How to use myfitnesspal as a meal planner instead of a tracker?
When it comes to losing fat and changing your physique, you need to know EXACTLY what you’re putting into your body.
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to ensure as much precision as possible with creating a meal plan and hitting your daily targets, so that guesswork is eliminated.
Before you begin, please ensure that you’ve set up MyFitnessPal and understand the best practises
creating your meal plan
It’s important for you to know the type of foods that you should be eating. So your first step is to know what your favourite Protein, Carbohydrate and Fat sources are. It’s also important for you to ensure that these are mainly minimally processed, single ingredient foods. Not only will these be better for you from a health standpoint, it makes tracking and adjusting these much easier in MyFitnessPal.
STEP 1 - CHOOSE INGREDIENTS
The macros we’re looking to hit are
Protein - 150g
Carbohydrates - 270g
Fat - 70g
We’re going to be logging in all these ingredients into MyFitnessPal.
STEP 2 - log all ingredients
Step 3 - Repeat for all meals
STEP 4 - CHECK how you’re doing against TARGETS
In the example below, you’re going to see that we’re short on Protein, Carbs and Fats….
STEP 5 - adjust protein sources first
For example, we’ve increased chicken from 200g to 250g, Salmon from 100g to 150g and Protein Powder from 1 Scoop to 1.5 Scoops.
It’s always best to include and increase the leanest sources of protein first, as they will have little impact on other macronutrients.
STEP 6 - Reassess TARGETS
You’ll note that we’re now at the protein target.
STEP 7 - ADJUST FATS AND CARBS
In our example, we’re going to focus on taking our carbs closer to target.
Here’s the approach
Breakfast - Increase Oats from 50g to 100g
Lunch - Increase Sweet Potato from 100 to 150g
Dinner - Add in White Rice 75g
Snacks - Add in a Banana - 177g
STEP 8 - Reassess targets again
As you can see, we’re fairly close to all of our targets.
At this point, we don’t need to make any more adustments and we’ve successfully planned out meals quantities
STEP 9 - PREPARE INGREDIENTS
Now that we know the quantities we need to eat to hit targets, we can buy, prepare and store these meals, ready to eat.
SUMMARY
Leaving nutrition to chance makes the whole process much harder. Whilst this approach does take some work, once it’s done, it’s done and you’re in a position to make much more informed decisions with your nutrition.
