reward. Okay, the next thing is, think about the pre emptive strikes, that you want to account for in your week. And what this is, is, for example, a high protein snack before a situation that would tempt you. Like if you know, there will be emotionally charged situations during your week, or situations where you there might be alcohol involved, or there might be a lot of other people involved where you get distracted. And these are normally the situations where you might over eat, bam, put your meal plan to work for you by shifting what happens before that point to minimize the chance of doing what you don't intend to do. And that could be something like having a lot of protein an hour before that event. So now you're not as hungry. It could be shifting calories, whatever, but be pre emptive. That's the way I like to think of it. That's an element of planning. Okay, the next one is social accountability. And this is simply recruiting your spouse, friend, family member, community member, coach, whoever is on your side and support your goals. And sharing your meal planning goals with them sharing ideas, maybe asking them for ideas, maybe they also use macro factor like you and you can share recipes, right, that's perfectly easy to do, you can take you can take a meal that you like to eat, turn it into a recipe and share it say Hey, this is what I like, for my lunch while I'm in fat loss. Right? And so just like with anything else, the act of meal planning can be a social experience to enhance your commitment. Okay, the next one is Carl's gonna love this Carl Berryman, if you're listening, you're gonna love this. And this is daily or weekly journaling associated with your meal planning. And this is this goes back to what I talked about during the flexible dieting versus If It Fits Your Macros episode of documenting things, like other variables, other dietary variables, maybe it's hunger, maybe it's your emotions, mediate your sleep and stress and journaling them in conjunction with your meal plan. So that it informs your meal plan, it improves your mindset and your awareness so that you can make the choices you want for next week. Simple as that, that way you know that the meal plan you came up with is or is not aligned with the goals we talked about earlier. So that's journaling. The next one is called the one more rule. This is kind of the tiny habits of meal planning, incremental changes. If this is your very first week doing it, how successful do you think you're going to be if you if you literally just plan the whole week out. And it's completely different than anything you've ever done? It's gonna be tough, even though you've planned it out, it's still going to be tough to to meet that you're not setting yourself up for the best success in my opinion, I would add one or two things the first week, one or two things the next week, and so on, for example, adding extra vegetables to your existing meals like continuing to eat similar to what you were, but adding a vegetable adding a protein. And again, I'm always a fan of adding in adding and adding and adding in which then crowds out what you don't want and what is not aligned with your goals. So you can do the same thing with meal planning first week, just just take what you would normally eat and add in here and there strategically, and continue to build week after week. The next one is decision fatigue, you probably familiar with this concept, the idea of paralysis by analysis that you have so many choices that you can't even make a single choice. And so when it comes to meal planning, I am not a big fan of big fancy recipes, even though I have recipe guides if you want them. I am not a fan of using that for meal planning. I would rather you have a very limited set of food choices. And then you just mix and match. I mean really limited. It could be as simple as two meats that you batch Cook, one that you use for lunch, one to use for dinner, two carbs, and then several vegetables, right, like two to two. That goes for lunch and dinner the first week just keep it really simple, almost boring. Sure. Right. And if it's too boring, mix it up. That's totally up to you. But if you have enough combination if you have enough foods even if it's a short At least they'll make a lot of different permutations right? A lot of different combinations. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transformed other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique, and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. And if we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Philip Pape  26:07

So again, I do have a guide to help you with meal planning that I give to my clients. And again, sign up for my email list wits & weights.com/email, and then reply to me and say hi, I want I want the guide for selecting food. And it's got proteins, fats, carbs, fruits and vegetables, a short list with all the information about them. So you can easily mix and match from very commonly available foods. And then it does have sample meal plans. Again, I say that with caution, because they're just ideas of how you can put things together. But decision fatigue is important. So keep the choices limited at first and start to get more complex over time. Okay, the next one is I think this is the last one on my list of strategies is habit stacking or anchoring your habits. So this is pairing your new habits with existing routines. And this could be not just the act of meal planning itself. Although of course, if you want to like turn on your favorite music or podcast while you're coming up with your first meal plan, that's fine. This is more, making sure that the meals and the timing of the meals align with your schedule such that not that you're eating and