The Win On Purpose Podcast
The Win On Purpose Podcast focuses primarily on health and fitness tips and discussions, but we love to celebrate ALL THINGS in regard to being the best you can possibly be in business, relationships, and personal development. Win on purpose means just that, purposefully taking action to become your best self, and following your purpose to develop the passion needed to excel at anything in life!
The Win On Purpose Podcast
Why Cookie Cutter Meal Plans Fail
Ever bought a meal plan online that promised amazing results, only to abandon it a few weeks later? You're not alone, and more importantly—you're not the problem.
Cookie-cutter meal plans are fundamentally flawed, setting most people up for failure despite their best intentions. This episode dives deep into why these generic nutrition approaches consistently fail and what actually works instead.
Coach Adam Kelley breaks down five critical reasons why pre-made meal plans don't deliver lasting results: they don't fit into your real life with its unique schedule and demands; they ignore your food preferences, making healthy eating feel like punishment; they fail to teach you why certain nutritional choices matter; they're often nutritionally unbalanced, following fad approaches rather than sound science; and perhaps most importantly, they can't adapt as your body changes throughout your journey.
The truth is that successful nutrition isn't about following someone else's rigid plan—it's about developing a personalized approach that works with your lifestyle, preferences, and evolving needs. Instead of focusing on quick fixes, Coach Adam explains why education and empowerment should be at the core of any effective nutrition strategy.
Whether you've tried multiple meal plans without success or you're just starting your health journey, this episode provides crucial insights to help you break free from the diet trap and develop sustainable habits that will serve you for life. Ready to stop wasting time on approaches that don't work and find what actually will? This conversation is your starting point.
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Welcome to the Win On Purpose podcast with Coach Adam Kelly.
Speaker 1:On this week's episode, we're discussing a hot topic that gets brought up all the time in our practice and the questions that we receive on social media and just a lot of talk. We see a lot of people waste a lot of time and money and effort and energy into these things and don't really help them succeed in the long run, and that is cookie cutter meal plans. So the topic of this discussion is five reasons why cookie cutter meal plans do not work. We're going to break this down, hammer it, throw it away so we can get past these scams. We can get past just these money generators and get to the things that truly serve you and truly help you along your journey. So we want to just make sure that we're empowering you every step of the way and cutting out the nonsense and giving you exactly what you need to be successful, and our team is here to help support you every bit of the way. So, as always, guys, enjoy the episode and we will see you on the other side.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Win On Purpose podcast From health and fitness, business, personal development, relationships and more. We promise you will find inspiration to help you win on purpose in all areas of your life journey. Now for your host, adam Kelley.
Speaker 1:What's going on everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I appreciate you for joining us. Another week, another episode and another opportunity for you to learn something that you can apply to your health journey or maybe share with somebody that you know is on their own health journey and could use this expert advice from people who have been in this industry for a long time, have seen the ins and outs, have made our own transformations and now want to help as many people as possible transform their health once and for all and take back control of their lives. So appreciate you guys, as always. If you don't mind, please share, comment like. Give us some stars, all that good stuff, so that just helps us climb up the algorithm ladder, helps us get more exposure to more people who are needing this type of advice, want free advice that they don't have to search it out, they're not having to worry about weeding through the false information and what this influencer is talking about. Of that.
Speaker 1:We try to keep everything as evidence-based as possible on what is, you know, the most recent findings because, as you know, science changes on a daily basis, as we should always be trying to learn more and figure out more and find the most right way to do things. So that's what we focus on here at the Win On Purpose podcast, at Transform Health Initiative, which is our private coaching company that we are actually kind of rebranding and relaunching. So exciting things there. If you guys have worked with us or if you've been watching the process, you know we opened up a physical location this past October 2024. So we're about seven months into this thing and everything's been going really good. But we are advancing and fine tuning our systems and our coaching experience so that we can provide not only the best experience you've literally ever had with the health coach, but also to be able to guarantee results from people, because, you know, getting a good workout ends great. Losing a pound or two here and there is great. But if we have a set goal that we truly want to accomplish, especially when our health and our life depends on it, we want to know for sure that anything that we do, every bit of time that we invest, every dollar that we invest, every ounce of energy and effort that we invest, is going to be leading to this outcome for sure. So that's why we are fine tuning things. We are making things, you know, very systematic and structured and professional, so you have the best experience possible, and so we're really branching out into the online market.
