I came across a study that you might be interested in:
Meal Planning Associated With A Healthier Diet & Weight Loss
Here are the important points of the study:
- Meal planners have higher overall food variety
- In women planning associated with lower odds of being overweight and obese
- In men planning associated with lower odds of being obese only
Gordon’s opinion on meal planning:
It’s going to help whether your goal is weight loss, body composition, training performance or being at your mental best. By having more food variety (a long as it’s coming from wholefoods) you’re going to have a healthier gut, better digestion and a stronger immune system. This is proven by hunter gatherer tribes such as the Hadza tribe from Tanzania where scientists found that they had a far greater microbiome compared to those following a low fibre, highly processed western diet. If you want to reduce your chances of getting Bali belly; rotate your food sources frequently.
When it comes to meal planning in general it’s going to save time and eliminate unecessary decision making throughout the day. Leaving you time to focus on more important matters. The hard part is of course making the initial time to plan your meals, cook and prepare them.
Modern day solutions to meal planning:
If you know how to cook you’ve got a head start; if you don’t you can learn the skills through following cook book recipe’s and online recipes. That’s how I learnt. If you don’t have time to cook or don’t want to, luckily today we have health conscious nutrition shops, pre-packaged meals and meal delivery services.
On average $10 per meal is great comparing that to $15-20 that you would pay for something fresh in a nutrition bar in Melbourne’s CBD. If each meal is an average of 400-500 calories you’re also looking at 3 meals plus your own homemade snack or high protein dessert for your daily intake if you’re a woman and 4 meals plus your own homeade snack or high protein dessert if you’re a man.
If you prefer fresh food you can also plan by:
- Creating your own list of healthy Go-To places near work
- Having a pre-selected list of 4-5 healthy takeaway/Uber Eats meals that you can rotate through to promote better gut health
Final tips:
Don’t over think it, nutrition during the week should only be for performance. Your body is Ferrari, fuel it with the best sources of fuel. Don’t get emotionally attached by it. For foods that you love you can have them too; plan it ahead of time, have it with company and use it to train hard.
Chat soon.
Gordon