The Feed My Health Podcast

The Meal Plan Trap: Why Rules Don't Create Results

• Rosalind Tapper

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Meal plans promise control but deliver restriction, creating unhealthy cycles of guilt, dependency, and all-or-nothing thinking that undermine real progress and disconnect us from the joy of eating.

• Meal plans represent an understandable desire for control when feeling overwhelmed
• They offer a false promise of simplicity by removing decision-making
• One-size-fits-all approaches fail to account for individual circumstances, preferences, and real life flexibility
• Following external rules creates dependency instead of building true understanding
• When life inevitably happens, deviation from the plan triggers guilt and reinforces feelings of failure
• Meal plans appropriate only for specific situations like competitive bodybuilders or medical requirements
• Women need education, empowerment and sustainable habits instead of rigid rules
• True success comes from understanding how to fuel your body and making confident choices in any situation
• Identity-based change means becoming someone who prioritizes health consistently, not perfectly
• Building a flexible approach that includes satisfaction and enjoyment leads to sustainable results

Take control of your relationship with food through education rather than restriction. Learn to trust yourself to make empowered choices that align with both your health goals and your values.


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Speaker 1:

Welcome back everybody to the Feed my Health podcast with your host, rosalind Taffer. I hope you're all doing well and you've recovered from the bank holiday weekend. We are about to go into another bank holiday, which seems absolutely crazy to me. I just I love routine. I absolutely thrive off structure. So to have days in a month where you can just I don't know, it just seems absolutely mental. But I'm enjoying it. I'm definitely enjoying it. It's so nice to spend time with family and friends and to have that little bit of downtime. So I hope you are all doing really, really well and I got loads and loads of positive feedback from last week's podcast.

Speaker 1:

I don't know why I had to go erm, like what am I talking about? The reason why I'm like kind of here, there and everywhere this morning is because I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet and I need to address it. I need to address it because I have a lot to say and what we are going to be talking about today is meal plans, because I flipping hate them. And let me just say I don't hate them for the right people that need them, and I am going to discuss the right people that need them. And remember. This is always, in my opinion, okay, but from my experience my own personal experience and also the experience of seeing other people and speaking to so many people who have followed a meal plan think they need a meal plan, tried a meal plan and the results from that, you know I can see that there is a definite negative towards having them, and I'm going to go into why that is. I'm also going to talk about my experience as well because, believe me, there was a massive time in my life where I thought that I needed a meal plan and I think the logic behind wanting a meal plan is, you know, makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense If I take myself back to when I was in my 20s.

Speaker 1:

I was in the thick of child rearing. I had three children. At one point I had three children under four and you can imagine an ambitious, highly motivated, highly driven person who had three young children and wanted to kind of do it. All was very much in the mindset of like I'm a people pleaser, I don't want to let people down, I say yes to everything. Had no boundaries. You know all of that. I had great boundaries with the children. Like I am so grateful that I had that for myself. I don't know why that happened, but I did. But everything else I didn't and I felt really out of control.

Speaker 1:

I think this is the critical thing and I think that when it comes to how you look and how you feel and the changes that you want to make, a lot of women feel out of control. They want to gain that control back. And I think when you start to get to almost rock bottom or you're really unhappy with how you look, you do whatever you can to get that control back. And I think that's a great thing if it's done in a healthy, very well-educated way. But when you are clawing every bit of information and thinking that that is education and then utilizing it to gain that control, it can be a slippery slope depending on where you're going for your information.

Speaker 1:

And let me just say that when I was going for my information at that point it was from the likes of Hello Magazine. It was, you know, the magazines you would get in the hairdressers back in the day. It was the backs of those where you'd see some random celebrity feature and they tell you what they ate in a day. It was me Googling things. It was me searching the internet. It was me following certain sections of a workout DVD that had a little bit of information about nutrition. And I would like run with this stuff because I feel like I was back in control and I couldn't see I was so kind of rose tinted glasses I couldn't see how damaging it was. And I couldn't see I was so kind of rose-tinted glasses, I couldn't see how damaging it was. And I'm seeing it again and again and again. And the reason why I've got such a beer in my bonnet about it today is because my entire social media was packed full of people who were doing Ozempic who didn't need to do Ozempic, by the way, for, you know, health reasons, but were doing it for weight loss, simply weight loss only.