Speaker 1:As you know, this podcast brings awareness and just in general on social media, things like that. We want to be able to offer something to everyone, even for the people that can't actually meet with us at our private facility to train with us as part of their program. So we are developing offerings that fit anybody's needs. If you find yourself at that place in life or maybe you have kids or you're finished raising your kids, now you're into the grandparent stage and you know that your health has been deteriorating over the years, you know that your body's been breaking down, that you feel weaker, that you don't have the energy you used to have, that you don't have the vigor in life that you used to have, and we are creating a platform that solves that problem for you, guaranteed guys. So definitely, if you've ever wanted to work with an online coach that actually coaches you, that customizes everything for your needs, we'd love to work with you at transformhealthcoachcom. You can sign up for a free consultation there and get this process started. So, with all that being said, guys, appreciate all the love and support as we grow this platform and as we help as many people as we can.
Speaker 1:So what are we going to talk about this week? Coach Adam, where are we at? Well, I wanted to talk about something that gets brought up a lot, especially with new clients, especially with people who have tried different avenues to be successful in their health goals in the past, and usually this one almost always doesn't work, especially over the long term. So I really wanted to nail this one almost always doesn't work, especially over the long term. So I really wanted to nail this one down because, you know, we need to clear up our perception of what's real, what's fake, what's social media glamour versus what actually works for real people in real time, in real life circumstances. Because if you, you know, you don't have the six, eight hours a day to devote to exercise and posting and creating content and doing all these things, to feel your best, you need something that's actually going to work and it's going to fit into your lifestyle right? So that brings up the conversation of meal plans.
Speaker 1:All right, I get asked a lot about do we do meal plans? Do we prescribe meal plans? Can someone purchase a meal plan from us? And you see people buying all different types of meal plans online, and everything has its time and place, but this is one thing that I tend to encourage people to stay away from, and I'm going to explain to you why in this podcast, by giving you five reasons that meal plans don't work. Okay, cookie cutter meal plans just don't work, and we're going to tell you what you can do instead, rather, if that's through us or through anybody else, to help get your journey started, get you eating right, learning how to eat properly for your needs and for your body, so that you can have truly lasting results and actually grow throughout the rest of the years of life that you have, into this new body that you are developing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, like I said, meal plans do not work All right. So you know, most likely, if in the past and maybe not you, but I guarantee you at least somebody you know, if not yourself, has probably downloaded a cookie cutter meal plan online, you know you see them all the probably downloaded a cookie cutter meal plan online. You know you see them all the time in the health and fitness world. You see them on social media stuff like that, and you know a lot of people have bought one and maybe they stuck with it for a week or two or maybe even a month, but the chances are it just didn't last. Ok, the at best the results were temporary and it wasn't something that transitioned into a lifestyle that was actually sustainable. Okay, so I promise you this is not your fault. Okay, this is not a sign that you can't diet or that you don't have willpower, or you don't have self-control or you can't stick to something. Okay, because this is something very unique and nothing is more unique than someone's diet and the foods that they eat and what they enjoy and what they can sustain.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, like I said, I'm going to break down the five big reasons why these one size fit all meal plans typically fail for real people with real lives and what you should do instead. All right, so let's get right into this thing. So, reason number one that meal plans don't work they don't fit your life. Ok, that's a capital your life. So meal plans tell you exactly what to eat every day, which you know, in theory sounds pretty great, like it sounds like it's cutting to the chase and solving you a bunch of and solving a bunch of issues for you, but they can often ignore your schedule and your family, your work hours, your energy levels and even your cooking skills. Let's be honest. So if a plan doesn't fit into your real life, chances are you're not going to stick with it.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I see this so many times. People buy these meal plans, they're super excited, they get started and, like I said, maybe they last a week or two, maybe the last a month, maybe they last a little bit longer, but then eventually, so many times because it's not customized to your life and doesn't ebb and flow with the ebbs and flows of your life that eventually you get burnt out and just are not able to maintain this anymore. So the fact that it's not custom designed for your life and your circumstances is a big hindrance. Okay, and some of these reasons kind of tie into this idea of not fitting into your life and what that looks like. So that's reason number one they don't fit into your life. Reason number two, and what that looks like. So that's reason number one they don't fit into your life. Reason number two they ignore your preferences, all right.
