A Shortcut to Your Forever Weight - The 36-Hour Meal Plan

Good morning, everyone. This is the fifth installment of Food Freedom Friday. I am Jennifer Dent-Brown. I am a health, life, and weight loss coach, and my goal is to lead you to food freedom. And so I've been— over the past couple weeks, I've been going live on Fridays to give y'all just a different approach to weight loss. So one of the reasons so many of us struggle with weight is because you have these old thoughts and old dieters mindset and these old rules and regulations about things that you think you need to be doing to lose weight, and you haven't lost the weight. So let's think about this, right? If you're doing the same thing and it's not working, then maybe there is a different way. And this was my story, and this is why I'm so passionate about helping women and like just giving y'all the information that you need and coaching you through your obstacles, your mental obstacles, is because I followed so many diets, I followed so many rules, I followed some— I tried so many different things that were successful and they work for other people, but they didn't work for me. For a number of reasons. And so Food Freedom Friday is just the beginning of me explaining to you all some of the basic dieters' myths that don't work, the dieting rule, like the dieting rules that just don't work, and giving you a different approach to it and giving you a different way to look at it. So Hello to— for those of you who are on Zoom, again, if you have any questions, you can just type them in the chat. I will get to them afterwards. Y'all gotta remind me. I think last week somebody had a question and she was typing and I disconnected. So I'm sorry. If you're watching on Facebook or if you're watching the replay and you have a question, email it to me, right? If you're on Facebook, you can just post it in the comments and I will respond, or you can just email me the question if you're watching this if you're on my email list. So let me just recap, and some of you have been here almost every week, so good morning. But let me just recap what you all have learned and what I've been teaching. And if there's anything that you missed, you can always go back and watch it again. Okay, in the first series, y'all learned about freedom eating. Freedom eating is the concept I came up with that will list like eliminate all of the mind drama you have about trying to eat in moderation and like trying to control what you eat by saying, "Well, I'm just gonna have this in moderation. I'm gonna be able, I'm gonna eat what I need to eat in moderation." Y'all, that doesn't work. That doesn't work. And so my answer to that myth is freedom eating. So that's in the first series. I go back and watch it, the replay, if you haven't watched it. It's on YouTube, it's on my Facebook, Facebook page, and I think some, some of them are on also on Instagram. So after Freedom Eating in week 2, the second part of the series, I taught you how to crowd out. Crowding out is so you can get more nutrient-dense foods into your body without completely giving up your favorite junky foods so you can have more energy and you can naturally eat less without feeling like you gotta go cold turkey and not have tortilla chips, not have popcorn, not have any of the things, right? I had some— I love that kettle corn, the Boom Chicka Pop popcorn. I had a little bag of that last night. It was good. It was good. Weeks— in week 3, I taught you how to crowd out. Oh no, I'm sorry, that was week 2. Week 3, we talked about sleep, and I taught you how to create your Luxe Sleep Strategy. For those of you who are waking up tired, for those of you who are working at night, the overnight shift, you know who you are, um, I taught you how to create your Luxe LUX Sleep Strategy, which focuses on improving the quality of your sleep versus the number of hours. So if your brain is like, there is no way, I gotta get kids out the house in the morning, I gotta work late at night, like there is no way that I can get 8 hours of sleep, you wanna be implementing your LUX Sleep Strategy, which is gonna be focusing on the quality of your sleep versus how many hours you get. Because for those of you who do get 8 hours, some of y'all are still waking up tired. Last week was real simple. We talked about water, right? And I taught you about the 10 sip standard and how you can implement that to get more water into your body, even if you have a job that doesn't allow you to run back and forth to the bathroom all day. This was specifically created in mind. One of my clients— all these concepts, y'all, come from my private clients, right? Come from the obstacles I coach my private clients through. And one of my clients was a dentist, one of them was a teacher, and they don't have jobs where they can like drink a lot of water and run back to the bathroom every 90 minutes. And so last week I taught you how to implement the 10 substandard, but how to do it within your schedule, okay? Within your schedule. And if you're on my email list, you know ahead of time about these series. You get the Zoom links, you can chat with me live on Zoom if you're participating live. So if you're not receiving my emails, if you're interested in achieving food freedom, then you wanna get on