Speaker 1:

Then they've gone off it and then they're now going oh my gosh, I've put all the weight back on. And then they're going for the next thing. And the next thing that I'm seeing them doing and I'm not going to say it because I don't want to open that can of worms to my audience, because I think it's atrocious but the next thing that they're now doing is essentially a very, very unhealthy meal plan, which will have the same exact effect. You will drop an immense amount of weight, which, in brackets, is water, lots of muscle and a teeny, tiny, weenie little bit of excess fat. And then, once you've done it for a week and you've bared it if you even get through it, because it is a brutal you will then put all that weight back on, because the weight that you lost wasn't body fat, it was water.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's simmer down, rosalind, let's simmer down. So I want to say that I and if you haven't guessed it from this, I understand that you want to feel back in control of your body, and I also understand that if you are spinning a lot of plates in your life, you are going to want to have somebody take that thought process away from you. And so the idea of somebody giving you a meal plan whether that's a coach, whether it's something that you Google, something you research yourself, the idea of having rules around what you should eat and what time you should eat it, and all of the rest of it I understand why you think that that's better for you, because you think, well, I don't need to think about it anymore. That makes so much sense because maybe in your life you feel quite overwhelmed. So having something or somebody tell you what to eat and when to eat it, oh, this is going to make my life so much easier. I totally get it.

Speaker 1:

But from my own experience and from coaching so many women at this stage, they don't struggle with what to eat, when to eat it, when there is routine in their day. So, for example, they wake up on a Monday morning, they have that natural boost on motivation and so they feel motivated to make a great choice in the kitchen. And then they feel motivated to make a great choice in the kitchen at lunchtime or in the office or whatever. It's the situations where life quote unquote life happens. And this is where the conflict happens, because in your head you think that life means relaxation, socializing, eating out, enjoying moments with your family, being spontaneous, and you can't do that with a meal plan. You cannot do that with a meal plan. There are people that will do it with a meal plan and they will feel miserable, they will feel restricted, they will feel sad, they will feel like they are impinging on everybody else around them's happiness. They will feel bored actually bored, okay, bored of what they're eating, and the joy from food and experiences stops completely.

Speaker 1:

So I want to talk about why I firmly believe that meal plans are not the one. Okay, so meal plans, they're one size fits all, but you're an individual. So what you're saying is please treat me like an individual, please treat me like the individual that I am, but give me a meal plan that you would give to anybody. And, yes, there might be certain discrepancies in quantities and blah, blah, blah. But what meal plan is going to have a lovely romantic meal with your partner on a Friday night in there? Or you know a family dinner that you all decide you like? Or you know a restaurant meal out? Maybe you want to go for a curry with the girls? Or an afternoon tea or a brunch or whatever. No plan is going to have that in there. So they are one size fits all. They don't account specifically to your personal preferences and if they did, it's relying on the fact that you will always have those things in your house and there'll be never any emergencies, difficulties that happen in your life, nothing. They don't take into consideration your hormonal shifts, your cultural foods or your energy demands. So if you can find, if you can find somebody that can write you a meal plan on a daily basis, based on what you have in your fridge, any life circumstances that crop up, any, just any, any scenarios, any niche little scenarios or nuances that come up in your day, then wow, like, go for it. I would guess that maybe you would need a celebrity chef, just saying I think as well.

Speaker 1:

The biggest thing for me, and the reason why I'm so against meal plans, is because they do not allow for real life flexibility. We are creatures of habit and routine, for sure, but we also like to feel in control of our choices. And what's that phrase where they say variety they'll go? Variety is the spice of life. Okay, life isn't predictable. And if you are my age in fact, I could say this to myself when I was in my twenties as well, because I feel like I fast forwarded 10 years before everybody else but life isn't predictable.

Speaker 1:

Meal plans don't account for those spontaneous meals, those social events or family needs, and the problem with that is and I will talk about this in a little bit more detail later on but when you then make a decision that aligns with your actual values, which is spending time with loved ones or going away for bank holiday weekend or whatever it is, if you then don't follow the meal plan that you promised your best self that you would do. What's going to happen? You are then going to be faced with incredible amounts of guilt and incredible amounts of shame, and you will feel like you've failed so immediately. If you have spent your entire adult life going from one diet to another diet, to another diet to another diet and never really letting it stick, that fear of failure is building up and building up and building up. And when you then want to go out for dinner which is a perfectly harmless decision to make as soon as you make that decision you go.