Speaker 1:So, guys, let's just be honest. All right, if you like hate fish or you're not really a fan of reheated broccoli or something of that nature, there's just a certain type of food that you don't really care for, you are not going to last long on a plan that shoves that onto your plate every week. Okay, and forcing yourself to eat food that you don't enjoy isn't even sustainable to begin with. It's more of like a punishment, if you think about it, you know, because good nutrition it shouldn't feel satisfying, it shouldn't feel like a chore in order to eat healthy and take care of yourself. So this is a big problem, I see as well, because, again, lacking that customization aspect, it can be the same meals every single day. It can be the exact same food choices, the same protein choices, carbs, fats every day. That can become very dull for people and very boring. But on top of that, if it's foods that you don't like maybe you don't like eggs, or maybe you don't like to cook eggs and your plan has eggs on it, or you know you don't like eggs, or maybe you don't like to cook eggs and your plan has eggs on it, or you know you don't like a certain, you're allergic to a certain type of food. But this plan isn't built around your you know allergic reactions, it's just, you know, copying and pasting from you to the next person to the next person. So this can be a huge hindrance because, as we know, successful eating, successful nutrition, is stemmed in your preferences and those things that you enjoy, because that's what you're going to be able to sustain over a given period of time. All right.
Speaker 1:Reason number three cookie cutter meal plans, do not work. They don't teach you anything. All right, this is a big one right here. So cookie cutter plans basically, they tell you what to eat, right. They tell you how much of this, how much of that, measure this, one gram of this, one ounce of this, but they don't teach you why you're supposed to be eating this way, why this is beneficial for your goals and for your health. So you're left, you know, following orders instead of learning how to actually fuel your body for what you need it to be able to do and the energy you want to have, and things like that. So you know, once your life gets in the way, you know, once things don't go as planned, once life throws a wrench your way or you finish your plan, you know, best case scenario, you actually stick it through. You're right back to where you started and you know.
Speaker 1:We know that education is the key to lasting change. So if you're not growing in your understanding about food, about what macronutrients are in what food, what nutrients in general, what foods, what foods that typically work for you well, if you're reducing your calories, what foods work for you well if you're increasing your calories? What foods work well for your digestion and making sure things are running smoothly? What works well for your energy levels, making sure that you are, you know that you're promoting high energy levels or at least sustain energy levels throughout the day. Like, if we're not keeping mind of these things and paying attention to these things, then we're not really growing. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:And at the end of the day, a coach's job shouldn't be to keep you on a meal plan. It should be to equip you and teach you the skills and the education to be able to make proper choices on your own. Because at some time, eventually unless you really just like working with someone and not having to do the thinking, and you stay with them for years and years to come, which happens and it's totally fine but most people are going to want to eventually branch out on their own, take over the reins completely themselves and not have to depend on any person or anything to help them be successful. So a good coach is one that you don't need beyond the time period that you need them is one that you don't need beyond the time period that you need them, although you may want to stay with them because you really enjoy the relationship, you enjoy the value that they bring to your life and to your journey, but you should never have to depend on someone to know what to eat and how to eat. Okay, this is something you should be learning along your journey. All right.
Speaker 1:So number four of why meal plans do not work they could be nutritionally unbalanced. All right, this is typically something most people don't think about, especially when they're formulating their diet or they're eating based on body composition, so the way that their body looks, rather, how much body fat they have, how much muscle tissue, the way their body performs on a sport level, athletic level, we tend to kind of undermine the nutritional value of our diet and making sure that we're getting in a very balanced diet of all the different nutrients that our body needs to be optimized. So, you know, with these meal plans, we know that a lot of them are just basically repackaged fads. Okay, you have, you know ultra low carb versions, barely any fat versions, tiny portions, intermittent fasting just for the purpose of following your diet plan. So you know, when we start getting into these fad diets and these temporary fixes, these extreme fixes, which aren't actually fixes, to begin with it's more like a band-aid that's ripped down the middle and it can't even keep the blood inside. We know that they can mess with your hormones, with your energy, your mood and even your metabolism, which is a definite negative effect.