my email list, because this is when I send out the, uh, food freedom weekly email series. So every single Sunday I send out a newsletter which teaches you things like this and other important things, fun things that I like to share about myself and other things that you can do, recipes, gadgets, things that I know will help you get to food freedom. For those of you who are like, okay, great, I just wanna lose weight. I don't care about food freedom. The way that you're going to achieve food freedom is you're gonna learn how to stop dieting forever first to lose the weight, and then you're going to achieve food freedom. Right? So food freedom is the ultimate goal. To get to food freedom, you're gonna lose some weight along the way. Alright. So again, like I was saying, these concepts— freedom eating, crowding out, Luxe Sleep Strategy, the 10 SIP standard— today we're gonna talk about meal planning. These concepts, most of them have been created very specifically for my private clients. So one of the benefits of working with me one-on-one is that you get customized personal coaching that is addressing all of your obstacles, right? And so yes, these concepts will be taught in the group. However, the group isn't open. We're doing some reshuffling and some— I'm creating some new things for the group, and I'm not sure when it's gonna be finished. What is going to be done. Um, but there are one-on-one client, uh, sessions— hey, Amy— one-on-one spots available right now. So if you're interested in losing weight right now and you don't want to be bothered with the group, you, you're just like, I need one-on-one, I need Jennifer to put her brain on all of my issues, then you're— you want to follow with— follow up with me for one-on-one coaching. I have a client now who is going on an international vacation at the end of the month. And so next week we're gonna spend our entire session together creating a very custom plan for her to travel internationally for vacation, which is different because her vacation obstacles are different from her travel for work obstacles. We worked on that earlier in the summer, and now she's chilling. She's gone on an international vacation with her friends, and so we're gonna come up with a very specific plan. Plan for her to travel on her international vacation, maintain the weight that she's already lost, and do things that keep the mind drama at the minimum. So for many of you, the mind drama is the big obstacle, and this is where coaching is such a game changer. So if you're ready to lose weight for the last time and you want to lose it now, schedule a call with me. You can go to jenniferdent.com to— at forward slash private coaching to schedule a call. We'll talk about how private coaching can work for you in my 3-month package. Okay, any questions about that, you can go ahead and type them in the chat and I will answer them at the end. But now let us continue with the Food Freedom Series. So this is, uh, part 5 of the 7-part series. We have— is that right? 2 more left. 1, 2, 3, 4. Yeah, part 5. We have 2 more left. So today we're gonna talk about meal planning. Now, we know meal planning is beneficial for weight loss. You either love meal planning or you hate it. I have some clients who love meal planning. And you know what's interesting? When I think about it, the clients who meal plan— I shouldn't say the best, but meal plan most consistently Actually, okay, it's one, one client I'm thinking about. They have a big family, so just used to planning everything for the week. It just makes everything easier for cooking and for the family. But here's why meal planning is essential for you when it comes to weight loss. Meal planning, planning ahead of time, is simply— that's all it is, is making your food decisions ahead of time. It 100% cuts out the emotional food decisions, and it forces you, right? It keeps you eating intentionally, keeps you following your plan. And then inside the coaching container, we coach on, you know, when your brain is like, ah, it goes left, it goes right. I don't want this. Like, we coach on all of those things. But I'm gonna give you today a different approach to meal planning that I think you're going to love. Meal planning allows you to pretty much control what you're eating. So there's no ifs, ands, or buts, or maybes. You already know, you already have a plan. Meal planning saves you money because you're not running out at lunchtime going in, you know, Chick-fil-A, or going to the deli on the corner to grab something to eat, because, oh my goodness, you didn't bring anything to work with you. Or if you work from home like me, your refrigerator is empty. So planning, it saves you money. I do have to say, thinking of talking about the saving of the money on Sunday, this is from a clip from my life. On Sunday, I wasn't feeling well, and so I had a plan. I was going to make, um, some chicken. I was going to make a salad with this cherry vinaigrette. I was on the couch, I was exhausted. And so about 7 o'clock, I was like, oh, I should get something to eat. Well, because I didn't have a— I had a plan, but it wasn't implemented, and I wasn't feeling well. I use Grubhub to purchase a salad, y'all, a salad from one of our favorite restaurants in Manayunk. Delicious salad. But add