Speaker 1:

I failed my diet, oh. And of course, you believe that this was going to happen because you failed everything before, and so it's just only reinforcing what you believed already from the beginning is that you'll never stick to anything. Can you see how it's a very toxic thing? It's a very, very toxic thing. The other element of this is that it encourages you to be very dependent. It means that you are very reliant on external rules rather than trusting yourself to make decisions, and it's very hard to trust yourself to make the right decisions if you were not educated on what those right decisions are.

Speaker 1:

And I just want to kind of say as well, like and this is a really hard thing for me to say because I am on social media but I also feel, because I was, I was a person that did this. I also felt that because I was consuming a lot of information from a lot of different sources, I felt that I was educated. I felt like I did know what to do, and a lot of women who speak to me initially they will say that they will say I feel like I know what I should be doing, like I feel quite well educated around nutrition. Well, potentially, yes, but unless you've got you know formal qualifications and done extensive research on scientific data, having you know tidbits from TikTok and wherever you know, I don't think is just assume that you're a newbie, just assume you know nothing, because there is a lot of conflicting information and if you followed all of the quote unquote education that you found on social media, you know you would be conflicting yourself all day long, all day long.

Speaker 1:

So it really does encourage dependency and actually, as women, we want to feel empowered. We want to feel like we know exactly what we're doing cool, calm and collected. We want to know exactly what choices we want to make empowered. We want to feel like we know exactly what we're doing cool, calm and collected. We want to know exactly what choices we want to make and why. We want to know what food does for your body, which is why I'm, you know, putting out those recipes with information about this particular ingredient will help you with this thing within your body. So important to know that, because then you can make choices that align with how you want to look, how you want to feel, and you're back in control again. And that's how, ultimately, we need to be. We also we need to make decisions from a place of ownership and understanding.

Speaker 1:

So, if you go out for dinner deciding, you know, this is how I'm going to play it today, this social occasion, this is how I'm going to play it today. Let's say you're trying to lose body fat. You're then going to play it this today, this social occasion, this is how I'm going to play it today. Let's say you're trying to lose body fat. You're then going to decide, right, when I go out for this meal, am I focusing still on fat loss or am I just going to focus on maintaining, or am I not worried really about what the scale. Does I mean and genuinely mean it Like I hear this all the time oh, I don't mind what result I get. Two days later, scale goes up, naturally because you've consumed more carbs, you've got more food in your system, etc. Etc. Etc, etc. And then the scale goes up and then, boom, I feel so flat, I feel so defeated, I feel rubbish and it's like no, you didn't truly own your decision and I'm totally going off on a tangent here.

Speaker 1:

But it's important that we learn how to make choices, why we're making them, and then own those choices and take radical responsibility. It goes back to what I was saying yesterday, last week, about success. Meal plans, again, I feel, are a short-term solution. They lead to very much all or nothing thinking. You are either on the plan or you are off the plan.

Speaker 1:

What about just being like the plan? What about just being like living life? What about just eating? What about? On Monday? You make like really nutritious choices most of the time and then in the evening you have a bar of chocolate, a glass of wine or, I don't know, a slice of pizza, like that's just life, that's balance, that's understanding and knowing why you're making those decisions. And the thing is it's very hard to make decisions like that and ever feel like you can if you don't really understand how and I think that a meal plan doesn't allow for that education to ever really happen, because it's not needed.

Speaker 1:

It's just like follow this, follow this, follow this, and if you don't follow this, you're not on the plan and then you feel like crap, right, so it's a short-term solution. It will lead to all or nothing thinking. It can lead to binge restrict cycles and it can lead to you starting again every single Monday, like I did, because at the weekend, your weekend isn't a meal plan. Like, you want to go out with your friends, you want to go out with your family, you want to go out for a pub lunch, you want to go for a spontaneous Sunday roast? Well, you can't do that if you're on a meal plan. So of course you're gonna have to start again on Monday and it's just over egging the toxic mentality that we are currently in and it's just not healthy and it's not necessary. It doesn't teach you true habit change at all.