Speaker 1:Nutrition isn't about extremes. It's all about balance, as most things in life are. It's about balance, and that balance is different for every person. So what works for you, what's balanced for you, is not going to be balanced for the next person. Your nutritional needs doesn't match the nutritional needs of anybody else on this planet, including if you had a twin or your parents or whoever, because you were made differently. You are unique, your metabolism is unique and the way your body responds to things has a genetic component. But a lot of your experience in life, what you've been doing up to this point, is going to affect how your body responds to different things. That can be completely different than somebody that has the exact same genetics with you but maybe didn't live the exact same life that you did up until this point. So we want to make sure that we have a nutritionally balanced diet so we're covering all of our needs, we're not having to depend on supplementation in order to get our needs, and that we're just keeping enough variety so we optimize our health because, again, it's not just about losing weight or burning body fat or just building muscle, it's about creating a healthier body that we can live in and want to live in. So the last reason here and this kind of ties into all of them again, especially number one, but this is more of the long-term view and number five reason why meal plans do not work is they do not adapt as you do.
Speaker 1:Okay, so basically, like, what you need on week one of your plan is not the same as you'll need on week 12. Your body literally changes as you go along. Rather, if you're losing body fat, that's going to change your needs. If you're increasing muscle tissue and strength and speed and agility, that's going to change your needs. If you're improving your fitness and your cardiovascular health, that's going to change your needs. So you know your goals are most likely are going to shift as you go along. Even if you're successful or not successful, there's a good chance your goals are going to change over time. It's not going to always be the same goal, because you should be knocking those goals off, checking those boxes and moving on to the next part of your journey.
Speaker 1:So you know, a cookie cutter program doesn't grow with you. It doesn't change, it's fixated. It's these foods, these combinations for this goal and that's it. It doesn't change based on your metabolism needs. It doesn't change based on lifestyle changes, work changes, sleep regimen, nothing like that. It's just super bland and here this is what to do. It's just super bland and here this is what to do.
Speaker 1:So that's typically from my experience and the experience of most coaches that actually care and want to see people successful. That's where most people fall off from what we see. And because it doesn't evolve again, your plan doesn't change with you. So you're left feeling frustrated, thinking that you failed your diet or that your metabolism's broke or you were progressing, so now you're not. So it must be something that you're doing wrong and honestly, it may not be you. It may be this plan that you're trying to force yourself to continue to follow.
Speaker 1:So, really, at the end of the day, the plan is failing you rather than you failing your plan or failing your coach, because your coach should be making changes on a regular basis, even if, for example, maybe your coach uses cookie cutter meal plans, you know, based on a goal, so like this is a calorie reduction goal for this type of client, this is a muscle gaining diet for this type of client, with these measurements and things like that. Maybe that's how they kind of structure things to simplify the process. And if that is the case, then they should absolutely be making adjustments, not only as time goes on, but initial adjustments as they assign that to you, because, again, some of the things that are in that may not be applicable to you or sustainable to you in your circumstances. So, at the very least, that's what should be happening. But, like I said, just this is typically one of the biggest issues we see with meal plans is they're so fixed and people you know it's just some side notes on them.
Speaker 1:You know people get really burnt out on the dieting process because again they're having to eat the same food. So what do you do when it's time to go out to eat with your family? You're just going to skip going out with your family, you're going to pack a Tupperware with this, you know, meat that's been sitting there, that came out of the refrigerator, that was cooked days ago because you had to meal prep, and now you're eating out of a Tupperware cold food while your family's enjoying a delicious meal. Or, like you know, a holiday comes up or something happens in your life where to have some flexibility and ways to maneuver your food choices to still align with your goals but also allow you to enjoy those experiences. That is a game changer and that's what makes your journey super sustainable when you can adapt to what's happening in your day-to-day life and your, your eating, your nutrition, adapting with that as you go along.
Speaker 1:So, guys, super, super important, before you purchase anything from anybody, if they are giving you something one, if you sign up for it and a few minutes later, an hour or two later, you automatically get a whole plan. Most likely that's a cookie cutter program. So you know it should take some time for them to develop your plan. It doesn't mean it has to take a long time, you know a reasonable amount of time, but they should be going through all these different factors, all this information that they're collecting from you and then deciding what's the best plan of action, what that meal plan needs to look like, what that diet needs to look like in order for you to be successful. So this is one thing that we really focus on here at Transformed Health Initiative. No-transcript fall off the bandwagon and have to purchase something new. That's not the way our coaching is set up. That's why we have terms and things like that because we want to make sure you have plenty of time to be successful and do it the right, safest, healthiest way possible. And do it the right, safest, healthiest way possible.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what could possibly be the alternative to meal plans? Is there anything else that's actually useful and successful? And that is, you know, you can work with a coach like our team, one of our coaches or any coach out there that actually builds things customized for their clients and watches over it and makes the adjustments, and all that Because, at the end of the day, if you find yourself debating between a meal plan and coaching or something like that, at the end of the day, what you're really needing is you need a plan that's built for you. You need one that takes your life and your preferences, your body and your goals into account. That should be the basis of the structure of your plan. So that's exactly what we do inside of our coaching program.
