Stick to the Plan, Ann!

Remember that old adage: "Failing to plan is planning to fail."  Well, it's true - especially in the world of diet and exercise.  Without a plan it is so easy to devolve into take-out and sitting on the couch for hours on end (those things require nearly no planning).

In past forays into a healthy lifestyle I always kept a food journal (and I still am) but the food journal is retroactive to what you ate or how you worked out, a plan is proactive.  Maybe I am just more addle-minded than I used to be (over 40 now!) or maybe I should have been doing it this way to begin with.

The photo above is last week.  I created a simple Excel chart for meals/snacks/workouts and I set it and printed it on Sunday evening.  Throughout the week I marked off those things that went as planned and annotated those that deviated.  Hopefully as I get better at planning the annotations will be fewer.

Life doesn't always go according to plan and if you have partners and kids and pets the weekly plan will likely look a whole lot more complex than mine, but here are some advantages to setting up a plan:

1. Shopping List -- If you know what you are going to eat you can set up a list for the grocery store and then avoid wandering aimlessly throwing Chips Ahoy packages by the fistful into your cart.

2. Identify Danger -- Maybe it is a bunch of social obligations in one week or the opposite and you are facing a whole weekend alone with nothing but you and the thoughts of all those Chips Ahoy, but if you lay out your week in advance you can plan for that instead of finding yourself facing too much temptation.

3. Retrospective -- Like a food journal you can keep these printed plans (I have a binder just calling out for them) and look back on weeks that you succeeded or struggled and see what you did well or could have done better.  If you stick to this for an extended period you can look back year on year and see how you handled the holidays or vacation and tweak your plans as you progress.

Obviously, you do not need to be trying to lose weight to utilize a meal and exercise plan.  This is actually as much a part of #40DaysOfOrganizing as it is anything else, but anyone who has struggled with weight loss knows that one of the biggest issues for many is control.  By having a good plan you are taking control of your week from the beginning and starting off on a good foot.

Anyone else have a good life organization technique they use and would like to share?  Please leave a comment!