Speaker 1:

Following a plan is not the same as building sustainable habits and really understanding your body, your metabolism and how to get that firing on our cylinders. It doesn't teach you anything about habit change at all. So it's another massive component. And the thing is, everything that we do, every decision that we make, is created by a habit, whether it's a good habit or a bad habit. And the only way to get rid of bad habits is not to get rid of bad habits, it's actually to replace them with better ones. A meal plan is not a better habit for poor food choices because you still want to make those poor food choices, because you still want to make those poor food choices because you want to rebel against the meal plan that you thought you needed.

Speaker 1:

True habit change happens. Positive habit change happens when you understand. Like, let's just say, for example, you wanted to eat better and you decided that you were eating too many crisps. Now a lot of people would oh, I'll just cut out all crisps, but then all you're left with is thoughts of crisps. All you're thinking about is crisps. You're walking down the street and suddenly every single person looks like a giant bag of crisps. But what if you actually understood why you wanna get rid of those crisps, and understand what it is you wanna feed your body and why you want to feed it and then put in something that you love.

Speaker 1:

This is critical. Put in something that you love that you rate higher than a seven out of 10 and put it in it instead. Don't put something in that you think that you should eat, like, oh, I think that I should drink like celery juice for breakfast because that's what looks great. Or I think that I should drink like celery juice for breakfast because that's what looks great. Or I think that I should drink matcha instead of have a cup of coffee in the morning. Like, don't do things that you think you should do, because when you use the word should, what you're basically saying is I'm comparing myself to everybody else. Put things in that you actually love, because when you love it, it won't feel. It won't feel painful. Why would it? Why should it feel painful? And also, you're going to stick to it 100%. So, habit change a huge, a huge component of everything we do inside for you, my health and I want those habits to be ones that you love and empower you and provide you with a much better, healthier, sustainable lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

That you wake up. You're flinging yourself out of bed, like today it's. What time is it? I don't know what time it is, but, like this morning, I just suddenly got such a bee in my body. I was so excited. I was like, right, jump in the shower, get ready. I want to talk about this Because I am seeing a hell of a lot of noise around meal plans and why people think they should have them, and the latest trends and the latest four week challenge. And you know, and the painful thing is, whilst I can look at that externally and think, well, this, there's a lot going on in the world. Right now.

Speaker 1:

I'm having conversations day to day with people in my Instagram DMs, on the phone, about their experiences and where they're at, and it's all because of a meal plan. Whether they've been given a meal plan that didn't include any of the things that they liked, given a meal plan that was incredibly boring, or given a meal plan but they don't really understand why they're eating it. You know they're not seeing any results from it and ultimately, like, why would you do something? It's like walking a plank. Somebody tells you to walk a plank, but you've got no idea why. Like what would you do that? No, you wouldn't do that. You would want to know specifically why am I doing this? Food is a massive part of people's lives. So for somebody to dictate to me what I've got to eat, like ingredient to ingredient gosh, I want to see some flipping epic results from that. Anyway, I will talk about who meal plans are suitable for, but at the moment I'm just talking about general population and you know, with the idea of probably wanting to lose weight.

Speaker 1:

Okay, one of the key components and the most damaging thing and I have touched on this earlier is the fact that it creates a lot of guilt and shame, and failing a meal plan makes women feel like they're the problem when their plan was probably really unrealistic. How many times have you felt that you have failed and that it's because of you, that you didn't have the willpower, that you aren't disciplined enough? And then, when you kind of tell yourself all of these things, you then start to create excuses around those things so I'm not disciplined, I don't have willpower Then suddenly turns into and that's because I don't have time, that's because I suddenly have too much going on, that's because I've got high blood pressure, that's because this, that's because that you start to justify how crap you feel about yourself, because then it will hopefully lessen the blow. Right, we are grown-ass women. We are grown-ass women. You should be able to walk to your fridge, open the door and pick something that you want to eat, know exactly why you're picking it, have complete ownership over it and not feel bad about your choices. So meal plans do really highlight that fear of failure, because it's very difficult to stick to a meal plan seven days a week, 365 days of the year. I would love to actually meet somebody that could do that, a gen pop woman who wants to lose weight. I would love to meet you and I would love to tell you that you're a liar.

