24-Hour Practical Plan: What, Why, How and When To Do It! [Ep. 2]

Lisa: 0:03

Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salisbury I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. Hey everyone. It's Lisa. Welcome back to the eat. Well think, well, Live well podcast. I had planned to record this episode yesterday, but it was actually super noisy in my house. We were finally getting our countertops installed. If you've been following me on Instagram. You may have seen a few pictures in my stories about a kitchen remodel, where we've been working on since early February and we finally finally have counters. So it's really exciting. Anyway, so here I am today. Coming at you with my topic of the 24 hour practical plan. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Why you want to do it, how to do it when all the details. So first off, what is a 24 hour practical plan? This is a tool that I recommend to all my clients. And basically it's all the food you're going to eat for the next 24 hours. It can be written down in a notebook or digitally on your phone. As long as it's not in a diet app that requires you to give an amount in order to track calories or macros. We don't need to do that. So just a list of what it is that you are planning to eat is all that it entails. One of the key features here. Is that you do not need to write down the amount that you're going to eat. that's where this really differs from things like where you project your macros when you're trying to plan out. What you're going to eat to make sure everything fits into a certain category, or if you, in the past have tried to calorie count or point count. And so you calculate points and calories to. Plan out what you're going to eat, because then you have the exact amount. There's no need to do that. We are all we're doing here is writing down the food that you are planning to eat. You're going to use your hunger scale and the physical cues that your body gives you. We learned about that in episode one. So you're going to use that to determine the amount of food that you need. We just can't possibly know in the morning or in the evening when you create this plan, how much food you're going to need in the day. So it's not really helpful to try to lock yourself into an exact amount. There is one time where we will consider an amount and we'll get to that later in the episode Next up is the Why the most important thing. Why would we even want to do this? So there's two main reasons. Number one is you have abundance versus scarcity mentality about food. And we'll get into that. And number two is trust. So when we're talking about abundance versus scarcity, One thing that comes up with dieting is a lot of scarcity. What am I going to eat next? When am I going to get to eat? What if there isn't food that's allowed on my diet. At the place that we're going to, what if I get hungry? All these thoughts, give us a lot of scarcity, which is just the emotion that we're feeling when we think these things. We might call it worry or stress. But what the brain is noticing is that food is scarce and we should definitely be worried. When we create a plan of all the food that we are going to eat in a day, it's much easier to calm the brain down when it goes into that. What if mode? What if I get hungry? Well, it's not to worry. Look what we have planned for lunch. Look what we have planned for dinner. You can answer that nervous scarcity thought with, I already know what we're eating and it will be plenty. This sounds simple. But really don't underestimate the power of planning and the effect it can have on these scarcity thoughts. When you have an answer to them, when you can calm the brain. And let it know. Hey, this is not a problem. If we don't eat seconds here because we already know what's coming up for our next meal. This creates a lot of abundance in our brains. The second reason that we do this, that we create the plan. Is to build trust in yourself. So, if you think about like, if you've ever canceled repeatedly on a friend, so let's say you and I decide to go out to lunch every Friday. The first Friday comes along and you are waiting for me at the designated restaurant. And I call and I say, you know what, I'm not going to make it. I overslept. And you're like, oh, bummer. Okay, well, we'll see you next week. Next Friday comes, you've arrived at the salad place we agreed on and I text you and say, I'm over at the sandwich place. I just didn't feel like salad. Sorry, I'm not going to meet you. And you're thinking. okay, that's weird, but I guess things can be like, not appealing one week, but I'll see you next week. The third Friday comes along and as you're waiting for me at the pizza place, I call 10 minutes after the meeting time and tell you. I got into a Netflix show and I just can't leave now. Do you think you're going to bother coming to lunch? The following Friday? I seriously doubt it, please. Don't please have more respect for yourself, right? Because why you no longer believe me? You don't trust me to do what I say. If I'm like, no, no, really. I'm going to come next Friday. You're like, no, you're not. We would never do this to someone else. Yet we do it to ourselves. Day in and day out. We tell ourselves. This time I'm committed to this diet. I'm really going to eat better. The problem is we're trying to follow a diet plans made by someone else. Or meet calorie or macro macro goals. Set up by someone else or even a computer. When we create our own plans and then follow them. Day after day. After day. We actually build trust with ourselves. Our brain starts to take note like, huh? I guess we do what we say now. This way, the way to do this gets into the how so the way, the way that we start building the trust gets into the, how we do the 24 hour plan. So. How we plan. Is super important. Because what I want you to do when you first start working on a 24 hour. Practical plan. Is to start by writing down what you're already eating. I know that sounds dumb. Like, how am I going to lose weight with foods? I'm already eating. It's because first I want you to be successful at simply following a plan. So let's say you're currently eating eight small meals a day, and you heard me say in episode one that I advised eating three meals a day. Using the hunger scale and waiting until you're hungry to eat. And then stop when you've just had enough. So you're like, okay, tomorrow three meals a day. That's what I'm doing. This is not going to be successful. And you'll only build evidence that you aren't trustworthy. It's like canceling lunch on yourself for the 629th time in a row. So the first day you do this. You're going to plan exactly what you currently eat. The only thing you alter at all from what you normally do is the amount. You're going to use the hunger scale and start to apply. What you learned in episode one about that? So you're welcome to do that. With the amount that you eat, but as far as what you're eating the food, that itself absolutely plan what you currently eat. But if you plan pasta for dinner, Your brain will undoubtedly offer. You know, sandwiches sound better. That will be faster. You're really hungry. It's about the same. No. Make the pasta. If that's what you have planned, make it. If you plan broccoli as your side dish and your brain is like roasted carrots are about the same, that sounds. Sounds yummier today no eat the broccoli. Okay. I know this sounds like that's pretty strict. That sounds really diety but here's the thing. I want you to practice with the 24 hour plan. Exactly. That because your brain is always going to offer you a different idea. So, I don't want you planning this like quote, perfect diet day. If you don't enjoy salads for lunch, Do not plan a salad. Maybe sometime in the future. You'll try a salad and see if you like it, but don't do it when you're first trying to follow a plan. As you start following your plans, like 80 to 90% of the time, then you can start tweaking what you're eating. So start with planning, what you're currently eating, and then slowly, slowly start making changes that you want to make in your nutrition. Okay. So when should you do this? This is called the 24 hour practical plan. So that means you're planning. For what you'll eat for the next 24 hours, you don't have to do this 24 hours in advance of the actual eating. I think that is one method to do this, but it's not how I teach it. So if you are more of a night owl and you like to maybe not think so much in the morning, take five minutes in the evening after dinner, or maybe before you go to bed and create your plan for the next day. If you do better in the morning. You want to start your day with creating your plan? Do that, just make sure you do it before breakfast. This also doesn't have to be done like morning or evening. had a client once who had the most downtime and brain space at lunch, she planned what she would make for dinner that day, and then what she would have for breakfast and lunch the next day. So in that way, she planned her next 24 hours. So it's very flexible. I want you to do it when it works best for you. So, how does this help you lose weight? And like I said at first, it doesn't really because you're planning exactly what you already eat. So you may not see a big difference at the beginning. But what does help you lose weight is paying attention to your hunger scale. Like we talked about last week. When you combine learning to trust yourself, doing what you say you'll do with the abundance of having plenty of food planned for the day. Then following your hunger scale cues by eating, when you're hungry, stopping when you've had enough. Actually becomes much easier to do. Because as you learn. To eat what you say, you're going to eat ahead of time. That builds your trust. It also builds your relationship with yourself. And helps you be more in touch with your physical hunger when you are building relationship with yourself by trusting yourself. You can also start trusting. Your physical hunger cues more. So planning on its own, doesn't create weight loss. But planning, feeling abundant. Trust. Along with paying attention to our bodies. That's what creates weight loss. So we've covered all the what's why's how's and when's of planning. But what if you want to eat something, not on the plan. So that's a craving. And figuring out what to do with cravings is coming up next episode. One more thought too on why this works. That I want to be sure to bring up is that when we plan, we are using a different part of our brains. Then when we walk into the kitchen and wonder what sounds good. So when we're planning, we're using our higher brain. Some people call it the prefrontal cortex. Some people call it the human brain. When we're eating on a whim or just eating what's in front of us or eating what sounds good. That's mostly your lower brain. Other names for that lower brain would be the animal brain. Some people call it the lizard brain. I particularly like to call it the toddler brain, because it definitely screams at me like a toddler. When you're eating things that's just kind of out of habit, those kinds of tasks have been delegated down to your lower brain to make it more efficient. So this is exactly the way your brain should work, which is fine. When we want to make plans for our future, we do that with our higher brain. So, do you think there's any chance that you're going to write down? A whole bag of chips on your practical plan. You're not like, okay. Tomorrow, I'm going to watch TV, so I'm definitely going to have a bag of chips, a box of cookies and, um, and then go have dinner after that this is unlikely, right? That's why we want to utilize our higher brains to make our food decisions when we do this effectively, you know, using, using our higher brain. We are better able to focus on our goals our long-term commitments and make decisions that are in our best interest Earlier. I said that we do not need to write down an amount of what you're going to be eating. And I said that there was one exception to that. So I want to bring that up now. The one exception to the amounts is if you're going to put something on your plan, That is typically something you overeat. Typically something you have a hard time stopping. So this would be like a reference, the bag of chips. So if you're like, when I open a bag of chips or if I, if I plan chips with my sandwich at lunch, I have a hard time not eating the whole bag. In that case, you might want to note down, I'm going to serve up, you know, two handfuls or. I'm going to use the blue bowl in my kitchen. And that's the amount of chips I'm going to eat. So if it's something that you tend to notice that you do overeat or that your brain is telling you, it's hard to stop. Then you might want to give yourself an amount just to give a, give a guideline. The other thing that you might want to give an amount on is what we might call exception foods. So these are foods. Once you get really into planning and you're on a protocol of foods that you like to eat, things that are working well in your body. And for example, this might be something with sugar in it. So you're noticing, you know, sugar doesn't really work for me. I don't really want to continue eating that on a, three times a day basis. Like I used to, you know, sugar, every meal was the way I rolled. So when I decided I was going to kind of cut back on that. Then I would, would go ahead and plan the amount if the item included sugar. So what I'm talking about is if I'm going to make cookies, I'm going to decide ahead how many I'm going to eat on something like that. So typically what we're talking about here is if it's going to be a dessert or, a food like chips, you probably want to give yourself an amount there. Because sometimes our hunger cues are a little difficult to read when the food is what we call highly palatable, which just means we're getting a big, big dopamine response from those items. When we're eating those foods that give you that big concentrated dopamine response, because they're concentrated foods, those are the things we want to just put down an amount so that we have a guideline from our higher brain. As to how much we want to eat I want to tell you too about. success that I see in my clients. I have noticed that. Those clients that meet their goals are the ones that do the 24 hour practical plan. I do have clients with a lot of resistance to this planning. So if you're listening to this and thinking, this is sounds really hard, or maybe your brain is like, that's. That's just way too much work. I get it. Like it's not easy. I'm not saying this is. Just no big deal. But what I'm telling you is this is a key to success. If you are truly interested in making a difference in your nutrition and making a difference in your current weight. I promise you this tool will be instrumental for you. I can think of one of my clients that did not miss one single week sending me a food journal, which means that she didn't miss a single week doing the food journal, doing her plan, and then following her plan. She sent it to me, it was clear what her plan was and then she made notes on it. If there were ever any changes. And changes do happen. So, you know, things happen and we work together in that client coach relationship working on, why things were changed. But when you are following your 24 hour practical plan, 80 to 90% of the time, that's on plan. I consider that basically. Perfect. So. She did follow her plan 80 to 90% of the time. And she did make a plan every single day. Not only did she meet her health goals, which had to do with, bloating her main goal was actually not a scale weight goal. So she wanted to change the way her body shape was because she felt like she had. bloating, which was giving her a bigger waist circumfrence was proportional to her body. So she didn't even set a weight loss goal, but in following this method. And paying attention to her hunger scale. What she realized is that she was slightly overeating, which was causing her bloating. And she also was choosing things that she wouldn't normally choose if she was planning ahead with her higher brain. So in order to effectively change the bloating that was happening in her body, she chose foods on purpose that she knew, worked for her. And in the process, she also ended up losing 10 pounds, so, I just share that story with you to let you know that. This really is a tool that works. Lastly, sometimes planning can feel overwhelming. I do have a guide to help with that. It's called my go-to meals guide. These are meals that you can use on a rotating basis on your plan. Also once you are regularly following your plan, these go to meals are considered, always on plan. So for example, I have three go-to breakfast. I no longer write down each day. One of these breakfast, I just choose one based on what I have on hand. And if I'm going to have something that's not one of these three, then that's when I write it down on my plan. But if it's one of those go-to meals, I don't have to, I consider not having to write that down. Another big benefit of creating go-to meals is so that when you are planning your brain, doesn't go to this place of like, I never make anything good, or I have no idea what to plan for lunch. I, I just don't even know what I like to eat for lunch. These are the like totally unhelpful thoughts that your brain offers you. When you try to create plans when you're trying to do something new, right. So when you create these go-to meals, you always have some good choices. I give you a list of mine in this guide. And I've also included a few of my favorite recipes for some of my go-tos, including my favorite protein oatmeal. I eat this probably. I don't know, seven out of 10 days pretty often. So grab that guide. The link is in the show notes and the description wherever you're listening to this episode. And it can also be found podcast.wellwithlisa.com/2. That's all I have for you today. I'll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening today. If you're ready to get some personalized help from me, I'd encourage you to schedule a free strategy session. Visit www.wellwithlisa.as.me or find a link in the show notes. We'll talk about where you currently are with your weight loss goals, and I'll give you some actionable tools. You can start implementing right away. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you're learning something new, I'd love for you to leave me a review. Thanks again for joining me, Lisa Salsbury in this episode of Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well. I'll talk to you next time!