Done with Dieting Episode #84: How to Create Your Own Meal Plan

Hi, have you ever had someone create a meal plan for you, but it didn’t work out really well? Or maybe there was a time when it did, like when you didn’t have kids. But then years later, when you dusted it off, you couldn’t get back on track.

In today’s episode of the done with dieting podcast, I’m going to teach you the exact steps that I use with my clients in helping them to create their own meal plans or what I call food uniforms. Get a pen and paper, cause you’re going to want to take notes.

Listen in and Let’s get started.

You are listening to the done with dieting podcast. The podcast for women in midlife, who are done with dieting, but still want to lose weight and feel good in your clothes.

You know that diets don’t work long term. But you feel like there’s this secret that everyone else knows that you just haven’t figured it out yet.

I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman. And I’ve helped hundreds of women get off the diet roller coaster, change their relationship with food, exercise, and their bodies.

Through this podcast, my goal is to help you too.

Welcome. Let’s get started.

Hi, everyone, welcome to episode number 84 of the done with dieting podcast. I am so excited to be here today because we are talking about one of my favorite things to talk about, which is creating your own meal plan.

Now, today’s episode is chok full of amazing and actionable takeaways that you’ll be able to use. So, get a pen and paper now, run and get that because you’re going to want to take notes. Now, we are at the end of August, right? Where did this summer go?

And at this point, I always think about the new school year as being new year. Some of you actually have kids that are going back to school, maybe college, maybe high school. Some of you may not have kids or your kids are fully grown, and you don’t think about the school year anymore.

But I don’t know, there’s something about September coming around, labor day the end of summer that makes me feel like it’s the new year. And maybe it’s just because of the years that I spent in school, or it could be that my birthday’s in fall. And so, I think about the new year happening then.

But whatever the case, what tends to happen is folks have more relaxed schedules around the summertime. We go out a little bit more, our schedules are more flexible. We have vacations and things like that. And so, what tends to happen is after labor day in just a few weeks, our schedules change. They become a little bit more, I don’t want to say rigid, but they become a little bit more scheduled.

And in one of my episodes, called clean slate habits. This is actually a really great time for you to think about what habits you want to start instilling for the new school year. Because we typically have somewhat of a disruption in our schedules. And so, we want to take advantage of that when we’re creating new habits.

So, I’m going to be referencing a number of other episodes that I’ve talked about because this all kind of builds together. But clean slate habits for sure is one of them. Now, you may be thinking, okay, so school year is starting. I need to not wing it anymore because we see how that’s been going. And you may be feeling a little bit out of control in terms of your eating plan.

And so, what we want to do is we want to talk about planning your meals. Now, when we talk about meal planning, what we’re going to talk about in this episode are two different concepts. One of the concepts is what I call creating a food uniform. And the second one that I’m going to be talking about is meal planning for the week. Okay. So, we’re going to be talking about meal planning in two different respects.

Now, as far as creating a food uniform goes, many of us actually resist planning our meals. We don’t want to be boxed in. I hear this all the time. Elizabeth, I don’t want to plan my meals. I just feel like, eh, when I do that. And I think that that’s because of all of the years of dieting that we’ve done.

And when we do meal planning, we feel like we have trauma from it. Because these meals that we’ve planned for ourselves have been so highly restrictive that we really haven’t been nice to ourselves or whoever created the meal plan was not being nice to us. And so, we don’t want to go through that all again.

But let me create the case for you that people who actually plan their meals, and this does not have to be a forever type of thing. This is only in the interim until you can figure out, okay, this is just the way I eat. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to start with meal planning. Okay.

And again, one of the biggest objections I get from folks is that because I don’t want a meal plan because I end up throwing food away or I don’t end up eating whatever that is. So, I definitely have some strategies if you are one of those people that’s like, Ugh, I don’t like meal planning.

And so, the meal planning and the way that I’m going to teach you today will help you to save money because there’s less food waste. You’re also going to be eating the food that you like. And you’re probably going to be buying less in the first place because you actually have a plan and you’re not going to the grocery store just buying random stuff off of the grocery store shelves. And then, not having enough at home to create a composed meal.

