Fitness Blueprint: Why having a plan is key!

How to plan your meals and workouts for the best chance of success.

Author

Ben Johnson
May 26, 2024

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”

Benjamin Franklin

Hey guys,

Nothing says “I’m fun at parties” better than a newsletter about having a plan…

But let’s face it, pretty much everything we do in life goes more smoothly if we have a plan. For a lot of people (myself included), planning is not something that comes naturally.

When it comes to fitness there are two major components that I’m talking about when it comes to planning: what/how you are going to eat and when you are going to exercise.

I suck at planning. I don’t enjoy doing it, and it feels like a lot of extra work just because I’m not good at it. Maybe you’re like me, or maybe you are someone who loves planning.

Regardless of whether you like it or not, fitness is something that I absolutely believe you need to have a plan for in order to be successful.

5 Key Benefits of Having a Plan

  1. Motivation and Accountability

    Seeing steps laid out in front of you is extremely motivating because completing each step gives a sense of accomplishment and encourages you to keep going.

  2. Improves time management

    Having a plan ensures that you are able to make time for your fitness goals, even amidst a busy schedule. A solid plan will also cut down on the amount of time dedicated to your fitness goals, leaving you with more time to accomplish other things in life such as work responsibilities or family time.

  3. Decision making with a purpose 

    A plan gives you a clear path to follow and helps to ensure the decisions you make are aligned with your goals. Without a plan it’s easier to get sidetracked and waste time on things that don’t actually matter to you.

  4. Helps minimize negative emotions towards yourself 

    Ever feel like you are trying really hard but not seeing the results you want? I know I have. Maybe as a result you feel discouraged or stressed and start self criticizing. Having a plan helps to minimize this because you can rest assured that if you are sticking to your plan, you are moving in the right direction!

  5. Encourages consistency and long term success

    A plan helps you to develop consistency and regularity in your fitness routine. Having consistency in your fitness is, in my opinion, the number one factor that determines if you will be successful or not in the long term. Being consistent makes it easier to develop habits that lead to lifestyle changes.

How to develop and execute a plan

So hopefully I convinced you at least a little bit why having a plan is beneficial to you, but how do you actually create an effective plan?

The key to creating your plan is knowing that there is no such thing as the “perfect plan”. Everyone’s path towards their fitness goals will look a little different, and really the best plan is just the one that you enjoy and will actually follow.

Even if you don’t have any idea what you are doing, there are a lot of ways that you can develop a great plan. Here are a couple of questions that you should take into consideration:

How much time do I have?

How much experience do I have?

What do I enjoy doing?

How much money do I have?

Do I want to work with a trainer or buy a program online?

There are an endless number of programs and trainers that you can find online. I believe that this is the best route to go because you are able to let people who do this for a living do all the heavy lifting in creating the plan.

I currently am in the process of creating some online fitness programs, so keep your eyes out for when I launch those and you could have me as your trainer!

But, hiring a trainer or buying programs online is another expense in your life, and you absolutely do not need to spend money on creating a plan, it just takes a little extra time from your part.

There are gazillions of free resources out there that could help you in creating a fitness plan. I linked to a couple of Youtube videos in the Ben’s Best section of this weeks newsletter down below that could help get you started.

This covers the workout portion of your plan, but as I mentioned earlier the second component of your plan needs to be your nutrition. So how do we think about planning our food?

Well for starters, you should look into meal prepping food in large batches that you can have on hand. There are a ton of benefits to meal prepping in my eyes, and in a couple of weeks I’m actually going to do an entire newsletter just talking about meal prepping.

For now if you wanted an overview of the benefits of meal prepping, you could check out this video. He does an awesome job highlighting many of the beliefs I personally hold around meal prepping.

Many people don’t want to eat the same thing every day, and I totally understand that. If you aren’t meal prepping, you still absolutely need to plan out your meals for the week.

Sit down for 30 minutes on a Sunday and figure out what you want to eat that week. Scroll social media or browse food blogs online to get inspiration, and then decide what you want to eat each day of the week.

This takes the guess work out during the week and increases the chances that you actually follow through on your food plan.

Without some sort of plan in place for your food, when you are tired or hungry getting home from work you will be way more likely to stop at McDonald’s or throw a frozen pizza in the oven out of convenience.