Speaker 1:Like I said, there's no guessing, there's no extremes. It's just smart, personalized nutrition guidance that works with your lifestyle, not against your lifestyle. You're not trying to fit your lifestyle into your plan. You're making sure your plan can fit into your lifestyle so you can sustain these habits that are manageable and sustain it over time to really see those benefits manifest and to extend how long you keep those benefits. Because we don't want to just get there, we don't want to just lose the weight and build the muscle and then six weeks later having to repeat that process.
Speaker 1:And that's what you see again a lot of times with these cookie cutter meal plans, but also even cookie cutter programs like you sign up for my six-week challenge but everybody gets the same information, everybody gets the same workouts, everybody gets the same coaching. But you know you're doing it as a challenge and then you see people do it and then they're successful. But then the next six-week challenge that comes out, they have to jump on board and spend all this money on it because they didn't actually learn anything and develop any real lifestyle, skills and habits. During that process. They were just checking a list and just following instruction until the time was done, which means they're guaranteed going to need somebody to continue that process or further develop that process for them. So they're always in that trap of needing somebody else to make it happen for them.
Speaker 1:Okay, and again, we want to empower you to be your own nutritionist, to be your own personal trainer, to be your own health coach, because then not only can you maintain that for the rest of your life however, your life changes with the different seasons and the different experiences and whatever comes your way but you're able to actually share that information with others. You're able to help other people on their journeys. You're able to build other people up and share this evidence-based, expert guidance that you have been provided from your coach and your experience and help dozens of other people. Which, again, as a coach who actually cares about people and wants to help people, that should be the ultimate satisfaction and goal of every coach is that you're creating basically smaller versions of yourself that go out there and have a much bigger impact, because, as a coach, we can only work for so many people. We can only handle such a workload we can only have so much impact and that's pretty, you know, limited to our circle and our sphere. But your sphere is different than ours. You have a different impact level, you have different people that you can influence, and the more that we can spread that and increase that education and information and understanding, the more that that can be compounded on with other people to where we're creating literally world change, just from the few people that we're able to actually manage and work with. So that's my goal and that's our goal here at Transform Health Initiative is to make sure it's possible.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, guys, you can sign up for a free consultation at transformhealthcoachcom. It's a free 30 minute conversation with myself, coach Adam, where we kind of you know, fine tune your goals, figure out what you're wanting to accomplish, what's been stopping you from accomplishing it, and then telling you about our programs and how we know that they can help you if you find yourself in that position and you're trying to figure out a way to better yourself and also make it sustainable so you can keep up with life at the same time, because we don't want again, we don't want your goals and your program to consume your entire life. It should be adding value to your life, not taking away from your life. It's making us better, not making our life worse, so we can look a little better. Like I said, guys, if you're tired of wasting time on Plans, don't Fit. Go free to reach out. We will build something that actually works for you. So you know, sign up for that consultation, would love to talk with you, meet with you, you know, virtually or in person. You know you can come here, do your consultation at our training facility in morrokloma, and you know we'd love to help you out, guys. But there's lots and lots and lots of very good coaches out there, very, very high quality online coaches that would also love to work with you and help you as well.
Speaker 1:So don't think this is just a pitch for our company.
Speaker 1:Like I only gave you all this information to try to sell you. Not the case at all. Although I would love to help you, I just want you to succeed, right, if that's with us, with another team, with another trainer, or just completely on your own as you figure out your journey. That's what brings me satisfaction and lets me sleep well at night to know that the people that hear my voice on this podcast are actually making the changes needed and building the life that they want to have, guys. So I appreciate you guys for tuning in. If this episode hits home, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share it with someone who needs to hear it and, as always, I will see you on the next episode. So let me finish up with how I like to finish up with every podcast episode. Whatever you decide to do with this information, make sure you do something good for yourself, something good for your health, something good for those you care about and, whatever you do, make sure you win on purpose. I'll catch you next time.