So, one of the really interesting things is that when people come to me, when they hire me or when they want to hire me. They ask, are you going to create a meal plan for me? And in the very early stages of my career, I actually started creating meal plans for people, but it never worked out. And it never worked out because the foods that I like, aren’t necessarily the foods that you like. Right?

We want meal plans because then we don’t have to think about it. However, when we are given a meal plan, it’s so funny. We’re like, okay, give me a meal plan because I don’t want to think about it. But then, when given a meal plan, we’re like, yeah, I don’t like that food. Right.

And so, why meal plans typically don’t work is that your tastes may be completely different than the person who’s created the meal plan. Like when we think about meal plans, when I think about meal plans. What I think about is like four ounces of chicken and two cups of broccoli with like butter flakes on them, or some BS about that, or like 15 green beans, and four ounces of steak.

Like they’re all composed meals, which is fine. But that’s not always how we eat. Okay. And so, that’s why I don’t do meal plans. The other reason why I don’t do meal plans is that meal plans just typically don’t work.

If you have a meal plan and then you go out to dinner and you’re looking at the menu and maybe you’re at an Italian restaurant, or maybe you’re at a Thai restaurant, or even in American restaurant and you’re out to dinner and you’re looking at the menu and you’re like, there’s nothing on here that resembles my four ounces of chicken and my two cups of broccoli. Right.

And so, what I prefer to do is I prefer to help my clients create their own meal plans. That way, they’re also not too restrictive. That’s something else that happens on meal plans is that they’re just so out of the norm of what you’re normally eating, that it just completely ruins the experience. That it’s too restrictive.

And then, the other thing is that meal plans don’t take into account. Your likes and dislikes, your lifestyle, and what’s happening with your family. But I realize that the power of creating a process of eating is really super powerful, especially when we’re talking about weight loss.

In fact, my way of eating, which I’ve shared on social media a few times is actually really super boring. I find it really super boring. But I’ve shared it on social media a few times and it’s actually this process that I guide my clients through, which is creating what I call a food uniform.

Because I eat the same things over and over and over again. And I’ve always been this way. When I was a little kid, I used to eat baloney sandwiches. Baloney sandwiches, just all day long. And then, one day I would decide, you know what? I’m not eating that anymore. I want ham sandwiches. And then, I decide to eat something different.

And so, I’ve always been this way where I have just eaten the same thing over and over and over again. And then, I just decide one day, you know what? I don’t want that anymore. And in fact, there was a period of time when I was eating ramen noodles. I was just out of college and so broke that I was eating ramen noodles every single day. I would buy cases of ramen noodles.

So, anyway, in creating your own food uniform. So, that’s where we’re going to start. Now, why I call this a food uniform is because it’s kind of like if you’ve seen the articles with Steve Jobs, where he talks about his own uniform, and if you watch that movie, that documentary on Theranos about Elizabeth Holmes, You saw that she also created her own food uniform.

And so, what it does is it takes the thinking out of it. It’s kind of like a capsule wardrobe. Okay. So, you have your tops, and you have your bottoms in your closet. And what you do is you just go ahead, and you pick, and you choose.

And so, what this food uniform does is it allows you to mix and match what foods or what clothes, right? What foods you enjoy eating. And it allows you like think about the treats as accessories. So, there are things that you throw on that add a little pizazz and fun to your wardrobe. And so, treats are going to add some fun and pizazz to your meal plan. Okay.

And so, that’s the idea. That’s where I came up with this idea of a food uniform. We have a couple different steps. We have six different steps to creating your own food uniform. And so, the first step is always to become aware. So, what is it that you are doing now?

And if you’ve used my eight basic habits that healthy people do, if you’ve downloaded the eight basic habits guide and checklist, you know, that the very first thing that we want to do is we want to look at how many servings of vegetables are we eating? How many servings of protein are we eating? How many servings of starch, how many servings of water are we drinking?

