How to Use the Meal Plan
Here is a step-by-step guide to using the meal plan as written.
Take a look at your personal macro goals for the day
- Understand what your macro total targets are for the day by looking at the “nutrients” tab My Fitness Pal. It’s not enough to know your percent of calories coming from macros or your percent splits - you must know your gram goals.
Find your macro check points
- Divide your total macros by how many meals you like to eat per day. These are your macro check points or the number of macros you need to roughly hit each meal to stay on target for the day. They are not ironclad goals, but rather, will simply inform the adjustments you’ll need to make to meal plan meals to hit your targets by the end of the day.
- Make a note for which meals will need to be altered to fit your personal targets
- At a glance, you’ll be able to tell which meal plan meals will need to be adjusted to hit your targets. You can choose to either:
Adjust the overall portion size of the recipe
- Adjust parts of the recipe based on ingredients available or preference, for instance if you do not like bacon, you’ll want to replace it with a food that has a similar macronutrient profile
- Add a snack to eat along side the recipe or in between meals
BONUS Pre log your day ahead of time to see if you need to make any last minute adjustments. This is super helpful for grocery shopping, especially if you have changed meals from the pre-suggested ones because they won't be in your grocery list.
By logging your food in your tracking app ahead of time, you’ll see which meals need to be tweaked to fit your personal macro goals.
Here’s a full example:
Let’s say your goal protein target for the day is 95 g and you enjoy having 2 meals and a snack each day. Your check point macros for protein are about 30 g. This means that each recipe should have roughly about 30 g of protein in order for you to hit your goals by the end of the day. You can easily glance at recipes to see what adjustments should be made. For example:
- Plan to eat a double portion of the recipe. Maybe 1 mini quiche is a serving, but you’ll plan to eat 2-3 to increase the portion of protein.
- Double the amount of protein containing foods within the recipe. Instead of 3 ounces of chicken breast, you’re making 5 ounces. Add a scoop of protein powder, soft tofu, high protein pea milk to your smoothie to bump up the protein content.
- Eat a few slices of beef jerky or turkey jerky between meals. Grab a high protein snack bar.
Here’s an example using carbohydrates. Let’s say your goal carbohydrate goal is 190 g and you enjoy having 3 meals and a snack each day. Your check point macros for carbohydrate are about 50 g. This means that each recipe should have roughly about 50 g of carbohydrate in order for you to hit your goals by the end of the day. In looking at the recipes, you’ll be able to tell what kind of adjustments you’ll need to make. For example:
- You love the looks of the sliced turkey salad recipe but it’s a regular macro day and you need the carbohydrates and this recipe says its only got about 10 g.
- Add carbohydrate rich foods to your salad like canned or roasted chickpeas, beets, strawberries, blueberries, or chopped pears
- Grab a few rice cakes and top with honey and sliced banana to eat between meals
- Make up the carbohydrates at a later part in the day by doubling your portion of rice or potatoes in your dinner meal
Map our your week by considering the following:
- Do you always like to break your fast with the same smoothie?
- Do you go to the same restaurant with your kids every Friday?
- Do you love tacos on Tuesday night?
- Maybe it’s a family staple to have ground turkey stir fry. Slot it for a night this week.
- You love a good snack of mixed nuts + beef jerky + dried fruit. Put it on your map.
- You bought smoked salmon on sale so you want to be sure to use it up. Throw it on rice cakes and put that on weekly plan.
- Super simple tuna + mayo + cucumber + cherry tomatoes works for you for lunch - add it to the map.
- Access a meal inspiration from FASTer Way’s Meal Plan
Access any meal planning resources that you have at your disposal, such as the FASTer Way Meal Plan to fill in any gaps you see in your weekly map. Here are some examples of meals that should be pulled into your plan:
- You know your entire family would totally eat the white bean turkey chili. Slot it for dinner one night this week.
- You have a bunch of ground turkey to use up. Slot a turkey recipe for another night.
- Double the portion for mini quiche because you need breakfast options and you can easily freeze them for multiple days
- Notice you have a lot of blanks for lunches during the week or you’re feeling really uninspired so you find an easily portable option like macro-friendly bowl
- Pre log a day or two into your diary to ensure that the macros are gonna work - do this especially if you’ve never tracked before or never tracked those particular food items before.
In this step, you’re “trying on” the plan and seeing if the macros are going to work for you. Pre-log a day or two in your dairy to ensure you’re not going to a ton of trouble to shop, plan and prepare meals that won’t actually fit your macro goals.
After reviewing a few days in your diary, you’ll have a pretty good idea if you’ll need to add food to meet macro goals or adjust recipes to better fit your specific targets. For example:
- You know you’ll be eating out this week for dinner, your break fast meal and lunch will likely be lighter depending on what you choose. You could swap a recipe you slotted for that space, you could make adjustments to the portions of the recipe, or you could bump up particular macros in the recipe
- You know that your carbohydrate targets seem to be higher than what you’ve accounted for on some of your REGULAR MACRO days. You could add carbohydrate rich snacks or sides to a meal (whole fruit, dried fruit, rice, oats), make adjustments to the portions of the recipe, or bump up the serving size of the carbohydrates in the recipe.
- You usually rely on protein bars, meal replacement shakes, or other calorie/macro bombs to hit your macros but after meal planning a little better you can see that these might be making you overshoot your macro totals. Consider ditching packaged snacks for real food to hit your macro targets.
FASTer Way To Fat Loss