Easiest Way To Build An Effective Meal Plan
Dialing in our nutrition is the best thing we can do to help us achieve our fitness goals. This applies to losing fat as well as building muscle. The problem most people face is that they are not sure if the food they are eating is actually helping them reach their goals in the most efficient manner or not. The easiest solution? Get a meal plan. This way, you can be sure you’re eating the right foods and getting in all the nutrients your body needs on a daily basis. The problem comes in when you actually pay to get yourself a meal plan and only days after using it you realize that you’re sick of the foods listed in it. See the thing is that meal plans are very personal. You cannot generalize a meal plan for everyone. Just because you love a certain food does not mean the next person will feel the same way about it. So is there a way to fix this? Yes, there is. Make your own meal plans. As basic as this sounds, it fixes both the problems you would face from actually buying meal plans. Firstly, it will be personalized for your needs with the food you actually enjoy eating. Secondly, once you know how to make yourself a meal plan, you can change it whenever you get bored. In this way, you can make unlimited meal plans for the rest of your life.
In this post, I’ll give you a step by step break down of how to use an app like MyFitnessPal to help yourself create a custom meal plan. This might look complicated at first but be patient and feel free to read this multiple times till you feel comfortable with the steps listed below. Not only will this teach you to create a meal plan, but it will also help you understand the nutrient breakdown in different foods.
Calculate Your Calories and Macros
This is the first and most important step. Your meal plan will be based on these calculated numbers. If you don’t know how to calculate your calories and macros for fat loss, click here.
Alternatively, if you find these calculations a bit too intimidating, you can use this calculator I’ve created until the link expires by clicking here.
If you’re someone who’s goal is to gain weight, add 200-300 calories to your maintenance and recalibrate your macros from there.
Once you have your numbers calculated, write them down and move to the next step.
For this example, I’ll be using approximately 2550 calories with a macro breakdown of 320 grams of carbs, 155 grams of protein and 70 grams of fat.
Set Up With Custom Macros
Let’s begin!
Download the app ‘MyFitnessPal' and sign up to create a free account.
You will be asked some basic details such as your height and weight. Once your account is created, you’ll reach the home screen. It should look something like the image below. From the menu at the bottom, select ‘Diary'.
Your ‘Diary’ will open up with the calories the app has calculated for you. We’re going to change this to our custom calories and macros calculated above. To do this, click the bar on the top which shows your current calories.
Once you do that, this page will show up. Select ‘Nutrients' from the menu bar at the top.
Now, click on one of the nutrients, say ‘Protein'. Something like this should come up. Once you reach here, click the ‘Goal’ number.
You will reach the page where you can enter your custom calories. Once you enter the calories you have calculated above, click the ‘✓’ icon.
The next step is to change the macros. Click on any one of the macronutrients percentages under the calories to bring up the menu shown below. Here you will try to get as close as you can to your calculated macros. You might not get the perfect numbers as it is in percentages but that doesn’t matter much anyway as this is just to give you an idea while you are creating your meal plan.
Once you select the macro split, click the ‘✓’ icon. You have now set up your custom calories and macros!
Make sure the changes have saved and click the back button to go back to your ‘Diary’. Now, your diary should display the custom calories you have entered.
Meal Plan Structure
Now that we have set up our custom calories and macros, the next step is to set the structure of our meal plan. This simply means we get to decide how many meals we want to split our current calories in. The number of meals you plan to eat does not matter as much as hitting your calorie and macro target does. You can definitely go deeper into meal timing and number of meals if you wish to do so, but if you’re someone who’s goal simply is to lose fat and get ripped, focus on the big picture. This means it’s completely up to you whether you wish to have 3 meals a day or 6 meals a day. Some people prefer eating small quantities more frequently and some prefer eating a fewer number of large meals. Make sure you consider your daily routine while setting up your meal structure.
Let’s continue!
Once you’re at your ‘Diary’ page, select ‘More' from the menu at the bottom. This page should show up.
Since we’re here anyway, I’d like you to make one more change in the settings. Click the ’Steps’ button. Once the page opens up, select the ‘Don’t track steps’ option. This is simply because the calorie number we have calculated accounts for your daily activity already. If you let the app track your steps, it will increase your calorie goal. Once done, press the back button.
Now we get back to setting our meal structure. Scroll down in the ‘More’ tab till you find ‘Settings’.
Once you open ‘Settings', click on ‘Diary Settings’.
In 'Diary Settings’, click ‘Customize Meal Names’.
Here you can adjust the number of meals you wish to have. You don’t necessarily have to name the meals as lunch, dinner, etc., but if you leave a meal un-named, it will not show up in your ‘Diary’. You can simply name the meals as meal 1, meal 2, etc.. In the example below, I want all 6 meals to show in my ‘Diary’, so I make sure all of them have a name on the right-hand side.
