25 : How to Build a 5-Week Meal Plan (and Put Your Week on Autopilot)

If a "what’s for dinner" text immediately gives you anxiety, or if you simply want to automate as much as possible within your week - this episode is for you. We are talking about how to get your meals out of your head and onto a plan so that you are making decisions from a calm, proactive headspace instead of a stressed, reactive one. And I have built out the most incredible resource to go along with this episode that is linked below!

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Transcript

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At 5 45 p.m. on a weekday, if you get a text that says what's for dinner, and that text immediately gives you anxiety, or if you simply want to automate as much as possible within your week, this episode is for you. We are going to be talking about how to get your meals out of your head and onto a plan so that you're making decisions from a calm and proactive headspace instead of a stressed and reactive one. And I have built out the most incredible resource to go along with this episode, and that is going to be linked in the show notes. So let's dive in. I'm your host, Carly Kaikendahl, and this is the Daily Penny, the podcast about building sickening consistency through everyday habits. Being occasionally great does not get you very far, but being consistently good is what moves the needle forward. Every time you follow through for a workout, a meal in motherhood, in your finances, in your business or in your life, you're putting another penny in the jar of the person you want to become. One penny that doesn't feel like much, but those daily deposits compound over time. This show is about fitness, nutrition, motherhood, money, business, and the systems that actually hold your life together in seasons when motivation is gone. Whether you're building habits, rebuilding confidence, or just simply trying not to quit that you're in the right place. Let's add another penny in the jar. You hear me talk all the time about automating things within my day and within my week so that I can hit my goals with as little decision fatigue and effort as possible. And obviously it's still effort, but I say as little effort as possible because the effort is done on the front end, kind of like batch working, versus the effort being done in the moment, which oftentimes takes so much longer because you're having to make decisions on the fly when you're already busy and you're already stressed. So by batchworking and doing as many things as possible in advance, we are operating from a more calm headspace and a headspace that's proactive versus reactive. You kind of hear me talk about this about my morning routine all the time. I think, what else can I do in advance so that my morning runs more smoothly? This is what we are doing in this episode, but with meal planning. Because when we are operating from a reactive headspace, we are just going to make the easiest decision available to us, which isn't always the healthiest and therefore probably not the decision that is going to help us feel our best or work towards our goals. So today I'm going to be giving you steps to craft a five-week meal plan in advance. And of course, like I said, instead of you trying to visualize all this and then create it on your own, I've created an incredible resource that is going to be linked for you in the show notes. This is a downloadable PDF framework, but also a blank version of that framework so that you can plug and play your own meals in. So what this does is it's going to help you plan out five weeks of breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinners. And like I said, I have the framework showing you where to plug everything in and then a blank version so that you can print it off and then plug in your own meals. I asked this question in my newsletter last week. If you got it on Friday, I asked, if you never change your mind about some things, are you actually learning or growing? So meal plans are something I have personally changed my mind about as a nutrition coach, especially with the one-on-one nutrition clients that I attract into my coaching program. And the reason I've been against meal plans until now is that I have always agreed with the thought of give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, you'll feed him for his lifetime. And I still stand by that because you really do need to learn how to create a well-balanced plate of protein, fiber, healthy fats, and slow digesting carbs, et cetera. And also it's going to benefit for you to read and understand nutrition labels so that you can make educated decisions on your own. You need to learn what nutrient-dense versus just calorie-dense foods feel like, how to, like I said, read a nutrition label to see if something is just calorie dense or if it actually has nutrient density to it. You also need to just learn to track everything so that you can feel the difference in the days that you hit your protein goal and the days that you don't. Like I agree with all of that. And that's where they're that's where the teach Amanda Fish comes in. However, I also find that clients need more structure versus less structure. And that's where meal planning can really come into play. So all of the skills that I mentioned, like, you know, creating well-balanced meals, learning nutrient dense versus just calorie dense, all of those skills will help you more easily navigate both fat loss and maintenance seasons. And maintenance, oh maintenance, this is this is where most people fail and then gain back the weight that they lost because a calorie deficit is very simple. Eat fewer calories than you burn and you will lose weight. But maintenance is more tricky because many people think that after just a few months in a deficit that they have mastered mindful eating. Yet I have been personally tracking macros off and on for seven to eight years at this point. And I can still easily, easily eat in a surplus if I'm not actually tracking my food that day. And also not to mention, we're busier than we've ever been. Like tell me the last time you felt like you truly had enough, and I put that in air quotes, enough margin in your week to check everything off your list of intentions for that week. I mean, it's just never-ending, or at least it feels like it is for me. And I just briefly mentioned that I have been incorporating meal plans