Today’s Preparation Determines Tomorrow’s Achievement.
At our Slimming World group, I noticed that many of us used preparation, or lack thereof, as the main reason for being either happy or unhappy with our week’s progress. This stayed with me all weekend as I thought about how valuable preparation has been for our family, and the part it continues to play in our weight-loss journey.
The more I thought about it, the more it clicked that preparation has not only been important, but you might even say it has been the key to our success. For us, I realised, preparing takes the stress out of eating Slimming World approved, and leads us firmly away from the temptation of the unhealthy because it’s “easier” or it’s “all we’ve got around”.
Oh, and what does our success look like? Well, I’ve hit my target, losing 4 Stone in 5 months, so I’m putting my energy into maintaining, while Julia is over halfway after losing 2.5 Stone and Gaby has lost 1.5 Stone in that time.
So, now that I’m feeling bold enough to claim “preparation is everything”, it feels pretty right to put my money where my mouth is and jot down some thoughts on why I think so, as well as how we do it in our home. I reckon this will not only cement our preparation in my mind, but it might just be helpful to others on their SW journey.
Why does meal preparation help?
Not getting caught out
Working around the country as we do, we spend quite a lot of time travelling and often find ourselves at the mercy of a service station or high street at meal times. It’s amazing how little choice there is to keep you eating healthily in this world of fast food. All convenience foods seem to be bread-based or worse — fried! — and that’s guaranteed to derail your day.
More often than not, if you want to stick to your SW plan, the only choice is a selection of salad boxes… To be honest, salad is not my idea of a meal. An accompaniment? Yes. A meal on its own? Hell no!
It’s super hard to feel satisfied or full after just a salad box, and it’s times like that where you feel yourself reaching for those synful alternatives.
Getting caught out like this on a few days in a row is what really spurred us on to prepare in advance- the only way to guarantee a good dinner is to take one along with you.
Portion Control and empty calories.
Preparing multiple days meals in advance means you need to think about portions in advance. Portion control at home also allows me to judge meal size. This knowledge helps me to not overeat when eating out as I now recognise the amount that fills me up and stop to when I reach that point — no matter the size of the meal I’m presented with when eating out.
Having a better idea of what makes up a good meal also makes us aware of what really fills you up from meal to meal and helps to avoid the temptation to “fill up” on empty calories that may work immediately but leave you wanting more very soon thereafter.
Dieting alone.
Thankfully, this is not something we have to think about in our family as we are all on the Slimming World plan together. However, I am constantly aware of how eating healthily can be difficult when your diet buddies aren’t as serious as you are, or perhaps when friends and family aren’t on a regime.
Meal prepping allows you to eat healthily even when there may be tempting foods around. I’ve also found that clueing people into your weightloss journey helps them to understand and respect your food choices. Hell, I’ve even managed to recruit a couple of friends to Slimming World along the way! It’s all too easy to dismiss a diet, but when people hear why you’ve changed your habits, and the success you’re having, you’ll find they are less likely to try things like “oh go on, you only live once, have this massive slab of chocolate cake and stop being so boring”
Eating clean.
Since we joined SW, every meal has been cooked from scratch. Sure, this can sometimes feel like a little bit of a chore in this “nuke for 6mins… bing! and you’re eating” kinda world. The bonus of cooking from scratch, however, is using all fresh ingredients, nothing fake or processed. The new member food optimising book is great at identifying all the foods you should be eating, and by going through it and the recipes in the books / magazines / internet, you start to understand what you are eating, and with that understanding you start to eat less junk.
Good preparation for the week is made up of a few parts.
Food list.
A vital part of keeping yourself on track, I caution you to never head into a shop or supermarket without one!! That’s when you find yourself sneaking in the not so SW friendly items, those naughty things that sit on the shelf whispering “buy me”. A list helps you to stay focused on your task and also keeps your weekly shop more economical without those surprise extras.
A quick note about when to shop. While a list can keep you on task, being hungry will throw you straight back off again. Having food in your house ahead of meal times helps you to avoid shopping after work when you’re hungry and looking for a quick (often non-SW friendly) fix.
Food Diary.
