Episode 97: How AI can Make Meal Planning and Macro Tracking Easier

In this episode, we explore the benefits of using AI for meal planning and making your favorite recipes macro friendly.  We discuss how AI can reduce decision fatigue and streamline the meal prep process by providing customized meal plans, grocery lists, and recipe modifications to fit nutritional goals. Tune in to learn practical tips for leveraging AI to enhance your nutrition habits and save time.

00:27 The Challenge of Meal Planning

01:00 Using AI for Meal Planning

02:48 Practical Example of AI Meal Planning

05:32 Using AI to Modify Recipes

08:45 The Importance of Simplicity in Nutrition

Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed it.

Grab our FREE fast food guide here.

Book a FREE strategy call here.

Reserve your spot with a Couture Coach: Buy a 1:1 coaching package

Sign up for our FREE newsletter here.

Follow us for more tips, tricks, and support in our private Facebook Group, Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30.

Follow us on Instagram @couture_fitness_coaching

Check at our website and blog.

Grab our free mini course - The REAL Reason you can't lose weight

Want to start boosting your metabolism today? Buy our $79 DIY, self-paced "Master Your Metabolism" course.

Want customized plan for boosting your metabolism? Learn more about our 1:1 coaching

Transcript

0:44

Hey everyone. It's Joe and welcome back to the Booster Metabolism after age 30 podcast. Like I said, I'm Joe and I'm here with one of our coaches Janine. And today we're gonna be talking about something that can save you tons of time and stress and decision fatigue when it comes to eating healthy. And that is how to use chat, GPT or AI to make meal planning and tracking your macros so much easier. Janine, do you wanna talk about why this is important? Absolutely. Meal planning is one of the biggest challenges we see with our clients, especially when they're following just a macro approach and the spectrum's kind of wide open. Just hit your protein, carb, and fat goal and stay, around a certain calorie range. And people know what their goals are. But when it comes to figuring out what to eat, that's where just it becomes overwhelming. And the cool thing is AI tools like Chat, GBT can actually help simplify the process. Yeah, so I stumbled upon this summer, just getting really overwhelmed with analysis paralysis, decision fatigue, spending. Way too much time agonizing over which recipes to make which would be the best. And finally what I just use Chat two as my decision maker, it really helps with the decision fatigue. And then all the tedious steps that go into meal planning. So this summer, one thing I did, i've realized that I love to use JA PT for is for quick meal planning. And the way I use it is, let's say it's a Sunday and I'm staring at my fridge thinking, what the heck are we gonna make for dinner and for lunches this week, or for breakfast and dinners? And so I just literally tell Ja, GBT hey. I need to make this amount of meals this week. Here are the ingredients I already have. Here's my general macro goal. For example, I need to get 120 grams of protein per day with balanced carbs and moderate fat. I might even tell it how many carbs and fats I have, or I just wanna make. Five dinners this week with 30 grams of protein each. And again here's how many meals I wanna prep. And then here's how many servings per meal I need. I'd have four people in my family, so it might be, each meal needs to have four servings. So there's enough for the whole family. And so within a few minutes. It will give me a plan that matches my goals, uses ingredients I already have, or make me a shopping list of all the ingredients I still need to get to make my meals and. It just takes away so much of the guesswork and the tedious planning that goes into even getting to the grocery store. So I'll give an example here of what you might get out of chat, GPT if you used it for this purpose. So let's say I might have some chicken breasts in the freezer, some ground Turkey. I know I've got rice, I've got some bucan of black beans in the pantry. Broccoli, maybe I have some peppers leftover from the prior week in Greek yogurt, and I tell Chad, GBTI need five dinners with about 30 grams of protein each, 400 to 500 calories per serving. And then I might get a menu like Turkey and taco bowls with rice and beans. It will give me a recipe and how to prep it. Chicken stir fry with veggies and jasmine rice might be the next meal. Chicken salad with Greek yogurt. They made into wraps, Turkey chili and then sheet pan chicken fajitas that, that might be what it comes up with, those ingredients. And it will give me a grocery list. If I ask it to. It will also give me like a prep schedule and how much time, I need to set aside to prep each of these meals. And then I'm not spending hours scrolling Pinterest. Or on Google, and I just have a plan that has been given to me and it literally takes about five minutes. And then really all I have to do is execute. And again, it's not that I couldn't do these things on my own, I just find left to my own devices. I would spend an hour on Pinterest just trying to find the perfect recipe. And then to convert that into a shopping list. We're talking tons of mental energy again before I even get to the grocery store or start the food prep process. So I really use it, when I am feeling overwhelmed and I want to make food, and I just, that whole conundrum when you stare at the fridge and say what am I gonna make for dinner? It will solve that for me. So I love it. I treat it like my boss, and then all I have to do is execute. So that's my favorite way. I don't do this every week, but again, when I get in a real. Pickle or I just want to feel organized going into the week or even a day. Even, it can even be like lunchtime and I know I've got some ingredients at home and I don't have any creative ideas. I've spent all my mental energy getting work tasks done or getting the kids from here to there. It will just tell me what to make for dinner and it will do the guesswork for me. So that's how I've been using it to make nutrition easier and to cut out on eating out, and also just reduce the mental fatigue. But Janine, I know you have another. Creative way of using chat GPT to make macro tracking and following your macros easier. So lay it on us. Yeah, so I don't really use it so much for a meal plan, but what I do like to use it for is, I think we all have that, one recipe that we just love and now that we're really paying attention to our health and, nutrition, maybe