with some of my one-on-one clients, and I really love the women that I tracked into my one-on-one coaching program because rarely do I get someone who's interested in coaching who has never tracked macros. Like she understands how to track macros. And by the way, if you don't know how to track macros and you claim that's what's holding you back, you don't actually care. I'm just being so for real right now because within three seconds of a search, you can have a step-by-step plan for how to track macros. And that's not why people hire me. People don't hire me to teach them how to track macros. They hire me because they need more structure and they need more accountability. And when you think about structure and accountability, meal plans just make sense. But I don't create someone a meal plan day one. That's where, like I said, the teach them in to fish thing comes in. I want to see what they are already eating, what they already like when it comes to food, and then we go from there. Because if I sent them a meal plan before I knew what foods they liked and how they already eat, let's just say I schedule them to eat chicken, rice, and broccoli every Monday through Friday, but they hate broccoli and they hate rice, then I'm immediately putting handcuffs on them. Because even though this client might know how to track macros, she's immediately not going to want to disappoint coach. So she's going to choke down the chicken, she's going to choke down the rice and the broccoli. And that's not only unhelpful, but it could actually take them a step back. So instead, I let them track for a few weeks. And if I find that they're having a hard time hitting macros, or they feel like they need to constantly reinvent the will every day, and it's taken them forever to track their food, or maybe they just have no structure with their meals. Or, like I said, they're just straight up busy and they just want another level of structure, like they're welcoming the structure. This is where a meal plan is so incredibly helpful for all of those reasons that I just mentioned. So I will look at their food logs, find foods that they love, find foods that they're constantly repeating, find days where they came closest to hitting their macros. So like I look at a day when they came closest to hitting their macros, and then I'm like, okay, what did they eat that day? And based on what they like, I then can create a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack meal plan for them to follow, and then allow dinner to be a variable meal. But the thing is, is that when you create a structure that has breakfast, lunch, snacks already accounted for, you know exactly how many calories you have going into dinner every night. So my advice, like I said, is to just repeat those meals. You've heard me say this a million times. Repeat those meals for a long time. And I say repeat those meals until you're sick of them, but in this specific framework that I'm gonna give you today, we are repeating some meals Monday through Friday for a full week. And then the next week we're gonna alternate it a little bit. But just know that this framework, you can repeat the exact same breakfast and lunch for as many weeks as you want. But I do have us alternating after a week of those same meals just to mix things up a little bit for those who might need it. But like I said, maybe you could change, maybe you could keep the structure of the meal somewhat the same, but change maybe a veggie or a sauce or a carb source to make essentially the same meal feel just a little bit different. And as a side note, like I said, I mentioned chicken, rice, and broccoli because it's just the first thing that came to mind. But it's also the, you know, poster child of what everyone envisions when they picture a meal plan. But just know that your meal plan should be foods that you actually like, not just foods that you think you should be eating because they fall into this healthy category. Find foods that fit your calories, your protein, that get you a good amount of fiber and healthy fats. But also at the end of the day, these have to be foods that you actually like. One thing I have found by working with people one-on-one is that structure promotes structure, structure around their meals, structure around tracking their macros, promotes structure in other areas of their life. So if you feel like you are flailing about, try creating yourself a meal plan using these PDF guides that I have linked here in the show notes. Trust me, you will benefit more from more structure because oftentimes people just want to jump right into mindful or intuitive eating and they want that to feel like a breeze, yet they haven't even practiced any form of structured eating for a long period of time. Spend time under structure. Learn how different nutrient dense feels from calorie dense. Discover the foods that you love that were absolutely breaking your macro budget, but you didn't know it. Learn how to structure your plate in a way that supports your goals. Experience what a high protein diet feels like versus just thinking that, oh, I am protein-minded throughout the day, but you're probably eating a lot less protein than you realize. Now, I just mentioned discovering foods that you love but that were absolutely breaking your macro budget. This is so crucial. And what I mean by this is maybe you are someone who loves a big bowl of oatmeal in the morning, and your oatmeal bowl consists of obviously the oats, maybe some milk, some nut butter, some berries, some granola, all great things, all very tasty things, and you have that every morning. But let's just say that you haven't been tracking that bowl, and then you decide to track it. So when you go to track it, you realize, wow, when I'm just scooping nut butter out of the jar, I now that I'm weighing this, I'm having about 200 calories in peanut butter in my oatmeal bowl. And then maybe when you weigh out the granola, you realize you're consuming 150 calories in granola. And then when you actually track the protein, it's essentially no protein. So you found something that you love, you love your oatmeal bowl, but it's most likely breaking your macro budget without helping you hit your macros, meaning a higher protein, lower calorie meal for the most part in comparison to the example I just gave. But here's the thing: you can keep this same bowl, but you just change it up slightly to reduce the total