Speaker 1:

Ain't nobody following a meal plan on Easter Sunday? Okay, nobody, nobody's following a meal plan on Sundays, let alone Easter Sunday. You've got to do things that actually embody a lifestyle that you want to lead. Okay, yes, if fat loss is your goal, there are going to be some things that you're going to need to put in place, parameters that you are going to need to follow. But once you've got to that point and you move into kind of up-regulating your metabolism and improving things and eating more food, you should have ingrained in you these habits and this lifestyle change to the point where you're not even thinking about it anymore. It's just who you are, it's just what you do, and it blows my mind and this is my kind of last point on this and why I'm so against it is that it's not family friendly, unless you are all prepared to follow this meal plan seven days a week, which I think for a child would be incredibly toxic.

Speaker 1:

Meal plans are just too rigid. They can be bland, they can separate you from what you eat with your spouse, with your kids, or they have to be everything that's the same, and then your spouse is probably annoyed because they don't really like the food that's on it, or the kids don't really enjoy it, or whatever it's it just it's not realistic. It is not realistic, not at all. No, no, no, no, no. Anyway, so who are meal plans for? Let's talk about that, because I do believe that there are, you know, specific kinds of people that they should have a meal plan, or it does benefit them, and this is the critical thing. Does it benefit? Does it benefit way more than the alternative? That's what we have to think about here.

Speaker 1:

So people who meal plans are for bodybuilders that are prepping for a show Okay, this is somebody that is doing something, either for a very intense habit or habits, that is, doing something either for a very intense habit or habits, hobby, or it is something that they want to do for a career or career progression. That's different. You will follow lots of things that you maybe don't want to follow so much to get ahead in your career. It's just a fact. When there is a payoff, you'll do something right. Competition, athletes, stuff like that. You know, people prepping for a show where precision is part of the sport. And if precision is part of the sport and you're taking part in that sport, I could imagine that taking part in that meal plan is an amazing thing and you enjoy it. So bodybuilders.

Speaker 1:

The second people are, I would say, people that are on medical diets, like their life depends on it, kind of stuff supervised by professionals, by dieticians. So people who are maybe in post-surgery, who have food intolerances, what else, you know, all of the areas of health basically where your life depends on it eating disorders, things like that. People should need potentially to be on a meal plan and that's great and that's a fantastic thing, but remember as well that a lot of this is short term. They're not doing this year round. I mean, potentially for people with health problems, it could lead to a long-term thing, but then that becomes not because they choose it but because they have to. And so you can see, can't you, how, actually, when you think about gen popper wanting to lose weight, you don't have to follow a meal plan, you don't have to follow it year round, your life doesn't depend on it, whereas for people that are doing it for health reasons, their life does depend on it and, um, so they are the people that I definitely say.

Speaker 1:

You know, meal plans are for short-term or photo shoots. So when I did one of my photo shoots, I never followed a meal plan, except for one of them, which was actually just the last week heading into the shoot, and that was because I wanted to bring my A game and I was so happy about it. I was really pleased, and it was, by the way, just to caveat, it was a meal plan I wrote for myself from my own education, from years and years and years of knowledge and education. So it wasn't even and it was food that I chose, that I rated a 7 out of 10. So you can see how differences are. And then meal plans are for people who want control, not education, and they are okay repeating the same meals over and over and over again. So potentially this might be people who are living on their own.

Speaker 1:

Individuals In my head, I'm thinking people who are like famous actors. Maybe they're on set for a little bit and they need to get in great shape, things like that, so really out of the norm, you know. In great shape, things like that, so really out of the norm, you know. And I think that we need to talk about what women actually need to do instead, and that is to be educated, really be educated and empowered, understand how to fuel their changing body and to work with their hormones very, very important. They need to have real life flexibility.

Speaker 1:

You are only going to stick at something if you enjoy the thing. If you don't enjoy it, you're not really going to stick to it. So it's very important that, whatever method you take, you ask yourself this question could I do this 365 days a year without feeling like I'm missing out, without feeling deprived, without feeling like I'm missing out, without feeling deprived, without feeling annoyed? And you probably will say yes initially, because you're like oh, this is amazing. I can eat this and this and this and this. No, no, no, no, no, I'll give you. I'll give you a week. I will give you a week before you go. Ah crap, my next door neighbor wants to have a drink and she's made this delicious cake, whatever. Okay, yeah. So real life flexibility is so important.