So, we want to start with what we’re currently doing. And the reason that we want to do this is because we don’t want to deviate too far from where we are right now. And I’m going to come back to that in just a little bit. Because I think a lot of times people want to go on meal plans because they’re not happy with how they’re currently eating.

And so, they’re like, I just need a complete food overhaul. I want you to tell me what to eat. What’s the perfect meal plan. And then, I’m going to do that but when we change too much, too quickly, it becomes too uncomfortable. And so, what happens then is we go off the meal plan.

So, step number one is gain awareness. What are you doing right now? How many servings of all the different things are you eating?

And then, step two is really understanding how your body feels on different foods. What foods make you feel good. What foods don’t necessarily make you feel good. What foods are staples in your diet. What foods aren’t. But you want to be staples in your diet.

And I’m going to definitely recommend that you listen to episode number seven, which is titled how to listen to your body. And that way, what you can do is you can start to hone in on what are the cues that I need to be listening for in order to give my body the food that it needs. And so, what we’re going to do then is once you understand what foods your body does well on, then that’s going to be the bulk of your meal plan. Okay.

So, once you understand how your body responds to those different foods, then step number three is creating what I call food buckets. Now, you’re going to have three different food buckets. And those three different food buckets are the foods that are going to make up 80 to 90% of your diet, foods that make up 10 to 15% of your diet or treats, and foods that you’re rarely or never going to eat. Okay.

Now, here’s the thing. Those buckets are going to change over time. And so, going back to step number one, that’s why it’s so critically important that you understand where you are right now. What foods are currently making up 80 to 90% of your diet. What foods are making up 10 to 15% of your diet. And which foods do you rarely eat.

Because what we want to do is we want to use what you’re currently doing, and then just improve it just a little bit. Okay. So, do not aim to be perfect in creating your lists of foods. Aim for B minus work. And another plug for an episode is episode number 12, B minus habits.

Remember, that aim for B minus and eventually you will get to A plus. Because the A plus work that you’re doing right now is eventually going to be B minus. Okay, I’ve talked about that a lot on this podcast.

So, do not aim to be perfect. Do not aim for, if you are not perfect right now which none of us are. Aim for B minus work. Okay. And I’ve told this story before, but I’m going to share it again that when I think about the version of me who started years ago, I would’ve been thrilled to be eating the way that I do today.

Today, I do not think that I am a perfect eater. But I’m sure that there are some of you who think that I am. If you were to see my meal, you’d be like, oh my God. If I could eat that every day, I would be thrilled. Same thing with the previous version of myself. I thought that what I would be eating today would be perfect.

But I wasn’t able to stay on it. It was too restrictive for me at the time. And so, what I’ve had to do over years and years, and years, and years, I don’t want to say perfect it, but hone it. We want to do what you can right now, lean into it every day just be a little bit better.

And then, what happens is over time, you will move into that A plus version of yourself. However, because it’s happened over a period of time, you’re not going to think that it’s A plus work. You’re still going to think it’s B minus work. Okay.

The third reason that we want to be kind to ourselves in terms of creating those buckets is because the person that you’re going to be tomorrow and next week is going to be pretty freaking close to the person you are today.

So, if you do not want to eat vegetables only for all of your meals today, if you want to have ice cream, occasionally, or some chips, or maybe a glass of wine, then what we’re going to do is we’re going to make sure that you have that tomorrow and next week, and next month as well. Okay, so that’s step number three, create your buckets.

Step number four is lean into better habits using step one as a guide. So, I mentioned this in the previous step. Identify how many servings of vegetables, starch, protein, and fat you want to eat per day. So, this is a really good example.

So, let’s say that when you track your habits, you figure out, well, most days I’m eating about two servings of vegetables except on the weekends. Then, it might be one or then it might be zero.

So, then you get to figure out. First of all, we do not want to jump. From two servings a day to five servings a day, that’s going to be way too uncomfortable. It’s going to be way too difficult to maintain that. So, what we want to do is we want to just get consistent every day of the week.