calories and increase the protein. Maybe you cut your milk in half and you sub the rest with water. Maybe you warm up the nut butter in the microwave so you can easily drizzle it over the top and use, you know, 25% of the amount that you originally were, but you still have the taste there. And then maybe you do that same thing with granola, significantly less, but the taste is still there. Maybe you increase the berries so that you can get more fiber and it's next to no calories. Maybe you add a scoop of protein powder to the oatmeal to increase the protein, or maybe you don't do that, but you add eggs and egg whites on the side for more protein. That is a way to find something that's breaking your macros and make it more macro friendly and still keeping it in your meal plan. But let's get back to actually tracking the food. So the majority of those who track macros have the goal of tracking for a season and then hitting that goal and then they immediately flip into what they want to be like flexible dieting or intuitive eating, mindful eating, whatever you want to call it. But the thing is, is that you have to spend time tracking at maintenance too, or you won't even know what intuitive or mindful or flexible dieting feels like. And I don't just mean track your food at maintenance, I also mean continue tracking markers like your scale weight and how your clothes fit, because that's the only way to know if you're truly maintaining versus slowly adding the weight back on because you are in an unintentional surplus. And that's how people end up back where they started and then they think their body, you know, just gained the weight back. No, maintenance is not a free-for-all, and a lot of people treat it like it is one. And once you have tracked at maintenance for a while and you have successfully maintained your results, that's when you can start integrating in an untracked meal every now and then, both to practice intuitive eating, but also to just give your brain a break from tracking. So you earn that flexibility within your week by actually having the structure first. So, like I said, structured weeks are going to help you in both a deficit, but they are also going to help you in maintenance. You cannot flip from being super structured within a deficit and hitting your macros and losing the weight immediately to flexible dieting or mindful eating at maintenance. No, you need structure in both seasons for a very long period of time before you can, you know, like some people like to say, earn the right to be a flexible dieter. You have to prove to yourself you know how to maintain those results. And that's where meal planning can be so helpful, both in a calorie deficit, but also at maintenance. And like I said, just meal planning in general to automate your week and to help you more easily hit your goals, but have significantly less brain cells used in the moment. We are using brain cells on the front end by batchworking ahead of time, like I said, so that our week is entirely planned out. And if you listen to this episode on the week that it launches, it's gonna launch towards the middle to end of May. And I am planning out five weeks of meals here, or I'm helping you plan out five weeks of meals, and that's because there are five weeks in June. That is not uh unintentional, that was definitely designed intentionally, knowing that maybe you could use this going into June in a time where your kids are out of school, or maybe you have a more flexible schedule and you need more structure when it comes to your meals so that you can have more time in the moment. You know, you don't want to be trying to plan all of things, all of these things in the moment. You'd rather plan them on the front end so that you can have time, flexibility, and more brain space to actually enjoy this summer on the back end. So now we're gonna dive into this framework for planning out your meals. Here's what I also want you to keep in mind as we go through these steps. We are planning meals that we actually like, not meals that you just view as healthy but you dread eating them. Yes, in seasons of a deficit, you will have to say no to some things, but that is the case in maintenance as well, because you're not gonna walk away from every meal at maintenance and feel absolutely stuffed. Like there's a difference between feeling satisfied and stuffed. And the sooner that you get comfortable with feeling satisfied and not having to feel stuffed at every meal, this whole process of tracking your macros becomes easier. And like I said, the more structure you have to the meals, the more repeatable your process can be. The more automated you make your goals, the easier they are to maintain. If you already have a list of breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack items that you love and you're more than happy to repeat, you do not have to do this AI prompt step that I'm about to give. You can kind of just skip this part and go into the actual planning aspect. But if you do need ideas around meals that are going to help you hit your macros and include foods that you actually like, the first step that you're going to do is go into your favorite AI platform, whatever platform that is, and you're going to give it this prompt. And I'm going to have this exact prompt in the blog post linked in the show notes. So if you need to copy and paste it into AI, you can do so. Here's the prompt. I want to hit X calories, X grams of protein, X grams of fiber. I like XYZ foods. Please give me a list of breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner options based on these preferences. So that's the end of the prompt. Obviously, you're replacing X with your exact numbers. So you might say, I want to hit 2,000 calories, 140 grams of protein, 25 grams of fiber, and I like ground beef, chicken meals with, you know, pasta, maybe some rice, these are the vegetables that I like, these are snacks that I like, you know, go through the list. So X, Y, Z foods, whatever that looks like for you. That is the prompt. This gives you a starting point so that when you sit down to fill out the framework that I'm giving you, you're not just staring at a blank page or wasting time on Instagram or Pinterest trying to find recipes. And like I said, if you already have a list of meals you love and make regularly, but just want to put them on a calendar, you can skip this AI step based on the options that AI produces for