doing something else at the same time. Because that's not always recommended. But you're guaranteed are almost guaranteed to actually eat those meals. Because one of the problems I see early on with clients is they actually struggled to eat all the meals, even if we haven't planned in there. And part of the problem is you're not planning for success, you're not anchoring the meals to your lifestyle, right and pairing those habits with what you already do. And so it could be a matter of, for example, anchoring them around your workout, that's a nice solid one, it could be anchoring in around a walk. So like you know that you eat and then you walk, it could be anchored around the habit that you normally have where you go to the vending machine and get a candy bar, it could be in that slot, instead write that, okay, I'm gonna have my protein snack, a lot of ways to do this. The one other thing I actually forgot to add to my notes, but I'm going to mention it is if you're using a food logging app, for example, macro factor makes it very easy to do use the app as your meal planner, use your app as the meal planner, it doesn't mean you have to map out your entire week. But you can map out what looks like a successful day. extremely common strategy that I propose to clients all the time who's who tell me hey, you know, I really am struggling to get the protein, and I see it in their data. And again, when you work with me, it is not about 100% adherence at all, there's a lot of flexibility because I would rather learn who you are and your patterns, then beat you on the head for not hitting a number. That's not the point. The point is to learn about you and find out how we make things more successful over time. So using macro factor and saying okay, well, you need 150 grams of protein, and you're regularly getting 100. Let's map out tomorrow, while you're in a logical, cool headed state today, and figure out where to make that happen. Conversely, let's look at your food logs for the last few days and see why we couldn't quite get there. Where's the opportunity to add in a little little more protein, or add an extra meal or alter your food choices, right? A lot of different ways to skin a cat. So those are the strategies and I'm going on What 30 minutes now for the episode. And now we're gonna get to the final piece, which is the steps to create your personal dynamic meal plan which that is the perfect meal plan a dynamic personalized one for you. Alright, so this is this is very prescriptive, very simple. And you may not need all the steps, but here we go. Step one is you have to know your calorie needs. So if you're using an app like macro factor, which calculates your expenditure, you'll know what that is on a weekly basis. I'm not going to go into that on detail on this podcast. But whether you're using an estimate a calculator or an app that calculates it for you've got to have some ballpark of where you're going to start. What are you actually eating? And those calorie needs are going to be based on your calories that you burn every day. That's your maintenance calories, your total calories burn, and then you're going You're going to add or remove calories for your goal, whether you're trying to build muscle, or lose fat. And really, those are the two directions we go on this show, right? We're not talking about endurance training or anything like that we're talking about strength building muscle, improving your body composition. So if you are going into a fat loss phase, and you know, you want to lose a pound per week, and that comes out to a 500 calorie deficit a day, and your metabolism is 2500 calories a day, then your calorie needs 2000 very simple concept, but just I wanted to put it out there. That's one of the more important dietary variables when you come up with a meal plan because of course, you want to meet your calorie needs for your goals. All right, then we go one step down into macros. Okay, now we have our calorie needs, we want to set our protein, fats, carbs, I'll just repeat the general guidelines that I like for that. For protein, we're going to go with around point eight to one gram per pound of your target bodyweight. So if your target body weight is 180, we're talking 150 to 180 grams of protein. I like to do fats next. I know some people go with carbs next, but I like to do fat. Next, because all of us listening here are building muscle. So we want to have carbs, like a decent amount of carbs left, if we can, it's not always possible, we're in fat loss, for example, for fat, I would anchor it at 30% of your calories. Right? So if you're going to consume 2000 calories, 30% of that is what 600 calories, and then you divide 600 times nine, I'm actually trying to pull up a calculator right now and do that. And that will be 67 grams of fat, and then the rest goes to carbs. So that's a super basic rule of thumb. Now, how might that very well, if you're in a fat loss phase, you might want a little more protein. Or if you're in a muscle building phase, you could deal with up to a little less, if you've come from a Keto background, you'd like to get a lot of higher fat foods, you can up the fat a bit and reduce the carbs or vice versa, a lot of ways to skin it. Okay, I'll stop there and keep going. So next we have micronutrients. So here's where we start to deviate from the traditional meal plan. So the normal meal plan, thinks about calories, macros, and then listing foods by meals. That's basically it. You know, there's some timing aspect to it, maybe. But we're gonna go deeper than that, because the next thing we care about is micros. And if you go back to the strategies, I talked about 8020 80%, nutrient dense foods 20%. Other, you're gonna get there, you're gonna get pretty