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July 20

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How a meal plan can help you lose weight and build muscle

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A meal plan is a way to organise your meals so that you can achieve your health and fitness goals. A well designed meal plan can help you lose weight without becoming too hungry or starving yourself. Likewise, it can help you construct a well balanced diet that can help you build muscle in conjunction with a proper weight training regime. Having an easy to follow diet plan is important because it helps you stay on track. Additionally, it makes sure that you're getting all the nutrients and vitamins that your body needs to function properly.

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A good meal plan should include:

  • A variety of foods from each food group (vegetables, fruits, grains, protein) so that all of your nutritional needs are met in one day;
  • An appropriate amount of carbohydrates (the main source of energy) and fats (which help us absorb certain vitamins);
  • The right amount of calories to lose weight or build muscle depending on what kind of goal you have (see below).

The benefits of having a customised meal plan if you want to lose weight

There are a lot of benefits to having a meal plan. First and foremost, it helps you stay on track with your fitness goals.

A meal plan helps keep on track in losing weight

Keeping You on Track

A meal plan can help you stay on track and keep you organized. It's easy to get overwhelmed by all the choices out there, but when you have a plan in place, it becomes much simpler to make good choices.

As long as your diet is balanced and healthy, it doesn't matter what foods you eat or how often they're consumed--so long as they're within your calorie range for the day. A well-designed meal plan will give you guidelines for how much protein/fat/carbs should be in each meal or snack so that no matter what type of food item comes up next on your list (or even if it's just leftovers from last night), there's an appropriate amount of each macro nutrient available for consumption without having to calculate anything manually first!

Well designed meal plans help make shopping easy and efficient

Makes Shopping Easy

Planning ahead for meals is a great way to make sure you have everything you need on hand.

This can be especially helpful when it comes time to shop for your groceries and avoid buying unnecessary items that may be tempting, but ultimately aren't healthy or good for your diet.

You should also think about using the right tools in the kitchen--like measuring cups, scales, knives and cutting boards--to ensure that every meal is made with precision and accuracy.

a meal plan offers and efficient and productive way to lose weight and keep it off

Efficiency and Productivity

If you know what you're going to eat every day, then there's no chance that you'll go off course and eat something unhealthy or unplanned.

This also means that when it comes time for dinner, all your ingredients will be ready in advance so all that's left is cooking them up!

Another benefit of having a meal plan is efficiency--you can spend less time worrying about what's for dinner or preparing food at home (which means more time doing other things).

A third benefit is productivity: if all your meals are planned out ahead of time and made ahead of time too (like we mentioned above), then there won't be any last minute decisions about what kind of food should come out tonight; instead everything will already have been decided beforehand so there aren't any surprises along the way!

Less Decision Making

Having a meal plan is like having a personal chef whose goal is helping you lose weight. You don't have to worry about what you're going to eat, or if it will be healthy enough. The decision has already been made for you--and the best part is that this process helps eliminate decision fatigue and guesswork!

Decision Fatigue:

In order to make good decisions throughout the day, we use up our willpower reserves. This means that when it comes time for dinner or lunchtime, we may not have enough energy left in our tank to make good choices regarding what food goes into our bodies (or how much). 

By having an organised plan ahead of time, this problem goes away because there's no need for any decision making at all!

Eliminating Guesswork:

When we're hungry and stressed out by work/school/family obligations etc., our brains are less able to focus on things like nutrition labels or calorie counts because they're busy trying not only figure out what they want but also whether or not they can afford it; this causes people who rely solely on themselves rather than planning ahead end up eating more junk food than necessary just because "it was cheap".

a meal plan gives you confidence in achieving weight loss results by being consistent

Confidence in Achieving Results with Consistency

The most important thing to remember is that you need to be consistent. If you're not, your progress will be slow and sporadic at best.


You can use a meal plan as a way of tracking your progress, but it's also important for helping you stay on track with your diet in general. Having an idea of what foods are good for losing fat and building muscle will help keep you from making poor choices when it comes time for food shopping or cooking meals at home (or ordering out).

Limiting Work and Training Influence on Other Aspects of Your Life

You're going to be much more likely to stick with your diet if you have a plan. It's easy to get distracted and lose sight of what is important when you don't know what needs to be done next.

Having a meal plan will help keep you organised, which makes it easier for you stay focused on what matters most: losing fat and building muscle!

You Can Review and Alter Your Meal Plan if Results Don't Reflect What You Want to Achieve

In order to see the results you want, it's important that you stay on track with your meal plan. If at any point in time you feel like things aren't working out as planned or if something is off, don't hesitate to make changes.

You can also use this time as an opportunity to analyse how well your diet is working for you and make adjustments accordingly.

Putting It All Together

So now that you know how to create a meal plan and what to put in it, let's talk about how to make sure your plan works for you.

First of all, consistency is key! You need to be able to stick with your meal plan for at least 3 weeks before making any changes or seeing results.

Second of all: tracking progress! Tracking progress helps keep us motivated and excited about our goals because it gives us something concrete that we can look back on when things get tough (which they inevitably will).

There are lots of ways people track their progress; some people use apps like MyFitnessPal while others prefer pen-and-paper journals where they write down everything they eat each day or week as well as their workouts (or lack thereof).

Whatever method works best for YOU is what matters most here--just make sure whatever method(s) work best FOR YOU so there aren't any barriers between achieving success.

A meal plan can help you stay organised and on track to help you lose weight

The benefits of having a meal plan are numerous. You can stay organised, and you'll also be able to stay on track with your fitness goals. If you're looking for an easy way to lose fat and build muscle, then this is definitely something that will help you out!

About the author

Paul Stokes

Paul Stokes BSc (Hons) is a Certified Personal Trainer, Accredited Sports Nutritionist, qualified Exercise to Music Instructor, Precision Nutrition coach, Massage Therapist and teaches 8 of the Les Mills Group Exercise programs.

He currently works in the Oil & Gas industry as a Wellness Coach, imparting his vast knowledge and experience to improve the quality of life of several hundred offshore workers.

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