you, or just like I said, the meals that you already have in your head that you're already thinking about to include in this meal plan. Step two is to decide on three breakfast options. Now, in this plan, we're mostly just thinking about you. But maybe your husband decides he also wants to follow this meal plan, you can include him as well. Chances are you're probably not gonna have your kids on the exact meal plan as yourself. But hey, if they also want to do this, the more the merrier. But just decide on three breakfast options. And I am biased, but if you're the one making the food and you're the one prepping it, it's something that you want. And then they can take it or leave it, right? You're you're gonna have something for them to eat. So if they want the prepped things, great. But step two is decide on three breakfast options. Step three is to decide on three lunch options. Once again, just for you, maybe for your husband if he wants to join us on this meal plan. Step four is to decide on two snack options. Step five is to decide six dinner options, and these are gonna be meals for the entire family to eat. Step six is to put together a list of three freezer-friendly meal options that create an entire meal. So, an example of what I mean by that is I love the frozen just bear nuggets. I get them at Sam's Club. Just Bear is the brand. Those stay in the freezer. I also love microwaveable broccoli. And then I might have made some sweet potatoes or roasted potatoes on the front end. If not, I will, you know, find something that goes with that meal. But those are just like the vegetable and the protein options that I'm gonna have easily available in the freezer. So that was step six is put to like put together a list of three freezer-friendly meal options. The final step seven is to decide three family breakfast options, and those are gonna be what we alternate on the weekends when we are all sitting down eating breakfast together. So those are the seven steps to create this meal plan. And then, like I said, this PDF guide is gonna show you step by step where to plug things in, and then you're gonna have your blank document that you can put your own meals in there as well. So the guides that I created for you are. Are easy to follow once you have this list of meals decided on. And I'm looking at the guide right now, so I'm gonna walk you through just a little bit of how it's structured. This is the overarching framework. So Monday through Friday, you're going to have the same breakfast, lunch, and snacks for an entire week. So five consecutive days. And then we are going to have six rotating dinners with no repeats within the week. But on Wednesdays, we're going to be eating leftovers. And on Fridays, we're going to have like a flex night to where you can have one of the freezer meals or eat some leftovers or maybe just plan a meal out with your family. So those are the six rotating dinners, and we're not going to have a repeat within the week, meaning we're not going to be making the same meal more than once within a week. You might be eating it if you're having a leftover night, but we're not going to be making the same dinner twice within a week. When we were walking through all of the steps, I told you to decide on six dinners. So you are only making those six dinners and you are just rotating them throughout five weeks. Like I said, incorporating leftovers in the mix some nights, and then maybe having a meal out or having a freezer meal so that it's breaking them up throughout the week. So here's an example of what weeks one and two would look like just from a dinner perspective to kind of show you how we're going to flow things so that it's not just total repeatable monotony every single day. Like there's still variety worked in there, and the variety is coming through your dinners. So on Monday, you're gonna make dinner one. On Tuesday, you're having dinner two. Wednesday is leftovers, Thursday is dinner three. Friday is that flex night where you're either having a freezer meal or a meal out or leftovers if you have them. Saturday, you're making dinner four, and then Sunday is leftovers again. And then when you go to week two, Monday night, you make dinner three, Tuesday, you make dinner five, Wednesday, leftovers, Thursday, dinner six, Friday, once again, a flex night of freezer meals, eating out or leftovers. Saturday, you're back to making dinner one again, and then Sunday is once again leftovers. So it kind of shows you how we're flowing things throughout the week so that we are, like I said, not reinventing the wheel all of the time, but we do have repeatable nights of dinners so that everyone can know what the expectation is, what we are having. And like I said, you are the one in charge of the meals, so you get the liberty to decide. And like I said, the guides that I created for you are so easy to follow once you have these meals decided on. And what I want you to think about is like we're heading into summer right now. This is a season where we all want more margin to spend with our friends and with our family. And structure like this is going to put your meals on autopilot. And so, therefore, it's one less thing to think about so that you can get some time back. So, today was a shorter episode, but I hope it was very tactical. And do not forget the downloadable PDF framework as well as the blank document for you to use for yourself. Both of those are linked in the show notes. So I want you to print it off, maybe listen back to this episode if you need, you know, a reminder about why structure is important and how it benefits you both in calorie deficit and maintenance, or just like some ideas that I mentioned in here as well. So print it off, plug in your meals, and hopefully it will help the next five weeks run on autopilot for you. That's all for today. Like I said, this was a very tactical episode. I hope that you take it and run with it. And if you're someone that I described as the girl who knows how to track macros, you know what you're doing, but you just need the structure and accountability of another person checking in with you to actually follow through and do that. I want to encourage you to apply for my one on one coaching. I will link to that in the show notes. I will also link to my app training subscription if that's also something within your week that you want to put on autopilot. And until next time, keep adding another penny in the jar.