it doesn't feel like that recipe is that. Gonna fit into those goals that we have, right? And so you can take that recipe and put it in chat, GPT, and ask it to make some adjustments to it to meet your nutritional goals. And that's what I love about it. So say you find, or you have, your mom's lasagna recipe that she made and you love it. But you wanna try to make it, like I said, fit more into your goals. You can. Literally take the recipe, put it into chat GBT and say, make this higher in protein. Keep it under four 50 calories per serving and reduce the fat content. And maybe you even tell it what you wanna reduce the fat content below and it might suggest swapping and ground Turkey for beef. Maybe using cottage cheese or Greek yogurt instead of the ricotta adding in extra veggies. And all of a sudden your lasagna recipe becomes more balanced that actually supports your goal. And that's one way that I love to use it. Another way is maybe you want a smoothie, but you don't wanna blow through your carbs first thing in the morning. You can paste that recipe into chat GBT and say, make it higher in protein and under 20 grams of carbs. And so you know, it, it will then give you more suggestions to swap in different things or swap out different things to fit into the goals that you're. You're seeking, so you're not stuck guessing. And I think that's what's hard is sometimes we don't wanna break away from those recipes or those foods that we like, but we are open to maybe finding ways to make them a little bit healthier or more balanced to fit our goals. And so that's how I really like to use chat, GBT. You can put any recipe into it and ask and just continue to drill down it, just like you were talking about the meal plan of, okay, if it tells you to swap it out for something but you don't like that, maybe you don't like Greek yogurt, you can say gimme another alternative for Greek yogurt. And you just keep going down that path until you find exactly what you want. Yeah. I love this. I haven't tried this yet. I definitely will. When I do have time to cook and cook recipes, I want they're not always the healthiest. There are some cookbooks that I particularly love that are not macro based. But the food's really good. And so I think this is a great way to keep some flexibility in your nutrition plan. So you're still. Getting to make all the recipes you love and your comfort foods, but you're just coming up with, not you, but someone else. Again, all you have to do is execute, is figuring out how to make it healthier and again, this could save hours of work that you might spend in my FitnessPal or nutrition app or on your own trying to figure out, if I sub ground Turkey for ground beef, how many fat grams does that save me? Or how much does that increase the protein? You're just not stuck doing all that. That could be hours of work. While it might not be perfect, it gets you closer to your goal in a very doable way. So I guess almost from a behavioral or mindset standpoint, let's talk about why this matters. Again, this is a huge. Tip for our clients in a way that can really help anyone who's trying to improve their nutrition habits. Because so much of nutrition success isn't about motivation, it's about implementation and about having systems and simplicity. And so the easier you can make things for yourself, the more likely you are to stick with it if you love the idea of meal planning and knowing what you're gonna make and ha going to the grocery store once a week to make, a certain number of meals, but it takes you three hours to do that. Who has three hours of extra time, and if something can literally do it for you in five or 10 minutes, that's a big win and that's a big time savings. What are your thoughts, Janine? Yeah, no, exactly. I agree with that. And I think one thing. To note is a lot of times our clients will say I just, don't wanna eat the same thing every single week. I don't wanna eat the same breakfast week to week. But again, they start getting stressed of okay, if I'm not gonna eat this breakfast, what's a different breakfast that's still gonna meet? My nutritional goals and you can utilize chat GBT to really help you figure out some variety. So some people are okay eating the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day, and some people want more variety and, but when our clients, I have, just from my experience, when clients don't know how to. It. It's just a struggle. And like you said, I think a lot of it comes back to time and having to spend hours scrolling, finding different recipes, figuring it out when they can just take one that they know that they like, throw it into chat, GBT, ask it to make some adjustments so it's fits into their goals. It just makes it so much easier. And let's face it, we're all busy with careers, with family, with relationships. And so the things, if we can use tools like chat GBT to take out, just the monotony of having to go through all of the recipe and figure it out on your own. Why wouldn't you use that? Yeah. Yeah. And we, at the end of the day, I think we're all creatures of habit. Like you said, if my biggest tip to someone who is looking to change their nutrition is to not completely overhaul everything and start eating all new foods, it would be take foods that you know, that you love and see how you can make them a little bit healthier. Absolutely. Or have a little bit more protein and be a little bit more. Macro balanced, and this is just a really easy way to do that that frankly, we didn't really have access to before. You could buy healthy cookbooks like, or, all your favorites made healthier, but this kind of takes it to the next level. So yeah, I know that AI and chat GPT, maybe everyone doesn't love it, but let's use these tools for our benefit where we can. Yeah. Again, if you've been feeling overwhelmed with meal planning or struggling to hit your macros, try using GPT as your meal planning assistant. Give it your ingredients, give it your goals and your servings, and it let it do the hard work and the heavy lifting, it's basically like having a nutrition assistant right at your fingertip. And that's what's nice about it too. Yeah. And like Janine said, you can always use it to tweak recipes to make them healthier and higher in protein and more aligned with your calorie goals. So all good uses of this new tool that we have. So we hope that this episode gives you some practical ideas for how to use technology to make life and healthy eating easier. Thanks for tuning in and until next time, stay consistent with those nutrition goals we'll talk to you next time. Thanks.