close to what you need. So if 80% or more of your foods are whole nutrient dense foods, you're going to have foods rich in essential vitamins, minerals, fiber. So fiber is not a micronutrient. It's a subset of carbohydrates. But I really think it's important to spike it out and think about the number and aim to hit that number. But again, you don't have to have a giant spreadsheet or anything. If you go the 8020 rule, you're probably going to be covered or pretty close to it. Because most people are like the opposite. They're like 60, or 70%, processed foods and like 30 or 40% Whole Foods. So if you're just doubling your whole foods, through proper meal planning for you for your goals, because why do we want nutrient dense foods, we want micronutrients, we want to mitigate hunger, we want to feel full, we want to feel great, we want to support our goals, we want to be healthy, and so on. So incorporating the 8020 is an early step in the macro planning process, because it already gets you to think of as you're going through, okay, I'm going to think I'm gonna think Whole Foods first, first, first first, but then my 10 or 20%? Where are those gonna go? Where's my pizza? Where's my ice cream? Where are they? Where's my glass of wine, whatever, where's that gonna go? Like, actually plan it in. That's the goal, to plan it in, and then enjoy them and not think of them as a reward, but just part of your plan. Okay, the next step is, and maybe you could have done this earlier, doesn't matter. I want you to list out all the things you like, all the things you like within each category. So the very simple way to do this is list your proteins, fats, and carbs. Now you can say well, but you know, beans are both protein and carbs or nuts are like mostly fat with some protein. Just put, the more they're dominant. So like beans, I'm beans are the weird one, I might put them under carbs to be honest, because when you really need a protein, it's not as dense as say meats, dairy, eggs, and so on. Right? Plants have plenty of protein, but they also have plenty of other stuff. And you know, same thing with grains like oats, I'm going to put that on a carbs even though they have some protein. So you kind of list them out. And guess what just put on the list of things you like don't put the things you don't like. Now if you're trying to be adventurous and you're trying to open up your palate, and like I had to do with my not had to do but I chose to too early in my marriage when my wife was like him. You are so picky. I ate hardly anything, but I was willing to try and together we incorporated more foods and I found out that I could like vegetables more and more rituals and there's certain things I just don't like, like I don't like to meet those, so I wouldn't put them on my list. And then mushrooms are like a like, I might put them on there because I know they're, they're good food to have in there. And I'm okay with them. So put the things you'd like the most put some of the things you want to try to incorporate maybe categorize them in that way, the things you just absolutely don't like, don't want to eat and don't even want to try it, hey, leave them off list. And then you can have another list or two of indulgences that don't really fit into protein, fats, carbs, like if pizza is on your list. I mean, what is that that's a lot of fat, a lot of carbs, maybe some protein, a bunch of oil, right? It's very calorie dense. So it's kind of in its own category of indulgences. So there you go, you've got your little menu to choose from. And again, I have a guide, where I can give you that has basic list like of those fruits and vegetables might be in their own category. For example, don't make it complicated, but just come up with the list that you need to choose your fruits from. That's it come up with that, before you go to the next step. The next thing is, you definitely are going to want to have a way to measure your food if you're tracking your food to that level. So if you're tracking it to the gram level, having your food scale, and I kind of throw this in here just to make sure you're prepared. So when you get to the meal planning, or the execution part, you know, if you're planning out 100 grams of potatoes, how are you going to know you ate 100 grams of potatoes right? Now, you could use quantities like one medium potato and stuff like that. But I'm really a big fan of just normalizing everything, just making it all grams weighing your food doing that for a while until this becomes intuitive. Because if you're using a meal plan, it's because you don't quite have that intuition yet. And I get it right, because that's where we all start from, you don't have that yet. And so we want to be very precise, I prefer more precision to less. You don't have to do it that way. But just be aware that you want to be prepared for it for controlling the the portion measurement, especially initially. Okay. Okay. Next on your meal plan checklist is the frequency and timing that aligns with your lifestyle and metabolic needs. And that could include workout nutrition. So this is pretty straightforward. For most people. There are routine days and not so routine days. And for most people that's weekdays versus weekends, or training days, versus non training days, or some combination, right training days, non training days, weekends, and oh, by the way, I love to go out partying every Saturday night. And so that's its own little day, fight, whatever it takes each of those days is its use has its own unique plan. Makes sense, right? We're not gonna have one plan that we do every day, even though I would say that that is ideal. In reality, you're not going to do it. Just admit it to yourself, right now, you're not going to do