Speaker 1:

The ability to make choices at a restaurant, at a party, on a busy day, without panic, like so important. If you walked into a sandwich shop on your lunch break, I want you to have the ability to make the best possible choice in that situation, if that is your only option. Now, of course, we all have choices and we have plenty of options in this day and age. So it wouldn't necessarily be. But let's just say, you know, you had a gun to your head and somebody said we are eating at this sandwich shop whether you like it or not, but you get to pick whatever want. I want you to be able to make great decisions that you love, that you enjoy, that align with the goals that you want, and you will come away from that feeling super empowered. I want you to have sustainable routine, a rhythm of eating that includes variety, that includes satisfaction and that includes enjoyment so important, especially when we're thinking about gut health and stuff like that. It's so important that you have variety in your diet and that you enjoy it.

Speaker 1:

Mindset rewiring is another thing. So shifting from I need to be told what to eat to I know what fuels and satisfies me oh my gosh, can you imagine the feeling of just being able to whip up a plate of food at a moment's notice and know that it's going to fuel you and it's going to satisfy you? Unreal, absolutely unreal. And then body awareness. So learning to eat for hunger, for energy and for strength, not just for you know I've got to eat this portion of this and this portion of that, or you know I've got to eat this portion of this and this portion of that. Identity based change Becoming a woman who prioritises her health consistently.

Speaker 1:

Not perfectly OK. If you have a meal plan slapped in your face, you are going to feel that you need to follow it perfectly, and if you don't see the results because you didn't follow it perfectly, you're going to get again blame yourself. So empowering things are knowing, educating, making decisions for yourself and understanding why you're making them, and that's ultimately where we all want to be and where we all should be. So if anybody ever had any confusion about my feelings around meal plans, then this is, this is the Bible. So if you, if you ever have a friend who says, oh, I can see that you've got some amazing results, what are you doing? Oh, I'm part of Feed my Health, send them this so that they can understand a little bit more about my thought process around, what we do, because I think it's really, I think it can be really confusing, because a lot of people in the diet industry, do, you know, use meal plans or rules or whatever, and it's just not necessary. It's not necessary at all, it's not, and there's no way way to live. And I really want to build a. I know I really want to build.

Speaker 1:

I have built a life where I pretty much wake up every morning, I know what I'm going to eat, why I'm going to eat it, and I love it and it's a lifestyle. And I know that if I go to somebody else's house and they've cooked, I have the choice about what I eat. I have a choice of whether I bring things to contribute towards it, and I have a choice if I completely, you know, indulge in everything that they have to offer. It's always a choice at the end of the day, and that's more empowering than being told you must do this.

Speaker 1:

And I understand just circling back that if you are in a position where you feel that you do need a meal plan, it's less likely about the fact that you think you need a meal plan or more about the fact that you feel that you are out of control, maybe in your body but also in your life, and you are seeking back that control. And that makes perfect sense, because that is exactly why I was motivated to seek out a meal plan every single Monday. And that makes perfect sense because that is exactly why I was motivated to seek out a meal plan every single Monday. And it was off the back of every single meal plan. I started on a Monday because it was so restrictive and then, come Friday, saturday, sunday, I didn't want to follow this meal plan. I wanted to. You know, it was very all or nothing. I was either really restrictive and really hungry all week or completely overindulged at the weekends, and so I was led my decisions were always led with guilt and shame and that feeling of not being in control.

Speaker 1:

And when you're making decisions from that place, just be very, very careful that you think logically rather than emotionally, because as a woman, we do make decisions with our emotions, and that's a great thing in some cases, but when it comes to your health, you could really screw up your identity, you could really screw up your mindset, you could really screw up your body and your metabolism, and I don't want that for you. So, with all that being said, I'm going to love you and leave you all, and I hope you're having a fabulous start to your week. I know it's Monday next week when you'll be getting this, so if you're listening to it on a Monday, you'll know that it's the start of a new week, and I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful start and a wonderful week, and please remember to continue to keep feeding your health.