Meal Plan For Weight Loss – Why They DON’T Work

Following a meal plan for weight loss sounds like a great idea in theory.

But from coaching thousands of people over the years by proxy, they don’t really do a very effective job getting people lasting results.

In this video, I’m gonna show you 5 reasons why meal plans don’t work and what you need to do instead.

Meal Plan For Weight Loss

Let me define what I mean by a meal plan. I’m talking about a specific list of foods to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

Having someone like a trainer or a dietician give you a meal plan sounds great in theory. If you just follow the plan, you’re gonna get results. Right? Unfortunately, that’s not what usually happens.

I used to give out meal plans when I used to train people in person. It seemed like a good idea. My clients did get results. The problem is, they had a hard time maintaining those results.

This wasn’t their fault by the way. They didn’t fail the meal plan. The meal plan failed them. 

The only times I’ve seen meal plans work is when they’re followed strictly by bikini show competitors or elite athletes training for a competition.

That’s what I used to do when I competed as a weightlifter and I had to make weight. It wasn’t really about the food. It was about making sure that my nutrition needs were met. 

Even then, the meal plan wasn’t meant to be followed long term. It was designed with a specific time frame in mind. Afterwards, you can bet that I ditched the meal plan.

It’s not uncommon for bikini competitors to gain a lot of fat after competition. I’ve heard of some people putting on 20 and even 30 pounds of fat afterwards. 

Heck, I wasn’t immune to that extreme weight loss and weight regain rollercoaster ride. Does that sound healthy to you?

For everyone else, and that includes you, you don’t need a meal plan. Because you have needs that change day by day and week by week.

% reasons why meal plans don’t work.

1. They’re too rigid.

Meal plans kinda just puts you in a box. Again, they dictate what to eat, how much, and when.

Yes, you might be able to follow the plan for a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months. But you can bet that life is bound to get in the way. That’s just how it works.

Stress hits and you ditch said meal plan for a relaxing night out with friends. 

Maybe you go on a business trip or a family vacation. All of a sudden, you can’t stick to the prescribed meal plan and you end up eating food that wasn’t on the plan. And you beat yourself up for not following it.

Meal plans just aren’t designed to support real life. They sound great in theory. 

But do you think our Paleolithic ancestors followed a rigid meal plan? No. They ate what was available or after a successful hunt. Sometimes they would go days without eating.

2. Meal plans tend to promote the super unhelpful all or nothing mentality.

Maybe your motivation is running high and you follow your meal plan for a while. 

Then you get bored with the rotating list of egg white and spinach omelette, steamed broccoli, brown rice, chicken, salad, and maybe a piece of fruit.

Eventually you never wanna eat another piece of lettuce or baked chicken breast again. You start craving trigger foods like ice cream or chips.

When your motivation runs out, and it will because we only have a finite amount of it, and you’re having a bad day. You’re bound to ditch the meal plan and start indulging on your caloric kryptonite.

The floodgates open and you go on an all out binge. 

This is the classic all or nothing thinking. You didn’t stick to your meal plan so you might as well eat everything in sight. Now you’re on the “see food” diet. You see food, you eat it.

The all or nothing mindset keeps you stuck. And worse, it ruins your relationship with food. You’re constantly yo-yo-ing from one extreme to another. Flipping from full restriction to binging.

As with a lot of things, the truth is usually somewhere in between.

3. Meal plans usually don’t take into account people’s cultural preferences.

There are very few diets out there that take into consideration a person’s heritage and up bringing. And that’s a big problem.

For example, when people come to North America from other countries, a lot of them don’t abandon their traditional cuisine.

While other people Americanize their eating habits by adopting a diet higher in processed carbs, sugar, and bad fats. 

There’s an eye opening study that revealed when Japanese women move away from Japan to the US, their life expectancy dropped by something like 8 years. 

Meal planning and diets have to factor in cultural diet differences in order to have any chance of succeeding. But, they usually don’t.

Take me for example. I’m Canadian but I was born in the Philippines. Which means that rice is a staple of any gathering. 

If I follow a meal plan that completely eliminates rice from my diet, it’s not gonna work long term.

If you’re Italian, following a meal plan that excludes bread, olive oil, and pasta forever is a recipe for disaster.

Completely ditching the aforementioned foods just wouldn’t work culturally. People shouldn’t have to turn their back on their ethnic favourites. 

4. Meal plans don’t account for food intolerances.

Meal plans often include foods that some people are sensitive with. The top offenders are nuts, dairy, gluten, soy, corn, and peanuts.

So following a meal plan that includes the aforementioned foods can present some problems.

There are two types of food sensitivities. Food intolerances and food allergies. 

A food allergy is a strong immune reaction from certain foods. You eat it and it triggers an allergic reaction that manifests as hives, itching, eczema, swelling of lips, face, tongue, and throat, or other parts of the body, among other things. 

Some allergies can even be life threatening if they don’t get medical attention right away. Like someone with a peanut allergy having anaphylaxis.

A food intolerance is a bit more subtle but it can be just as devious. It’s a mild inflammatory chemical reaction where the body can’t digest some types of food.

Its symptoms can be more subtle like gas, bloating, heart burn, headaches, irritability, and other minor symptoms. 

I hate to throw them under the bus but vegans often experience most of those symptoms. Especially bloating. You’ll often see them post pictures on social media about their food baby. That’s not normal. 