If you’re already eating two servings a day, then just do it seven days a week. And then, what you can do is you can start to increase it through using the technique of increasing your frequency, increasing your density, and increasing your intensity. And if you’re unfamiliar with that concept, I’m going to recommend that you listen to episode number eight, which is called how to get consistent with exercise.

So, what you’re going to do is you’re going to slowly ratchet up. You’re going to maybe decide that three days a week, you’re going to get three servings of vegetables. And the other days of the week, you’re only going to get two. Or you could decide that you know what? I’m going to add another serving into my breakfast since I normally don’t add vegetables into that meal.

So, there are lots of different ways that you can get creative in terms of figuring out how many servings of starch, protein, fat that you want to eat per day. Okay. So, don’t jump into a perfect plan if your diet is not currently perfect. So, that’s step number four, lean into better habits using step one is a guide.

Then, step number five is decide how many meals are you going to eat? And then, what we want to do is we want to break down the servings that we created in step number four. We want to break down the number of servings per day into number of servings per meal times.

So, an example of that would be if I’m going to eat three meals per day, and I’m decided that I’m going to eat two servings of vegetables. Then, when are those vegetables going to appear in my meal times. Meal one being breakfast, maybe it’s a little bit difficult for me to add vegetables to that meal.

So, I’m going to make sure that I have one at lunch and I’m going to have one serving at dinner. Or maybe, you know that every day for lunch, you eat an enormous salad. So, you’re going to get your two vegetables in there. So then, your meals would be meal one would be zero for vegetables, meal two would be two servings, and then meal three would be zero. Okay.

And then, you would do the same thing for your servings of starch, your servings of protein, and your servings of fat as well. So, you just decide again in step number four, you’re deciding how many servings of vegetables, starch, protein, and fat you’re having per day. And then, in step number five, you’re figuring out how the breakdown is going to occur. All right?

And then, step number six is create meals based on what you want to be eating. Based on how that breaks down. So, here’s an example. Let’s say, that meal one I’ve decided is going to be one serving of vegetables, one serving of starch, one serving of protein and one serving of fat. Okay.

So, in meal one, what that might look like is doing some sort of avocado toast. So, the starch would be my piece of bread, my vegetable might be spinach and a tomato, add avocado, and then my protein would be an egg. Okay. So, like a breakfast sandwich, right?

What we’re doing here is then we’re creating meals based on serving of vegetables, a serving of starch, a serving of protein, and a serving of fat.

Another example might be if you are going to have a vegetable and a protein for meal four, let’s say. What that might look like might be a veggie stir fry or perhaps a sheet pan meal. Where you have your protein, and your vegetables, and you bake it all together.

So, these are just some examples of how you would create meals that you enjoy based on what you want to be eating. Okay. So now, that’s what we call a food uniform.

Now, how you implement it once you have all of these meals. And I also want to mention that if you’re someone like me, who can eat the same thing over and over and over again. You don’t have to get too creative for how many meals you have for each of those meal times.

But if you are someone who craves variety and you need to have different foods for each of your like every day of the week, then what you might have to do is you might have to get a little bit more creative and outline three to five, maybe even seven different meals for each of those meal times.

So, you might have like protein pancakes for breakfast and avocado toast and potentially, yogurt with blueberries for your breakfast. And you would just have more templates or uniforms to choose from for each of those different meals. You can do it either way, but just be aware that if you’re someone who likes to eat the same thing over and over and over again, it’s probably going to be a little bit easier.

Now, once you have those meals decided for each of the meal times. Then, the next thing you want to do is every single day, you could do this on a weekly basis. And I’m going to talk about that in just a second. But every day you decide ahead of time, what meals you are going to eat tomorrow.

So, today is Tuesday. You’re going to decide, what am I going to eat on Wednesday? And now, here’s the thing. You want to make sure that you add in treats. Do not be mean to yourself because the person you are today, if you have been eating let’s say, nuts at three o’clock every single day.