it, you might do it for two weeks, you're not gonna keep doing it. Why? Because that's restrictive. That's rigidity. That is what we're trying to avoid. Okay? A plan that works on a day that it's easy to execute. The plan is not restrictive. It's just having a plan, but a plan that you're trying to force into a day where it won't be easy to meet the plan. And you know, that is restrictive. That's the difference. Okay? So I'm very passionate about this stuff, as you can tell, because there's so much BS out there. But meal frequency and timing, what does this look like? Take a typical day, let's say a non training day, that's in the middle of the week. And very simply map out your meals. That's it, map out your meals, and your snacks, your indulgences, everything, like put it all in there. It might be breakfast, lunch, mid afternoon snack around the time that you don't really get hungry. And then dinner, and maybe a dessert or pre bed snack if that's what you want or need for your goals. And then do the same for your training days is the same for the weekend. And what and then put it all together, put it all together for seven days. And that's going to tell you a lot of information because does it fit? And by fit I mean calories macros, right? Let alone all the other stuff which which is driving your decision of what foods to pick, but calories and macros are they fitting. And so that's why I like to look at the whole week because your training day may have more food than your non training day, if you want to do it that way. I don't recommend that initially, I'd rather just keep it pretty consistent. And then you can shift things around from that. But you may decide right now that No, on the weekends, I'm gonna have more calories. So I'm going to make that happen in my plan. Fine. That's your natural lifestyle. Okay, so meal timing and frequency set that up, plan it out for the whole week. I kind of alluded to this already. But the next thing I would do is to pre schedule all of your indulgences so that you can adjust the other things around it. So once you've got your typical day, and I kind of miss telling you this, but when you plan out your normal day, you don't have to have indulgences in the default meal plan, let's say but then you'll realize Hi, where do I want indulgences. And you may decide I'm going to instead of having a dessert every day like I do now maybe I'll have one three times a week or I'll have it only on the weekends. And I'm going to plan that in that way. And then I know to come in, and there we go. So pre plan your indulgences make it work. Another way to do that is just leaving open spot of probably fats and carbs, let's be honest, most indulgences are fats and carbs, and leave it open spot, I would do this sometimes during a fat loss phase, when it starts to get a little hairy there. At the end, I get lean, and the calories are somewhat low, I might reserve say, 200 calories at 8pm. If I go to bed at like 930, or 10, for a little bit of protein and some carbs. And I know I just said fats and carbs. But for me that was like protein pudding, for example. And I would do that just in case, because I knew that, hey, I might get hungry, I didn't always take advantage of it, I would sometimes accommodate earlier in the day and maybe have a bigger dinner and just not have it. Or I would end up with less calories for the day, which was fine as well, since I was in fat loss, it generally worked out. Okay, then you are going to take those days that you just planned, and make sure that you have the right lifestyle factors accounted for. So this would be for example, variety, right? I don't want you to eat the same thing every day, if that's not going to be enjoyable for you. But you may have the same breakfast every day, you maybe even have the same lunch every day for the week. And then next week, you switch up the lunch, like the way I do it, I've been eating the same breakfast for years, my lunch tends to be similar during the week, and then the next week, I might switch it up like I might have a different meat, I might go from chicken thighs all this week to lean ground beef all next week, as an example. So the idea here is not just to have a fixed plan for the week, but options for yourself. And so what this might look like is some different example days. So for your routine day, in the middle of the week, you might have a couple of versions of that. And you just kind of rotate back and forth. Okay, now, this might all seem overwhelming. I'm not saying that you have to have all of this written down per se. It's more of being conscious of it. And it could be just the next day, it could be the two days ahead that you do that. Just just putting that out there. Okay, flexibility. Okay. Now, once you've got all that, guess what Next, it's time to execute. So the first step to executing is shopping, right? You create a shopping list based on the sample days, you think about whether you want to do some meal prep, some batch cooking, if it's convenient, if it helps you with your self care and reducing stress. And then you go and buy the groceries. Simple, right? Then you're going to log everything in execute. So you're going to, you know, meal prep if you have to, but if not, or if you chose to. But if not, you know you wake up in the morning, you've got this plan ready to follow whether you've whether you've pre documented it, or it's mental or whatever works for you, again, flexibility, and you just start to execute it, and you start to log it. And at the end of the week, guess what you have, you have super valuable information on actual versus expected feedback. That's the feedback loop actual versus expected. So anything that you missed, you reevaluate. You say, Why did I miss it?