Keeping a food diary is useful in a few different ways.
Primarily, it helps you to log how your week is going food wise. Knowing you are writing everything down helps you to think about what you are going to eat, and if you’re going to feel guilty about logging it! In the beginning, I took a picture of everything i ate and popped it online, knowing that someone would see it. Having told my friends I was on a diet, I knew that if i uploaded a picture of a Mars Bar or packet of crisps I would get into some serious “trouble”! I’m not suggesting anyone goes to those lengths, but it worked for me.
Keeping a Food Diary also means rating your weekly meals is easy to do. This is pretty important as it allows you to identify what you like, as well as new things you’d like to try. This in turn helps you to plan out menus and a shopping list for the next week’s meals.
Sometimes we don’t do as well as we expected even though we’ve had an “on plan” week and kept the syns to a minimum. Your food diary lets you compare the not-so-good week’s diary to previous weeks and see if any kinds of patterns emerge.
Designated meal prep day.
For me, this is the most important part of the process. “Failing to plan is planning to fail” as they say, and a designated prep day is the largest part of planning for success.
Not only does this activity pull together all the planning you have done so far (recipe research, food list & shopping), but by setting aside time to cook and pack your meals you are devoting that time to YOU and reinforcing how important this is to YOU.
Cheat meal day.
As part of my prep — and to help me keep on track all week — I plan in a cheat meal. Now, I know it’s not essentially part of the Slimming World ethos, but knowing I have something “naughty” waiting for me at the end of the week keeps me focused on where I am now, and helps me avoid the temptation to “just have a little something” on other days. It’s all too easy for those “little somethings” to stack up; you forget that you had one yesterday and the day before, and before you know it your week has turned into one “big something”.
If some other reward works for you, then by all means use it instead. I was chatting to someone the other day who puts £1 in a jar every day they stick to plan, and then goes out and buys something nice and frivolous once there is £50 in the jar. We’re all incentive based, right from when we are little through to every day in our jobs. There is no reason the same principle can’t work for your diet too.
How da Higgs do it.
In order for everyone to be involved and contribute to the plan we split up the stages of meal prep between us. Ownership is very important in your weight-loss journey. Having someone else do it for you may sound like a great idea, but playing an active part reinforces the new principles you’re living your life by, as well as helping you to invest in yourself and your success.
Gaby (as the picky teenager of the house!) has the job of going through the recipes and choosing the meals for the week. This way she is able to choose what she would like to eat for most meals, but also learns to think about the rest of the family, ensuring everyone has something they really like at least once during the week.
Julia has the job of “converting” the recipes into a shopping list. We have started to shop online since we started SW. In the beginning it helped us keep focus and not buy those random items. But more and more it has become part of the prep, and let’s be honest it’s just so convenient. We book the food order to arrive just before midday on Sunday. It lets us have a nice Sunday morning and we know as soon as the order arrives, it’s time for us to get moving and spend a few hours working on the weeks meals.
Once it’s all arrived it’s my job to get it all started. The most time consuming of all the tasks is the chopping and prepping of the raw foods. We make lunches for us all for the week, something easy that can be frozen and then just popped in the microwave either at work or at school. It tends to be vegetable soup, curry or bolognese. For dinners we precook chicken or beef soup, bolognese that we can easily turn into a chilli or similar by just adding a few extras in the evenings. Every dish has some fresh ingredients added but we try to precook as much of the “base meal” as possible. These will make up 3 or 4 evening meals a week. The rest are made from scratch, but planned to be easy to make in 30 mins or less.
As soon as the cooking is underway I turn my attention to the fridge. Instead of packing things in the fridge like I used to I have started to put the ingredients for each evenings meal together on the shelves so when we get home, rather than hunting through the entire thing, you can grab a shelf (or half a shelf) and know that the bulk of what you need will be there.
Although planning this way will make you as prepared as you can be, life will still get in the way and throw you off balance, so keep rolling with it as best you can. We all struggle in our family at times to make sense of it all, and find it hard to remember… One bad day does not make a bad week. Draw a line under the day and start afresh.
— We have a family Instagram where we post pictures of our meals (dull) as well as recipes and tweaks to recipes —