Are you setting yourself up for success?
What are your goals?
I am sure you have goals, dreams, and desires that you see yourself achieving one day. But, are you setting yourself up to succeed and reach those goals? It’s easy to write down what you want to achieve, but making a step by step plan to accomplish those things might not be as easy as the first part. We always hear experts saying make a vision board, write out your goals and put them where you can see them, revisit your goals often to remind yourself of where you are going, and so many more great tips. However, there is one major thing that is left out when discussing goals and that is what I want to talk to you about here.
Creating and Executing a Plan!
These two steps are crucial if you want to actually see success in achieving your goals. I agree with everyone who has ever said that writing out your goals is so important. It is, and it will help you define what you actually want and visualize your future self once you accomplish it. Then why do so many people fail, give up, or change their goals altogether because their original goal just seemed too hard to reach even after they wrote them down? The simple answer here is they didn’t have a clear plan to execute in order to get themselves to those goals.
Writing a plan, breaks down one giant goal into smaller parts that are easier to achieve. Small progress over a longer period of time is much more successful than trying to just go for the big shabang all at once, failing and continuously trying again and again without any progress. Now, don’t get me wrong here writing a plan is huge and breaking down one big goal into smaller, more achievable goals is going to lead you to great success, but if you don’t take action on this plan you will never see any progress. Execution of your plan is going to be the biggest step you can take towards progress. Nothing can change or progress without action being taken.
How do I plan and execute my week?
Now that we’ve gone over exactly what you need in order to actually be successful, let’s chat about how to do those things. You first need a goal: my current goal is to improve my gut health, fuel my body for running and lifting workouts, and to focus on eating whole, natural foods daily. This goal should be written down somewhere you can see it daily. Of course these are not my only goals, I have business goals, life goals, and so much more, but I am going to use these specific goals to walk you through how to plan out a week in order to be successful. Next, I need to create a plan keeping my goals in mind.
GOAL: Improve gut health, fuel my body for running and lifting workouts, focus on eating whole, natural foods daily.
PLAN: there are going to be a few steps that I take in order to plan out my week, here is what I do on Sunday to make sure that my goal is going to be met throughout the upcoming week.
MEAL PLAN: Tyler and I sit down every Sunday and discuss our specific meals for the week. We pick one breakfast meal, one lunch meal, and then write down what each of our dinners will be daily. Breakfast and lunch are our busiest times of the day, so we like to keep it simple by choosing one specific thing to eat for the entire week so that we can meal prep it Sunday night and have it in the fridge to just grab and go. Below you can see our weekly plan for this upcoming week and examples of other options for each meal. For dinner, we are usually both home to cook and eat together, so we like to make meals each night instead of prepping them and making them on the go. This may change for you if your schedule looks different. Keep in mind, your plan has to work for your lifestyle. On Sunday we have a good idea which nights Tyler will be home and which nights he may be working late. We plan our dinners around this. If we foresee a night that we might not be able to cook and eat together we will either make it ahead of time or plan to have leftovers from the night before so that we aren’t left with nothing to eat and hangry at the end of the night. This varies each week because Tyler’s schedule is always changing, but you might know you have a steady schedule and be able to easily make this the same each week and change if needed when a scheduled event does pop up.
GROCERY LIST: now that we have planned out exactly what we are going to eat for the week we make a grocery list for what we need to fulfill this menu. This is the time when we check the fridge and pantry to see what we already have and what we may need. You can do this simultaneously with meal planning, especially if you are trying to get ideas of what to cook. Sometimes when you see ingredients you already have it is easier to build a meal around that. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, if you already have things in your fridge or pantry just make it simple. There is no need to stock up on unnecessary items. If you aren’t sure what you should stock in your pantry to always have on hand check out my previous blog post “Pantry Essentials”.
GROCERY SHOP: time to make a trip to your favorite grocery store. Make sure to bring your list with you and to not go in to the store hungry, Our brains tend to have cravings and cause us to buy way more than we need or unhealthy things because it just wants to be satisfied and needs energy immediately. Next thing to remember in the grocery store is that 90% of your items should be found on the perimeter of the store. This is where the whole, natural foods live. If you are unsure about an item you are choosing check the nutrition label! The main thing you want to look for on a package nutrition label is the ingredient list. If there are more than 5 ingredients it is most likely not a whole, natural food. The ingredient list is ordered from the item that is most prevalent in the food to the least, so if the first ingredient is not a whole food, I would steer clear from that packaged item.
MEAL PREP: now that you have made a list of what you are going to eat and have all of your ingredients stocked up, it is time to think about if anything needs to be prepped. This week we are choosing to do two different breakfast, Tyler wants bagels and I wanted yogurt bowls so for those we do not need to prep anything. I will make my yogurt bowl in the morning adding fresh fruit, granola and honey. Tyler will toast his bagel and add cream cheese. These are super simple, however if we decided to make an egg bake for the week I would bake it on Sunday night so that it was already ready to be heated up and taken to go for breakfast. For lunch this week we decided to do burrito bowls. This we needed to prep on Sunday night. We cooked rice in the rice cooker, marinated and cooked chicken in the crock pot, and then chopped veggies for toppings. Once everything was done cooking we create individual servings in our Tupperware and store them in the fridge so we can just grab and place them in our lunchboxes before leaving the house for the day. For dinner we typically choose 4-5 dinners for the week depending on if we expect there to be leftovers or not for a day we are going to be busy. Some weeks we may also use the leftovers from dinner as our lunches and intentionally make a larger portion to plan for that. It is important to not only look at your meal plan, but to compare this plan to your weekly schedule and see what meals it would be easier to prep in advance and which ones you know you have time to cook.
SCHEDULE IN EXERCISE: the last thing to do in order to set your week up for success is schedule specific times for when you are going to exercise. The amount of times per week will vary based on your goals. Getting in at least 3 days a week of 30 minute exercise can be extremely beneficial. It will reduce stress, improve mood, help reduce blood pressure, improve cardiovascular health, if you are completing resistance training you can build lean body mass, and so many more benefits to your health! Look at your weekly to do calendar and schedule in a time for exercise. This designated time should be looked at as an important business meeting with yourself. It is crucial to take care of your body and not only on the others around you. With self-care and exercise we have more natural energy and increased mood so that when we do need to take care of others or work with others we are able to do it as our best selves.
Here is my weekly meal plan for this current week: September 20-September 26. On the right hand side are options for different meal choices you could make throughout the week. I typically will pick and choose from this list or create dinners based on what I have on hand in the fridge or pantry.
Typically I will write out our weekly dinner menu on this whiteboard and stick it to the side of our fridge so that we can see our plan for the week clearly. I also love writing it on a white board because if we need to be flexible and move meals around we can easier erase and switch days.
