Most people find it hard to stick to a new diet, and while it can be difficult, you can make it easier by eating what you like using the Google search method I described in chapter 2 of The Six-Pack Abs Strategy. Once you figure out which healthy foods you like best, you can help yourself stick to eating these foods, and avoid junk foods by planning your meals using a meal planner.

Meal Planners

Meal planners are apps and sites that help busy people plan their meals so they can eat healthy even when they have so many other things to do. Using a meal planner can also help you to keep track of how many calories you’re consuming, as most meal planners list nutrition information for each meal.
Pre-planning and preparing your meals is a highly recommended step. It helped me save time and avoid eating whatever I got my hands on. With a meal planner, you can decide what you want to eat and prepare it beforehand. Then when you’re hungry, you already know what you’re going to eat, it’s already waiting for you in the fridge. The best part is that you know it’s exactly what you should be eating.

Planning my meals was the one thing that I feel like helped me the most when trying to lose my belly fat. I didn’t have to figure out what to eat, I planned and prepackaged my meals on Saturday for the entire week. When I got hungry I simply grabbed one of the prepackaged storage bowls, cooked it, and ate a healthy meal every time. And even when I was too busy to prepackage my meals on the weekend, I had a secret weapon to help me find healthy recipes in a snap, instead of having to search google for hours to find something good. I used the Real plans meal planner.

Real Plans

Real plans really did take the stress out of sticking to my diet plan. There are so many healthy meal choices in their recipe box that I could spend 10 minutes, find a good recipe, then just add it to my calendar using the Real plans scheduler. The scheduler is probably my favorite feature. When I click “schedule” to add a recipe to my schedule, a calendar comes up for me to choose which day and which meal of that day to add it to. Then when I go to the meal planner, I can see how to prepare the recipe and reminders to defrost frozen items if needed. I can also add my shopping list directly to Instacart to have the items delivered to me at the time I choose. So for example, if I want my items delivered after work, I can just add the items I need for a recipe from the “shop on Instacart” button inside the Real Plans app and schedule delivery for after work. Real plans made it so easy for me.

The meal planning help is amazing all by itself, but you also get a  carefully thought-out timeline and shopping list. The timeline is updated with your recipes as you add or delete them, and tells you when to thaw/soak/prep the recipe ingredients and includes tips and tricks you need for preparing each dish. They have literally covered all the bases needed to help anyone be successful with meal planning; even me.

Over the years, I’ve tried a bunch of different meal planning apps, but not one of them gave me the flexibility I needed to succeed with meal planning, which was always hard for me. At the end of the day, those other apps were just someone else’s strict idea of what I should make and eat.

Real Plans not only allowed me to choose healthy meals from their recipe bank, but I can also import my own recipes. This was extremely helpful when I didn’t know what to make for dinner. I could just go to the Real Plans App and find something good. Then I’d make a grocery list of the items needed for each meal and add to the planner. This made grocery shopping much easier. I bought food storage bowls when I first started planning my meals and used them to store my weekly meals. This helped to make sure I ate healthy, filling meals that I actually liked. No tofu for me.

The recipe box includes more than 1,500 recipes, and the recipes can be sorted by diet choice, which makes it even easier to eat healthy, delicious meals.

Picture of the real plans recipe box

Real Plans Recipe Box Image

 

Planning my meals was the key to making all the other parts of this weight loss plan work better. You can have all the best intentions to stick to your goals, but without the proper environment to facilitate your goal activities, reaching that goal becomes longer and harder.

You can try Real Plans by signing up on their website.

I found out about Real Plans while I was searching YouTube for Meal planning ideas. Their video caught my attention, so I went to their website to check it out and I’ve been a fan ever since. You can check out the video below.