That means whatever they’re eating is causing inflammation and other weird things in their gut.

You simply can’t follow a cookie cutter blanket meal plan that your favourite instagram influencer is selling if you suffer food sensitivities. Or even suspect that you might. 

In fact, you need to follow an elimination diet if that’s the case. The best elimination diet is the carnivore diet. It’s been shown to reverse a lot of autoimmune disorders and gut issues. 

It’s the ultimate elimination diet because you’re eliminating all the foods that trigger inflammation. 

Here’s the ugly truth about plants. Anti-nutrients in plants trigger inflammation. 

The most mainstream anti-nutrient is gluten. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The other big players are lectins, phytates, and oxalates.

What are anti-nutrients you ask? Anti-nutrients are chemicals found in plants that keep our bodies from absorbing essential nutrients from food. 

It’s a defence mechanism they’ve developed to protect themselves from predators. They’re not just sitting on the ground waiting to be eaten. 

I’m not saying you should never eat plants. Not all plants are bad. They exist in a spectrum of toxicity. A lot of people have the genetic ability to eat avocado, broccoli, or mango and be just fine. 

Some people might not be able to tolerate certain plant foods. If they eat a tomato, they get eczema or trigger other autoimmune issues.

The only way to find out is by using a carnivore diet as your template and slowly introduce some of these foods back to your diet.

You should check out my carnivore diet video if you wanna know more about it.

5. Meal plans don’t teach you anything about your individual nutritional needs.

Nutrition is highly individualized. Everyone is different. Your metabolism is like your unique fingerprint. No one else has it. 

Your nutritional requirements also change over time. What your body needed at age 20 is drastically different than what you need at age 50 because of fluctuating hormones, level of physical activity, and other lifestyle factors.

For the most part, unless you do resistance training, you can’t eat the same amount of food every day day as you did when you were younger. 

Older adults require even higher levels of nutrients like protein compared to younger people because of something called anabolic resistance.

Most meal plans are just too generic and not focused on what the body needs during various life stages. 

What should you do instead?

You wanna learn how to eat intuitively.

What I recommend you doing is identify your favourite healthy foods that your body tolerates. Take into consideration your cultural and personal preferences. 

Don’t eat foods you hate just because they’re “healthy”. For example, I hate pickles. I don’t care if it’s the healthiest food on the planet. I don’t wanna eat a rotten cucumber. 

Same thing with salads. I’m not a big salad guy. I think kale belongs in the garbage. So, I don’t eat it. Life is too short to keep eating foods you hate. There are always other alternatives.

If you’re coming from a period of rigid meal plans and feel like you don’t even know what foods you prefer because you’ve just been forcing yourself to eat what’s on that plan, do some experimenting.

In terms of quantity, I recommend you plan each meal to include as much non starchy vegetables as you like. Cruciferous vegetables are great for this. They’re basically free calories.

Eat at least a palm size of animal protein which should cover the minimum of 30 grams to trigger muscle protein synthesis. 

And then depending on your weight loss goals and level of activity, you can include some sort of complex carb like root vegetables, starchy vegetables, or even grains if you can tolerate it. 

Asians have been eating white rice for centuries. Japan doesn’t have an obesity epidemic and has the most centenarians per capita on the planet. 

You can have a serving of seasonal fruit for “dessert”. You can also have some type of dairy if you can tolerate it like cheese or greek yogurt. Nuts or 85% dark chocolate are also great options.

And then you wanna sequence your meals. Eat your food in the following order. First, eat your non starchy vegetable. Next, protein and fat. Lastly, your starchy carbs.

Eating in that order increases satiety because veggies, protein, and fat are extremely satiating. Once you get to your carbs, you might not even eat all of it. 

Next, minimize snacking. You don’t need them. If you’re hungry in between meals, it could just be a sign that you’re bored or just need some water. Drink a big glass of water and see how you feel. 

Rapid fire nutritional guidelines for success

Try to eat all your meals in a 6 to 8 hour window. That’s called time restricting eating. We’re not meant to graze on food all day.

You should check out all my other videos about it if that’s news to you.

Don’t drink liquid calories. Drink mostly water. Black coffee and herbal tea are also fine.

Follow the 90/10 rule. Follow the meal structure I just gave you 90% of the time and indulge with whatever your heart desires with the other 10%. I love tacos and cheesecake.

90% of the time, eat single ingredient, mostly unprocessed, nutrient dense foods like meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, and some seasonal fruit. It’s easy to identify these foods because they usually don’t have a nutrition label sticker

Next, very important, you also wanna ditch industrial seed oils like canola, soybean, safflower and sunflower oil for cooking because they’re extremely inflammatory when heated at high temperatures. 

You’re basically eating radiation when you use them. Learn to read labels. Industrial seed oils are everywhere.

Instead, you wanna use coconut oil, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, butter, or ghee for cooking. You can also drizzle your food with extra virgin olive oil.

Lastly, eat until you’re satisfied but not until you’re completely stuffed. Imagine being stuffed at 100%. You wanna eat until you’re satiated at 80%. The Japanese have a term for this called “hara hachi bun me.” 

Now, tell me. Isn’t that so much better than a meal plan?

As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!

Need More Help?

Use this simple 4-step process to melt ALL the fat around your stomach and look good shirtless WITHOUT going on a crazy diet or wasting hours at the gym. Get the Lean Body Blueprint here for free!