on the service fees, the Grubhub fee, the delivery fee, that salad was $30. It was $30, and, and the tip to the driver. It was delicious. It served a purpose, but it was $30. Having a plan eliminates the $30 moments, the $30 salad moments. Okay, meal planning gives you room to get creative with your meals, and it's easier to practice crowding out. So we talked about crowding out a couple of weeks ago. Meal planning allows you to cut down your daily cooking time if you are one of the people who likes to actually prep. When you plan. So you, you know, you're cutting up the vegetables, or maybe you're actually cooking the entire meal, and you're just storing it, and you have it for the next couple days. Cuts down on your cooking time or eliminates it completely. So we know meal planning is great. Meal planning is going to support our weight loss goal. We know this. This is not the problem. The problem comes with traditional 7-day meal planning. Which, you know, for many of us who were on all the diets, I had all the planners, everything. You plan everything out for 7 days. Making decisions about what you're going to eat 7 days from now isn't always realistic. And I noticed this happened with my clients. They kind of like had this, um, I don't know what I want to eat on Friday. I don't. So they just avoided meal planning altogether. And if you're a chronic dieter like I was, or maybe it— maybe have— there may have been times where you just went through spurts of meal planning, right? Where you were like, yeah, I want a meal plan. Maybe you were in a meal planning Facebook group, or maybe you had like your meal planning accountability buddy, and you would do your meal prepping and all the things, and you were hot at it. Like, you were doing it, doing the thing. And you would do it for a few weeks, and then you would quit because it takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of energy. Okay, so those were the 2 biggest problems. If y'all have other problems that you see with 7-day meal planning, let me know in the chat. So again, we know the benefits of meal planning. We know meal planning will help us lose weight. But if you have trouble making decisions that far out, if you have trouble committing to something that far out, which many of my new clients do, I want you to consider the 36-hour meal plan instead of the 7-day meal plan where you sit down on Sunday and you plan out everything out through Saturday. I want you to consider The 36-hour meal plan. Okay, it's really, really simple. Weight loss actually, y'all, is really, really simple. If you beget— listen, if you go back and you watch everything that I've taught you in the past 4 weeks about these different concepts— freedom eating, crowding out, Luxe Sleep Strategy, the 10-step standard— if you go back and implement those things now, Super simple. You will lose weight. And now you're going to add on the 36-hour meal plan on top of that. You will lose weight. Very, very easy. Weight loss is a very simple thing. What makes it complicated are all of our emotions about it, all of our feelings about it, all of our thoughts about it. That's what makes it complicated. And that's why coaching is so effective with helping you lose weight in the long run. Okay, let me go back and explain what is this 36-hour meal plan. It's real simple. You're planning your meals 3 days at a time. So on Sunday you're just gonna plan what you're gonna eat Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. On Monday, if you decide you're gonna plan on Monday, it's super simple. You're gonna plan what you're gonna eat Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. What you're not doing is planning the day of. Right? So you're not waking up on Sunday like, I'm gonna do my 36-hour meal plan, and you're planning out what you're going to eat on Sunday. You would have already planned that on Friday, right? If I'm doing, doing my math correctly, you would have already planned that. So 36 hours, 3 days. Oh, this is so good. Uh, Regina just posted in the, in the chat, she's like, she was just sitting down to do her meal plan and now she's glad that I'm talking about Only 36 hours. Yeah, for new people, 7 weeks can feel daunting. But I want you to start 36 hours, 3 days. The goal isn't the quantity of days, right? The goal isn't like, I gotta plan for 7 days. That's not the goal of meal planning. The goal is to plan ahead of time, quite simply. That's it. So I want you to plan— the planning ahead time of 36 hours is beneficial. Now listen, if you're already doing 7 days, keep doing you, and you love 7 days, and you're like, I got my schedule, I go to the grocery store on Friday, like you have it down, keep doing you, keep doing that. And then what you want to get coaching on are the days when you're not following your 7-day meal plan, the days where you are veering to the left and you're eating off plan, that's what you wanna be. That's when you wanna make sure you're getting the adequate coaching to understand what are the thoughts, what are the feelings, what are the beliefs that are creating this habit of like, oh yes, I planned for 7 days, but then you don't follow through. Okay. For my newbies, my new people, 36 hours. So what is today? Friday. Oh, perfect. Friday, y'all. How many of