Forcing yourself to try and figure out what to eat while you’re hungry is a recipe for failure. Your brain is not nearly as likely to make decisions that align with your fitness goals, so avoid this by creating a meal plan for each day of the week.

Then the hard part: actually stick to the plan you created for yourself.

To create a very simple summary about how to plan out your fitness routine, here are the 5 tips that would be helpful to the vast majority of people:

💪 Workout at the same time every day - ideally first thing in the morning (the benefits of which I’ll discuss in a future newsletter), but whenever works best for you. Just make it the same day-to-day.

🕜️ Don’t wait to try and see when you can “fit your workout into your day”. Schedule your workout and plan the rest of your day around it. If you tell yourself you’ll fit the workout in where it’s convenient in your schedule, you are way more likely to skip the workout altogether. Everyone has a busy life, and without a scheduled workout it’s easy to get caught up in other responsibilities and then be too drained or distracted to exercise.

📆 Actually put your workout into your calendar, both personal and work. You can block off time in your work day for a “meeting” that is really just getting your workout done… I won’t tell anyone.

🍎 Figure out all your food for a week on one day. Do your grocery shopping and meal prep most of your food for the week all on one day. This way you aren’t having to grocery shop, cook, and do dishes every night of the week.

🍽️ Plan out days you are going to eat meals out of the house so that you can be intentional about it, and avoid eating out multiple times per week.

Ben’s Best

Check out these two videos that I mentioned earlier for some inspiration on how to create a workout plan!

🥩 These ground beef bowls are a staple meal for me that I make all the time, try it out! Sometimes I do this meal with ground turkey just because the turkey is cheaper, but make it with whatever meat you prefer.

🍫 I’ve been eating this Choceur Dark Chocolate a lot recently for dessert. One serving is 170 calories, however I’ve been having just one square of the bar which is 1/3 of a serving each time, so one bar lasts me a week or two. Awesome way to satisfy my sweet tooth, and who doesn’t love chocolate? There’s nothing special about this brand, I just like it. You could eat any dark chocolate that you enjoy - in appropriate quantities.

My favorite podcasts from the week:

Weekly Action Points

  1. It’s time to create a plan for yourself. Don’t overcomplicate it, all you need is a basic framework to give you a general direction to move towards. We can always tweak our plan as we go and learn more about what works and what doesn’t

The point of this is not for you to go crazy and tell yourself you are going to start hitting the gym five days per week if you currently aren’t going at all. The question to ask yourself is this:

What is the minimum possible change I can make that will move me in the right direction? Put in other words, what is the smallest positive change that I can make consistently?

If you currently don’t workout at all, schedule one day per week. If you consistently workout two days per week, maybe you try out three days per week.

I’ve been giving exercise goals every week in the newsletter. If you haven’t yet had success completing those, maybe you could just create a plan for when and how you are going to get those done.

  1. Plan out one meal you will eat for dinner this week, and go to the grocery store today to get ingredients for that meal. I’m not asking you to plan out an entire week of food and know everything you are going to put in your mouth. All I’m asking for is one meal. Bonus points if you can make a meal that has more than one serving so that you can eat leftovers for a lunch or two during the week. We will work towards planning out the whole week down the line, but gotta start with one meal.

Exercise Goal for the week: I am keeping it identical to last week’s goal. So 12 minute walk every other day, and fitting in this stretching video a minimum of two times throughout the week.

Last week I told you it didn’t matter which days you did the stretching video. This week I want you to plan it out. Put your walks into your calendar as well as when you are going to do your stretching video. And then the biggest key: ACTUALLY FOLLOW THROUGH and do them when you said you were going to.

Nutrition Goal for the Week: Last week I created the goal of limiting sugar sweetened beverages to one serving per day. Sugar sweetened beverages are among the most detrimental foods in our society, so I am going to keep progressing this goal.

This week limit yourself to one sugar sweetened beverage every other day, mixing in a diet alternative on the other days. Later on I am going to be doing an entire newsletter dedicated to sugar sweetened beverages and the benefit of cutting down on them because it is such an important topic. But for now just trust the process that I’m putting you on to minimize your consumption of these products.

Thanks for being a part of the Fundamental Fitness crew! Always remember that fitness is a marathon not a sprint. Having a solid plan will be key to keeping you on the right path.

Have a fantastic week!

Ben

Do me a huge favor and send this newsletter to your parents or significant other! Whether they are 20, 40, or 80 they could get some huge benefit out of this newsletter!