Philip Pape  42:56

Is it okay that I missed it? Do I need to switch something up? Is it tied to psychological hunger? Is it tied to something that came up in my life? And how could I better accommodate that in the future, and on and on and on, it's all a detective game, let's say, it's, at least, you know, I enjoy this, you can hear it in my voice with my clients, and they come in and they check in for the week, and they're a little bit discouraged. You know, my checking back to them will always be positive, because I know that that discouragement comes from the fact that they disappointed themselves and didn't quite meet their plan. And for me, I look at it as Oh, now we have this amazing information that we can grow from growth mindset, you're going to be even better this week, and the week after the week after you're just going to constantly grow. And this is this is awesome, this is an opportunity. And so I love having all that information logged, because then it's easy to see what's going on. Okay, the next thing, I don't want to forget this in all of this detail. But please do listen to your body all the time, and pay attention to your body's responses. And then let that also serve as information for the meal, even if you're not writing it down. If you constantly get digestive issues, and you can tie it to what you ate. Come on, that's that's telling you the information right there, stop eating that, like stop eating that thing. And make a change, maybe it's less of that, a different version of that, cutting it out altogether, switching to something else, whatever, that's your body telling you what you want to do. Okay. And then all of this is an ongoing process. So I would say not only do you make adjustments potentially every week, but as the weeks go on you and you become more attuned to your body and you get into a routine, it almost becomes easier to adjust at that point. Because you can pick out where changes cause outcomes, you know, right? Like if you all of a sudden start to experience something, and you've only changed this one thing in your meal this week. You know, that could be the culprit, right? It gives you it gives you more sensitivity to your own body and to your meals with that awareness. Okay, this is a lot like I said, it's it's a lot. So now you have the answer. You have the answer the perfect meal plan, which is sent Believe the one that works for you. And so now you're equipped with multiple ways to get there multiple strategies, step by step approach. Hopefully I didn't miss anything. If I did, please reach out to me. But I think that'll get you going quite a way along the road to success if you need some help putting one together. Okay, again, I do not do meal plans. I do not give people meal plans. However, if you join my email list, and then you reply to let me know that you listen to the show, right, Episode 112. And you want my free guide to creating your own meal plan, I will send you a guide that gives you a list of foods that gives you sample meal plans for inspiration only. And it gives you foods sorted by protein density, meaning all the types of foods for steak, for example, sorted by which ones have more, the most versus the least protein, which really helps because when you're in fat loss, for example, and you're trying to play this little Tetris game of keeping the protein high, but the calories low and enough carbs for energy. It can be difficult, but I find that starting with very high protein density usually makes the rest of the equation fall in line pretty easily. So that's why I provide that in there. If you want it go to wits, & weights.com/email, join my list and then just reply to my email. I answer everyone, I'm a human being I love conversation. So do that. Go to the link in my show notes or go to wits. & weights.com/email. All right. In our next episode 113 barbell training for physical therapy and injury prevention with John Patricio Oh, this is an awesome one. John is a physical therapy consultant throughout my rehab journey, and he's just a master at combining barbell training with rehab. You don't find that too often in the industry, and he's going to teach you a lot. We discuss how he marries those two worlds. We're going to challenge conventional wisdom. As always, we're going to give you a framework that could drastically change your approach to injury prevention and rehab. It did for me, you'll learn why strength isn't just about lifting weights and why barbell training could be your secret weapon against not just injury, but mediocrity. Please subscribe or follow the podcast right now in your podcast app, please pause or go into the app whether it's Apple podcasts overcast, whatever, Spotify, click either follow or subscribe, whatever they call it, and you'll get notified and automatically download new episodes. It also helps me it helps the ranking of the show, the more subscribers there are, so don't just download willy nilly actually subscribe and that will help others find the show. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong