Back to Basics: The 24 Hour Practical Plan [Ep. 64]

Lisa: 0:00

This is the eat. Well, think. Well live well podcast episode 64, back to basics the 24 hour practical plan. 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 Salsbury. 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. This is the second in the back-to-basics series. I'm doing here in October. I'm bringing back some tools that I published episodes on way back at the very beginning of the podcast. So I know a lot of you weren't listening then, and for those that were thanks, and it's always good to review the basics and make sure we have those down. So these are tools that can be used anywhere and any time so that you don't have to wait until the new year to lose weight, you can get these tools in your tool belt, and even through the holidays, you can lose weight. So last week we covered the hunger scale. And this week, like I said, the title is the 24 hour practical plan. So here's the thing about the podcast. I really do hope that you lose your first five pounds listening just to these episodes. It's honestly my aim for you to see success, but the tools I give you here for free. Each week. I really hope you have improved your relationship with food started to lose weight, have some great new habits, whatever you are defining as success. Hooray. I'm so happy. That is my goal with the podcast. If you haven't though. It's time to schedule a free session with me so I can see where you are getting stuck. I want to introduce you to my limited time offer the get unstuck session. This is a 50 minute session on zoom that is completely free for you. So, if you are trying to improve your relationship with food or your body. Or you're trying to drop a little weight, but you just haven't figured out where you are going wrong with these tools. This session is for you. These concepts can be difficult to implement all by yourself when all your life, all you've ever been given is a calorie count. Or a macro count or a food list and then sent off to do your best. Here's a meal plan, eat all of this and you'll lose weight, hit these numbers and just like magic. You'll be cured. They never tell you though what to do when you have a bad day or when you feel like there just aren't any quote, good choices on the menu, or maybe just when your willpower has run out. I want to help you take a look at your thoughts and also your current food journal. If you have that, definitely bring that to this session and see where we might be getting stuck. At either a plateau or maybe you're just unable to even begin. I have 10 slots on my calendar in the next five weeks. So they are pretty limited. If you don't see something that works for you, please feel free to email me and I'll work with you to open up a spot. Let's get to today's back to basics topic. It is the 24 hour practical plan. So that is what we're going to talk about today. The what, why, how, and when of the practical plan, this is a tool that I recommend to all of 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, like in your notes app? As long as it's not in a diet app that requires you to give an, an amount in order to track calories or macros or things like that. We don't need to do that. So just a list of what it is you are planning to eat is all that this entails one of the key features here is that you do not need to write down the amount that you are going to eat. That's where this really differs from things like where you project your macros. When you're trying to plan that out. What you're going to eat, make sure everything fits into a certain category. Or if you have in the past, try to calorie count or point count. All of those kinds of calculations. A lot of times you'll write down things in advance and calculate them to make sure you have enough. That is not what we're doing here. All we're doing is writing down the food that you are planning to eat. It should read sort of like a menu oatmeal with berries and sprinkled nuts. Uh, sandwich with Turkey, cheese, Mayo, and avocado. So like, it should read like a menu. Like you see the ingredients, but not super detailed, like a tablespoon and a half of mayonaise is going on this sandwich. You're going to use your hunger scale and the physical cues that your body gives you to determine the amount to eat. So we covered that last week in the first episode, in the back to basics series. So listen to that. If you haven't already. You're going to use that to determine the amount of food that you need. We just can't possibly know when you create this plan, how much food you're going to need in the day. So it's really not helpful to try to lock yourself into an exact amount. You may need less. You may need more. There is one time we'll we will consider an amount and we will get to that later in the episode. So that is what the practical plan is. Next up is the Y. Why. Is the really the most important thing. Why would we even want to do this? So there's two main reasons. Number one is helping you to have an abundance versus scarcity mentality about food. And number two is about trust. So when we're talking about abundance versus scarcity, one thing that comes up with dieting is a lot of scarcity. Your brain is like, 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 where we go to that place. What, if I get hungry, all these thoughts can 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 during a diet. And we should definitely be worried when we create a plan of all the food that we're 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, not to worry. Look, this is what we have planned for lunch. Look, this is what we already know is coming for dinner. You can answer that nervous scarcity thought with, I already know what we're eating and there 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. We don't need seconds here because we already know what's coming up for our next meal. This actually creates a lot of abundance in our brains. The second reason that we do this, that we create this plan is to build trust in yourself. This is probably the more important reason, but depends on how your brain works. So, so you decide you're going to. Have lunch with a friend every Friday. Do you ever cancel on her when you do that? Let's play it out. Let's say you and I decide we're going to go to lunch every Friday. And the first Friday comes along and you're 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, okay, bummer. Well, we'll see you next week. Next Friday comes, you've arrived at the solid place we agreed on and I text you and I 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 okay. I'll see you next week. The third Friday comes along and is 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. Because why. You no longer believe me. You don't believe that I'm going to be there. When I say I'm going to be there. You don't trust me to do what I say. If I'm like, no, no, really. I promise I'll come next Friday. You're like, Hmm. Probably you're not going to. We would never do this to someone else. Right. And yet we do it to ourselves. Day in and day out. We tell ourselves this time I'm committed. I'm really going to eat better this week. The problem is we're trying to follow diet plans made by someone else. You're saying to yourself, I'm really gonna follow this plan. I'm really going to keep my calories in check. I'm really gonna weigh and measure all my food. And try and meet these calorie or macro goals set up by someone else or even by a computer or an app. 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 that like, huh? I guess we do what we say now. The way to do this gets into the next section, which is the, how. Meaning the way that we start building the trust gets into how we do the 24 hour plan. 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 are already eating. This is partly where I get the name practical plan. It needs to be very practical. what we're planning. It might sound dumb to write down what we're already eating. Like, how am I going to lose weight with the foods I already eat. Those, those are the foods that are the problem, right? 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 the last episode that I advised eating three or four meals in a day, eating and then stopping and waiting for hunger, using the hunger scale. Waiting until you're hungry enough to eat and then stopping when you've had just enough. So you're like, okay. Tomorrow three meals a day. That's what I'm doing. This is not going to work. It's not practical. To go drastically different way of eating from what you already do. So you'll only build evidence. That you aren't trustworthy. This is partially why crash diets fail. Is because you haven't built the trust within yourself to do exactly what you say you're going to do. It's like canceling lunch on yourself for the 517th time in a row. So the first day, That you try using this 24 hour practical plan tool. I want you to write down. Basically what you ate yesterday. Like what you typically eat on a Thursday. Okay, you're going to plan exactly what you currently eat. The only thing you might alter at all from what you normally do is the amount you can start to use the hunger scale. I've already introduced you to that tool. So I hope you're already using that and start to apply what you learned in episode 63, about that. I would encourage you to use that skill first and then start using the practical plan. So plan exactly what you already like to eat or what you're already typically eating. And then use the hunger scale to determine the amounts. So if you plan pasta for dinner, Your brain will undoubtedly offer you, you know, sandwiches sound better. That will be faster. You're really hungry. It's about the same. No, don't do that. 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, ah, roasted carrots are about the same. That sounds yummier today. I would really prefer you actually eat the broccoli. I know this sounds like pretty strict, like, well, that sounds like a diet. If I've ever heard one. But here's the thing I really want you to practice with the 24 hour plan. Exactly. Plan what you want to eat, make it really practical and then eat just that. Because your brain is always going to offer you a different idea. At the beginning. It's not always, always as an exaggeration. Eventually you will get used to it. But if, especially at first, I don't want you planning like this quote unquote 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 use this tool. 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. Okay. The next step is when, when should you do this? It's called the 24 hour practical plan. So that means you're planning for what you'll eat for the next 24 hours. But you don't have to do this 24 hours in advance of the actual eating. I think that is one method. And one way that this tool is taught, 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 right before you go to bed and create your plan for the next day. If you do better in the morning, like I do, you'll want to start your day with creating your plan. That's a great time to do it. Just make sure I just always make sure I do it before I eat breakfast. Alternatively, this doesn't have to be done like morning or evening for a full day of eating. I had a client once who had the most downtime and brain space at lunch. So she planned what she would make for dinner that day. And then what she would have for breakfast at 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. Okay. How does this tool help you lose weight? Like I said at first, it doesn't really when you first start, 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 plan for the day. Then following your hunger scale cues by eating, when you're hungry and 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 a relationship with yourself. By trusting yourself. So it all is kind of, these two tools are really wrapped into each other because you can start trusting your physical cues more. When you're doing what you say you're going to do. So planning on its own doesn't create weight loss, but planning, feeling abundant trust along with paying attention to your body. That's what creates the weight loss. So we've covered the what, why, how, and when for the practical plan. But what if you want to eat something that's not on the plan? That is what I call a craving and figuring out what to do with cravings is coming up in our next back-to-basics episode. One more thought too, though, 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 than 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 tends to be mostly your lower brain. Other names for that lower brain would be the animal brain. Some people call it the lizard brain. That's like in opposition to the human brain. I particularly like to call it the toddler brain, because it definitely screams at me like a toddler sometimes. When you're eating things also out of habit, that's also one of those tasks that our lower brain has grabbed. We've delegated it down to that lower brain to make it more efficient and eating is often one of those things that we delegate down to the lower brain. So this is normal and exactly the way your brain should work, which is fine. But when we want to make plans for our future. We do that from our higher brain. So. Here's an example of what I mean here. Do you think that there's any chance that you're going to write down? A whole bag of chips on your next 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 buck, a box of cookies, and then I'm going to 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 use our higher brain effectively, we are better able to focus on our goals, our longterm 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 there was one exception to that, and this is where it comes in. I want to bring that up. Now, the one exception to writing down the amount is if you're going to put something on your plan, that is typically something you overeat, like, for example, that bag of chips, box of cookies, those kinds of examples. Typically something you have a hard time stopping with is something that would be considered highly palatable. So if you're like, well, when I open a bag of chips or if I plan chips with my sandwich at lunch, I have a hard time not eating the whole back. In that case, you might want to note down, I'm going to serve up, you know, two handfuls or. Another really effective way to do this is to use a particular bowl. I'm going to use the blue bowl in my kitchen and fill that. And that's the amount of chips I'm going to eat. If it's something that you notice that you do overeat or that your brain is telling you, it's hard to stop. That's when you want to give yourself an amount. Just to have a guideline. We do this because sometimes our hunger cues are a little difficult to read when the food is highly palatable, which just means we're getting a big, big dopamine response from those items. So 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 on a Mount for so that we have a guideline from our higher brain. On how much we truly want to eat. Because that higher brain keeps in mind our body and how we want to feel afterwards. At that higher brain is way better at this than leaving it to the lower brain in the moment. And that's the part of the brain that gets to be in charge when we're getting all of this dopamine hit from those highly concentrated foods. So it's just helpful to have a little guideline for those types of foods. I want to tell you too, about a success story that specifically involves the 24 hour plan. I have noticed that 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 sounds really hard, or maybe your brain is like, that's just way too much work. I get it. Like it's not easy. I'm not saying that this is just no big deal. But what I am telling you is that I believe it's the key to success. If you're 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 this one client that did not miss a single week sending me a food journal, which means that she didn't miss a single week. Doing her 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. We worked 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 is on plant, that's basically what I consider following it perfectly. She did follow her plan 80 to 90% of the time. She did make a plan every single day. She wanted to make a change in the way her body shape was because she felt like she had bloating, which was giving her a bigger waist. Circumference then was proportional to her body. So she didn't set a weight loss goal, but in following this method and paying attention to her hunger scale, what she realized was that she was slightly over eating. What she felt like was actually causing her bloating. And she was also choosing things that she wouldn't normally choose if she was planning ahead with her higher brain. So some of those food choices were also causing some bloating. So in order to effectively change that bloating that was happening in her body, she chose foods on purpose that she knew, worked for her. And in the process ended up losing 10 pounds. So this really is a tool that works. Lastly, sometimes planning can feel overwhelming. So I do have a guide to help with that. It's called my go-to meals guide. It's been available for a while. So I know a lot of you have this, if you don't be sure to get it soon, I'm going to be taking it down pretty soon and creating something new for you guys. But these are meals that you can use on a rotating basis that are always on plan. It's all explained in the guide, but basically you don't have to plan every single meal if you have these go-to meals. So like, for example, I don't really ever plan breakfast because I have three go-to breakfast and I just choose from one of those. So I don't have to write that down every single morning. So it also helps when I walk into the kitchen and I'm like, oh, I've never made anything good. I have no idea what to eat for lunch. Like check your go-to meals. You actually do make good food. When you first tried to create a 24 hour plan, you're trying to do something new, right? So when you create these go-to meals, It helps you to always have some good choices. So there is 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 link is in the show notes. And lastly, consider getting scheduled for one of my free get unstuck sessions Those are available for the next five weeks. If you want some really personalized help on these back-to-basics tools, especially as always. Thanks for listening to the eat. Well think. Well live well podcast.