And you don’t plan for that, your brain is going to freak out when it’s three o’clock tomorrow and you do not have nuts on your meal plan. What you want to do is maybe have nuts, but maybe a smaller serving if you feel like you’re overeating them. Okay. So, make sure you add in treats.

Now, the second piece is eat what you have planned. The whole idea of deciding ahead of time is that it takes the deciding out of the equation because when we have to decide what we’re going to eat, our lower brain gets involved and our lower brain only cares about right here in the moment.

It does not care about the future or your freaking goals to be able to fit into your genes. All your lower brain cares about are avoiding pain, seeking pleasure, and doing it as efficiently as possible.

So, when you decide ahead of time, what you’re going to eat tomorrow. My next piece of advice for you is going to be set yourself up for success so that your lower brain only has to do what’s easy. So, we’re going to reduce friction. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to make it so super simple for yourself tomorrow, so that it’s easier to follow the plan than it is to deviate from the plan.

Now, I want you to plan in treats. And I want you to plan in treats on purpose because what’s going to happen is someone’s going to come along and they’re going to say, Hey, I made you a cupcake. Do you want it? And of course, you’re going to want it, but you want to start becoming discern.

And I want you to start thinking about, okay, you get to decide between eating what you planned, which maybe you planned to have wine that night and then deciding between the wine and the cupcake. Do you want the cupcake, or do you want the wine? You can’t have both. Okay.

And so, what happens then is you tell your lower brain, cause your lower brain is going to want the cupcake. Right? You tell your lower brain. Okay, lower brain, I know you want the cupcake, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to save the cupcake for tomorrow. And all we have to do is we have to follow the plan.

So, we’re going to save the cupcake for tomorrow and then I want you to put it on the plan for tomorrow. Okay. You don’t necessarily have to eat it tomorrow if you don’t want to. But you’re going to put it on the plan.

Now, what this does is when you’re deciding ahead of time, what you’re doing is you’re planning, from your prefrontal cortex. The part of your brain that goes and makes decisions. And it knows the consequences to those decisions.

And so, what happens then is when you are in the moment, all you have to do is follow the plan. And if you’re being nice to yourself in the process, it’s going to be easier to follow the plan then if you’re not nice to yourself.

Now, one of the questions that people have is okay, so how does that fit into weekly meal planning. And so, I want to go through meal planning with you as well. And so, this is a little bit longer of a podcast episode, but that’s okay. I think it’s all really good and it’s all really useful.

So, first of all, when we talk about meal planning. Meal planning is not the same as meal preparation. When I talk about decide ahead of time, I’m not necessarily saying that you have to make all of your meals.

All I’m saying is that when the meal shows up, when you go out to dinner, or when you decide that you’re going to eat that you already know what it is that you’re going to eat. If you’re going out, decide ahead of time, what it is that you’re going to eat at the restaurant. And so, when I talk to my clients about meal planning, what they hear is meal preparation.

And I just want to let you know that you do not have to prepare all of your meals in order to be successful in your goals. You can totally be successful eating out a majority of the time. Okay. So, that’s the first caveat that I need to share about this whole meal planning thing. You do not have to prepare all of your meals. Okay. You just have to plan what you’re going to eat.

The second piece is do not try to retrofit the foods that you are already eating into this plan. It might work, but it probably won’t. We like the foods that we like. I totally get that. And what happens with many of my clients is they create this food uniform by looking at what they’re already eating and they’re like, well, I don’t want to change these different meals cause I like them.

And so, I’m going to retrofit my current eating plan into this food uniform. That’s fine, if you like the way that you eat and you’re getting good results. However, I’m going to assume that the reason that you’re here is because you’re not loving the results that you’re getting.

Maybe you’re overeating, maybe you’re eating emotionally. Maybe you are going out to dinner and you’re thinking, oh, I don’t know what to eat, so therefore I’m going to eat everything. Do not use this food uniform as a retrofitting way of fitting what you’re currently eating into this.