us go into the weekend with no plan? How many of us are like, oh, I've been so good over the week. I have been eating in moderation, right? Like, you're like, oh, I'm eating all the good things during the week. And so then you feel like you can go into the weekend and do what I call freestyle eating. And just allowing yourself to emotionally eat. Let me tell you something. As someone who did freestyle eating when I was struggling with my weight for years on the weekends— actually, my weekend would start on Thursday because I would always go to happy hour— you can unravel everything you did during the week in 2 days. So if you don't have a plan for Saturday, for Sunday, I want you to do it today. I want you to commit today on Friday. You're going to create your plan, your 36-hour meal plan for today— or I'm sorry, tomorrow, which is Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. 36 hours. And you're going to commit to following that plan over the weekend. Now, inside my program, we talk about weekend brain. And I coach my clients a lot on weekend brain and like what happens over the weekend. I want you to challenge yourself, challenge yourself right now to commit to a 36-hour meal plan over the weekend and allow this to be the new you, something that you always do on Fridays before you end your workday. You create a plan for the weekend. So you don't allow those emotional eats to derail your weight loss goal. So think about beyond this weekend, right? I want you to think about beyond like doing a 36-hour plan this week. Think about the implication of your weight if you start implementing 36-hour meal plans right now for the next 90 days. For the next 90 days. Imagine the impact of doing 36-hour meal plans consistently for the next 90 days. I work with my private clients in 90-day increments. So if you are like, okay, Jennifer, I'm excited, I'm gonna try this 36-hour meal plan thing, but you find yourself not following it, this is when the coaching is necessary. So with my private clients, yes, we meet live once a week, but they also have an opportunity to message me on an app in between sessions. Like I said, I'm seeing a— one of my clients messaged me on, um, the thing right now telling me about something that we coached on yesterday. So if you're like, well, I'm only meeting with you once a week, but I'm gonna need multiple 36-hour meal plans, it's not a problem. I will still to support you on understanding why you're not following the 36-hour meal plan, okay? Or why you're doing it for like first 2 weeks, it's on and popping, you got it down, but week 3, week 4, you're falling off, or maybe you're going on vacation and you don't know how to do a 36-hour meal plan on vacation. Maybe you have to travel for work, maybe you've got work meetings and you don't know how to plan because you don't know what they're gonna be serving. We will work through all of those individual obstacles. This is one of the benefits of working with me as a private client. Everything we do is customized to you. Everything we do is personalized to your specific obstacles and your specific challenges. Okay? So one of the things I want to— and before we go, I'm gonna leave you with this. I want to leave you, um, with this challenge. One, you're going to do your 36-hour meal plan. For the weekend. But I want you to challenge yourself and do it within 10 minutes of or less. If it's taking you longer than 10 minutes to do this, then we need to work through some things. Okay, we need to work through some things. It should not take you longer than 10 minutes at the max to do a 36-hour meal plan. Alright, so this is the 5th installment of the Food Freedom Series, do we have any questions? Yes, it definitely saves money. Thank you for that. Yes, it definitely saves money in meal planning, because you're cutting out those emotional decisions. You're not running down the McDonald's real quick to grab something for lunch. You're not running into Starbucks in the morning because you didn't have time to make breakfast, right? You're planning ahead of time. Okay, any other questions that I can answer for you? Anything you need clarification on? And I'm also looking on Facebook as well. I'll give it a minute. Let's see, I will drop my email— my email— my website in the chat in Zoom, and I'll put it on Facebook for those of you who are interested in scheduling a session form with me, which is complimentary. I always get people ask me like, how much does the, the consult cost? I'm like, it's free. And what happens during the consult is that you will, um, y'all trying to do two things at once. I'm like, we post on Facebook. Hold on, give me a sec and I'll read the question that just came in. We are live. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Okay. You're very welcome. What if we are planning and there's an event? Should we always plan to eat before we leave the house if we can't warm up there? Okay, so I love this question. And there will be many times in your life where you will go somewhere, and you will not know what is going to be served. You will not know what you're going to be eating. And for some of us that makes us a little bit nervous, because we're like, oh, my goodness, I don't know what's gonna be like. Am I gonna have to eat what is served? The question— that's the question you want to ask yourself versus how do I plan when I don't know what's going to be served? Do I have to eat what is going to be there? And I always like to use this example, but if you had a food allergy, right, if you had a severe food allergy, say you are allergic to peanuts, which many people are, like EpiPen allergic. And you go to an event and they have like, they're serving you peanut stir-fry, are you going to freak out and be like, oh my gosh, I have to eat this because I didn't plan for anything else? No, you're not going to eat the peanut stir-fry. Weight— losing weight is no different, okay? You're going to go into the event, there is not an obligation to eat anything there. That's one way. That's one approach you can take. The other approach is we use our satisfaction scale where you eat when you are— and you're in my program, so you know exactly how to use the satisfaction scale. You eat when you are ready to eat. Doesn't matter if it's on your plan or not. Okay. So no, eating before you leave is not a solution. That is, you know, I think that's an old way. I feel like I learned that in Weight Watchers. I'm like, it's an old Weight Watchers hack of like, oh, eat a little bit before you go. So eat your celery sticks and eat your healthy food so you won't overeat when you go to the event. You're still eating when you're not hungry, so you're not going to eat to avoid eating later. You're not gonna eat before you go to avoid eating later. That just is— doesn't even make any sense now. Okay? So because you're new, what I want you to do is think about the types of food that are on your, your plan, right? You've got the energy foods, you got your fun foods and your no foods. You decide from there If, if those foods align with what's at the event and you use a satisfaction scale, then you, then you eat. Those are the 2 things I want you to use as you're planning for the event. Okay, yeah, eating ahead of time before you go out to eat does not prepare you for food freedom. Y'all, food freedom is being able to go into an event, go into a social eating situation, and not feeling controlled by the food, but actually being present for the event which you're there enjoying the people that you're, you're there to hang out with and to mingle with and to socialize with. The food is secondary. When you walk into an event and you can eat or you cannot eat, like it doesn't matter, that is food freedom. When you feel compelled to eat just because you're at an event and they're serving food there and you feel like you have to eat, that is not food freedom. We have some work to do. Yes, Amy, the goal is to have your mindset figured out ahead of time, aligned. You're, you're making those decisions ahead of time aligned with your goal. So again, the question isn't when you're going to an event and you don't know what's gonna be served. The question isn't like, how do I plan to eat when I don't know what's going to be served? That is not the question. The question is that you wanna ask yourself is— well, actually, no, I'm not even— I'm not gonna give you that second question. What I want you to do, keep it simple. Right? Look at your goal. Look at your plan, your eating plan. What is aligning with your plan that is at the event? When you get there, you'll know exactly like this is yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And then you're also gonna use your satisfaction scale, right? Is it time to eat? Nope, I can wait. Don't eat. Say no. Okay. All right, perfect. Good. I'm glad that makes sense. Again, y'all, weight loss is super simple. It is super simple. What makes it complicated are, are our thoughts about what we're doing and our emotions tied to the food. That's it. And that's what we— that's where the coaching comes in. So again, like I said, if you go through and listen to all of these Food Freedom Series that I've been doing, and you implement Freedom Eating and Crowding Out, and the Lux— you create your Lux Sleep Strategy, and you start implementing the 10 substandard, and now you're going to do the 36-hour meal plan— if you do all of those things with no thoughts about it, you will lose weight. The problem comes in when we have thoughts about what we're doing. The problem comes in when we have emotions about what we're doing. The problem comes in when we have attachments to the food that we're eating or not eating. And that is where coaching is the key. That is where coaching is the missing key. Again, so private client spots are open. I'm filling up my spots for the rest of the year. You want support and you want to begin to lose weight for the last time right now. And you're like, Jennifer, I need help. I need your coaching expertise. Come on, let's talk about it. Book a call with me completely free. 60 minutes. We'll meet on Zoom. You'll tell me all the reasons why you specifically have not been able to lose weight, all of the things that you have tried and what hasn't worked for you. I will give you a very clear plan of what you can do to lose the weight. Period. That's it. Okay. All right. I will see y'all next week. Same time. We're going to do Food Freedom Friday number 6. Have a good weekend. Let me know how your 36-hour meal plans go. All right. I'll see y'all later.