Once you select the meal structure, click the ‘✓’ icon. You have now set up your meal plan structure!
Building The Meal Plan
Now, you’re finally ready to create your own meal plan. The goal here is to select foods that will not only help you hit your calorie and macronutrient goals but also give your body the essential vitamins and minerals. This means that you should not fill up the meal plan with "junk food". Make the meal plan with healthy whole foods that you will enjoy eating. This seems very difficult in the start, but with a little experimentation, you will find healthy foods that you wouldn’t mind eating on a regular basis.
Here’s how you start adding food to your ‘Diary’!
Open your ‘Diary’ and click the '+Add Food’ button under the first meal.
Search for the food you wish to enter. Alternatively, you can scan the barcode, if the item you’re planning to enter has one.
Here, I’m going to search for a banana. Tip: If you’re planning to add raw foods, make sure you type raw/uncooked while searching. This won’t make a difference while tracking a banana but it will if you track something like 100 grams of rice cooked vs uncooked.
You will see several entries but select the one which has the most appropriate serving size and calories. If you aren’t sure, you can always just use google to verify the calories in a certain food. After you select the food, you can adjust the ‘Serving Size' and ‘Number of Servings’. Once done, click the ‘✓’ icon.
You have now added your first food. You can keep adding more food to your meal plan to hit your targets. Click the '+Add Food’ button once again to add the next ingredient.
Once you have added the food, your calorie target should be hit. Don’t sweat it if you’re a little over or under your calorie target.
You can now click the calorie bar and select ‘Nutrients' from the menu bar at the top to see your if you hit your targets. You can scroll down and see your micronutrient targets as well.
Do not worry if you are not able to hit all your targets in your first attempt. Try different foods to help you hit your macros.
Tip: Try to add in a protein source to each meal to reach close to your protein target as this will make it easy for you to play around with your carbs and fat with the remaining calories. Your main focus should be your calories followed by your protein intake.
The Final Step
Once you are happy with your meal plan, the final step is to make sure that it is giving your body the micronutrients it needs. Generally, if you are eating a variety of foods with lots of fruits and vegetables, you don’t need to stress about this step. But if you are someone who is planning on using the same meal plan for a long period of time, I highly recommend this step as it can help prevent deficiencies. I personally love MyFitnessPal but I don’t think that it does justice to the micronutrient breakdown. Cronometer is an app similar to MyFitnessPal but it gives a way more detailed breakdown of your micronutrients in my opinion. I would suggest using the desktop version at www.cronometer.com as it is way smoother. All you have to do here is enter the meal plan you created on MyFitnessPal in the Cronometer ‘Diary’ to get a complete breakdown of your micronutrients. This will allow you to make small changes in the long run such as adding in foods richer in specific vitamins and minerals. Again, don’t stress about hitting 100% of every micronutrient every day but make sure you aren’t building up any deficiencies in the long run.
The End Product
After going through these steps, you will have a custom meal plan which you can use to reach your goals. Besides reaching your goals, this will help you learn a lot more about different foods and their nutrients. Here’s the SAMPLE meal plan I ended up with using the above steps along with its nutrient breakdown.
*I am not a medical professional and hence you should take these as a general guideline. Consult a medical professional if you wish to decide whether the information given is appropriate for you.
Putting Your Meal Plan Into Action
Now that you have a meal plan, you simply eat the quantity of food you entered while creating it. This is easy when you consider something like a banana where you can just count the pieces. On the other hand, food like oats and rice will need to be measured. Most people dread the thought of using a food scale but it will be one of the best investments you make. It might seem awkward the first few times, but after you get used to it, it won’t even feel like you’re putting any effort at all. It doesn’t have to be something super fancy. Any digital food scale would work. The main reason of using a food scale is that it helps you be consistent especially if you plan on using things such as oils, peanut butter, etc. in your meal plan as these foods are very calorie dense. For example, depending on how heaped your spoon of peanut butter is, it could vary from 90 calories to 200 calories. Keeping in mind the fact that you’ll approximately be creating a 500 calorie deficit daily, it is very easy to erase the deficit if you’re not being accurate with such food. Also, once you use the food scale for a few months, you’ll be able to estimate the calories in a given quantity of food for the rest of your life. This means you will be able to eat out and still have an approximation of how many calories you have consumed. Think of it more as a tool which will help you learn portion control for the long run.
Conclusion
To build a sustainable meal plan, make sure you take into account your personal preferences. Select a meal frequency and incorporate healthy whole foods which will help you hit your macronutrient and micronutrient targets. Just as everything else, the more you practice, the better you’ll get at building meal plans which make the process of dieting easier for you and assist you in enhancing your health and performance.
Now that you have a meal plan which will help you dial in your nutrition, you’re just 2 steps away from reaching your goal physique. Read about the 3 Steps To Get Ripped.
Find the content informational? Share it with your friends and family using the share buttons above and under this article!