Remember what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to increase your servings of vegetables. We’re trying to decrease your access to processed foods and things like that. And so, we’re trying to clean up your diet and we want to do that in a very gentle way by increasing our access to the foods that we want to be eating. All right.

So, if you want different results, you’re going to have to do things differently. Okay. So then, ongoing, as you plateau, as you find that what you’re eating becomes easy. Then, I’m going to invite you to evaluate your buckets again. And see, what’s ready to move in from one bucket into another.

So, an example of that might be diet soda. Maybe you are not ready to give up diet soda. That’s totally fine. Or maybe you’re drinking full sugar soda and you’re not ready to give it up. It’s totally fine.

Eventually, you may decide that I want to move that diet soda into the treat bucket. So right now, it’s in my 80 to 90% bucket. But eventually, I’m going to move it into the treat bucket. And then, eventually you might move it out of the treat bucket into the foods that I never or rarely eat. Okay.

So, that’s how things progress. And so, what happens then is the foods that we want to be eating more and more and more of become 80 to 90% of our diet. Okay. So, you get to decide what your treats are going to be. You get to decide what your never foods are going to be. And then, you get to work it into your food plan.

Now, one of the questions that people have when deciding ahead of time is okay, how does dinner work? Because generally, most people are on their own for breakfast and lunch, but then dinner is traditionally a more community thing.

And so, what I generally suggest is that once a week, you go to the grocery store, and you plan out your meals for dinners. And you get to decide if those meals are also going to have leftovers, so that that becomes your lunch the next day. Just plan all of that stuff in.

Now, I do have a protocol that I follow for meal planning for the week and I’m going to go over it with you right now. It may feel a little overwhelming, but I’ve honed this planning over years of observing and noticing what my mistakes are.

And that’s actually a really important point. Because with this food plan, with any way of creating a food uniform, you really need to make it work for you. And how we want to do that is through looking at what works, evaluating what didn’t, and then doing I don’t want to say better, but figuring out what the roadblocks were and then seeking to overcome them.

This is a process that I follow for weekly meal planning. So, step one is I go through my fridge or my pantry to determine which foods are going to be expiring.

So, if you have vegetables that are in the vegetable drawer, that need to be used up, make sure you just make a mental note of that. Also, clean out whatever foods need to be thrown away. Okay.

The first step of this sounds counterintuitive cleaning out your refrigerator of anything old. So, make notice that anything that’s going to expire within the next week and then if desired, plan that into your meal plan for the upcoming week. So, just start to notice what foods you need to use up. Okay.

Step number two is look at your schedule to determine how much prep time you have each night to prepare your meals. This is really important. Look at your schedule. Look at the schedules of those in your family. And this will allow you to determine, how much time you have to prepare your meals.

But also, who’s going to be eating them and when they’re going to be eating them. So, on nights, when there are fewer people in the house or you’re alone, you might want to keep things super simple. But you also don’t want to over buy foods and end up throwing it out.

If you’re strapped for time, it’s important to either take advantage of pre prepping some of those ingredients so that your cooking time is reduced. And you might want to do that on the weekends, or earlier in the week, or having a few super simple tasty fast meals in your recipe box so that you can pull from those as you need.

The other thing to consider is grocery stores today have amazing, prepared foods. Take advantage of that as well. Okay. So, on those nights, when you’re strapped for time, definitely use one of those strategies. All right?

Now, step number three is look at the weather forecast for the upcoming week. I know it sounds silly, but it’s super important year round. Especially, during times of the year when weather changes. No one wants to be eating stew when it’s 80 degrees out. Nor does anyone want to eat salad when it’s freezing out.

So, looking at the forecast will allow you to prepare for weather changes and eat meals that are appealing for that weather. Okay. So, eating things that are warm and tasty on cold nights and then things that are super refreshing and light on days that are hot. Okay. So, look at the weather, that’s step number three.

The next thing you want to do is you want to think about your moods. So, I found that I’m more willing to cook fancier heavier meals at the beginning of the week. And it’s because I have more energy, right? I just come off of a weekend and I just feel like I could spend more time cooking.

And so, I tend to get more casual as the week progresses. So, at the beginning of the week, I might make something a little bit more complex. But at the end of the week, I’m more likely to make meals like tacos or burgers. Okay. So, think about your moods as the week progresses.

And then, step number five is leftovers. Are you one of those people that likes leftovers? I love leftovers. And so, leftovers are one of the best and easiest ways to meal prep for the rest of the week. And this tip is more about quantity of your meals. Then, it is about what it is that you’re cooking.

So, for example, I mentioned sheet pan meals earlier. If you’re making two chicken breasts for you and your partner. Then, why not put three or four more on there and have chicken for the rest of the week that you can then put into salads or wraps or bowls or whatever it is. And so, just cooking more food, doesn’t take that much longer.

Plan to overcook so that you can use those foods in other meals throughout the week. And this might change depending on your habits. Or it might change depending on who’s in your house. But just be aware that leftovers are an amazing way of being able to prep your meals for later in the week.

And again, understand your own eating habits and what it is that you do for lifestyle. So, like for example, if you tend to eat out on the weekends, you probably don’t want to cook a large batch of chicken on Wednesday or Thursday because it’s just going to go bad.

So, when you would do that would be earlier in the week, like Monday or Tuesday so that you can have it for lunches later on. So, again, just be aware and start to plan and think it through. It may sound overwhelming, but once you start doing it, it becomes so much easier. Okay.

Now, I don’t know how long I’m going to be doing this for. But I do have an offer for you. I will give you all of the tools that I use with my clients and walk you through this whole process. And you will get the resources that I give to my clients.

So, you’ll get a personalized eating report. You’ll get the easy meals matrix which is an amazing resource where it’s kind of like a food uniform, but it’s actually for meals. It’s a method that I use myself. And there are five different mealtime methods. And that all you have to do is swap out the vegetables and the meats and the seasonings.

And you’re basically cooking the same thing over and over and over again. But it doesn’t feel that way because you’ve completely changed the flavor profiles. So, the easy meals matrix is one of my favorite resources that I give to clients. You’ll get all of the forms for creating your buckets and your food uniform.

And then, we will also work together. You’ll get three 45 minute coaching sessions where I will walk you through this exact process. And you’ll also receive the recordings of the videos so that you can rewatch them as you progress in your eating style. All of this is $300 and it’s an amazing deal.

Now, why this approach works? Why this food uniform works is that you get a meal plan that’s totally designed for you and your lifestyle with foods that you love and enjoy. So, you know that you’re going to be successful. And when you go out to dinner, because you figured everything out before, you know the method behind the madness. You know, what the guidelines are.

So, as you read the restaurant menu, you will know exactly what to order. There will be no more throwing the menu up and being like, well, I guess I can’t stay on that meal plan. So, I’m just going to eat whatever. You’ll already have decided how going out to dinner is going to fit in with your diet.

And then, as the seasons change and your tastes change, you can adapt your food uniform. So, as you create new menus or as you look at new recipes online, you will be able to swap those in and then move other ones out. So that as the seasons progress, you’ll be changing your food uniform as well.

And so, the last reason why it works is that as you lean into the B minus habits, your buckets will change. And so, you will become a better, more savvy eater and it will also set you up for success.

Again, I always think about fall as the second new year’s. Probably, because of the school year or daylight savings time in my birthday. So, if you want to start this second new year off with getting your food plan dialed in, I’m going to invite you to participate in this offer. Again, I don’t know how long I’m going to be offering this.

So, if you’re interested in it and you want to do it, I’m going to invite you to email me at hello@elizabethsherman.com. Okay. So, that’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing week, everyone. I will talk to you later. Bye-bye.

Hey, thanks for listening.

If you’re done with dieting and would like to work with me as your coach, I’d like to invite you to reach out to myself and my team to ask about programs and pricing. Go to elizabethsherman.com/contact to get started today. I can’t wait to hear from you.

See you next week.