FAIL TO PLAN = PLAN TO FAIL
- Tracey Mahaney
- Feb 8, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 30
PLAN + PRIORITIZE + PREPARE
You can’t do a behavior unless you can help yourself do a behavior. In other words, unless you plan, prepare, and facilitate taking action, you can’t do anything – or you can’t do it for very long.
For instance, you can’t eat fruits and vegetables if you haven’t stocked your home with produce; you can't stock your home with produce if that activity isn't a priority you purposely make time for.
We call this the “HOW before WHAT” approach – as in, make sure you know HOW exactly, you’ll help yourself do things consistently before you worry too much about WHAT, precisely, the action is.
We’ve found this set-up to help with a lot of future nutrition and health habits.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
MAKE TIME
Feeling "busy" and rushed is the norm in the 21st century. The world is full of people and things that are happy to distract us, grab our attention, pressure us, and push us to follow their agenda.
People who have been socialized to be "pleasers", "helpers", and / or "caregivers" may find it hard to take time for themselves, or identify or advocate for their own needs - especially if they become parents or other types of caregivers.
So, if we don't make time, time will be taken from us, and that includes time spent on building health, fitness, and nutrition-related skills and behaviors.
Practice basic planning, prioritization, and preparation techniques, such as:
1) Using a calendar + automated reminders to:
Read the 5 Rings Method Daily Lessons
Schedule grocery shopping and meal prep (When + where?)
Book workouts, whether they are on your own at home or at the gym, with a trainer, or even in your hotel room while traveling.
Other “appointments with yourself”
Anticipate obstacles and come up with "If/then..." scenarios
IF I have to cancel a session at Moxie due to a work obligation, THEN I will do a workout at home from Moxie Studio Online.
IF I know I know I have a busy day / week, THEN I will plan + prep some healthy meals + snacks ahead of time (and pack a cooler) so I'm still able to stick with my Nutrition Plan.
IF I don't have 30 minutes at one time to walk, THEN I will break it into 2x 15-minute walks or 3x 10-minute walks.
2) Adopting a weekly / daily ritual
Successfully eating your fruits and vegetables (and protein...) comes down to making it easy, convenient, and available. Set aside a little time regularly to prepare for the near future.
On the weekend...
Look ahead.
For which busy days in the upcoming week will you need pre-prepped meals?
Make a menu.
Jot down a few ideas for your pre-prepped meals; Keep this general; nothing 5-star. Plan meals + menus that include colorful fruits + veggies.
Develop a few “go-to” meals that include colorful vegetables and fruits, and that you’re ready, willing, and able to make or shop for regularly. If you’re traveling or eating in restaurants, use the Food Spectrum to identify better options from menus.
Prep a grocery list of the fruits and veggies (and other foods) you like (Try going by color - choose one green, one blue-purple, one red, and so on. Check out Fruit + Veggies Shopping list in the Resources below) and make sure you have enough on hand for several days.
Particularly in the beginning, buying a few extra bags of frozen fruits and vegetables is a great strategy versus buying too much fresh produce that may go bad.
Prep + cook for the week.
On Saturdays or Sundays, cook time-consuming meal components: chicken, veggies, potatoes, etc.
Store it conveniently.
Pack your prepped food in stackable clear containers and make them accessible in the fridge. Each time you want a salad, a veggie omelet, or a stir-fry, either right away or for later at work, a wide variety of pre-cut veggies is just a container away.
Remember, if it's ready and available, chances are, you'll probably eat it.
Check out the Weekly Meal Prep Mastered Infographic in the Resources below.
3) Anticipating potential obstacles + setbacks
It's not enough to just say "I want to eat more fruits and veggies". It's pretty obvious that going grocery shopping for fruits and vegetables is a necessary step in getting prepared. "Winging it" only works for experts. Set aside a little time regularly to prepare for the near future. Some things you could try:
Doing small meal prep tasks (i.e., packing a healthy lunch / snacks, chopping vegetables to have handy)
Doing larger meal prep tasks (i.e., batch cooking proteins, veggies, etc.)
Packing / laying out workout clothes the night before
Arranging childcare so you can go to the gym
...And so on.
This “ritual” could be 5 minutes every morning or evening, 30 minutes every few days, an hour or two on weekends, etc.
You can also try some easy tricks for getting enough fruits and vegetables each day, such as:
Buying pre-chopped or packaged fruits and vegetables to save time (like broccoli florets, cubed butternut squash, baby carrots, cole slaw mix, sliced mushrooms)
Buying fresh fruits and vegetables when they're in season for better flavor, higher nutrient levels, and better prices.
Buying frozen fruits and vegetables.
Adding vegetables to foods you're already eating, such as spinach into a smoothie, pumpkin puree into oatmeal, or mushrooms and onions into eggs.
Using vegetables to boost the nutrition of other foods. For example, riced cauliflower is a great substitute for or addition to regular rice, zucchini noodles are a fantastic substitute for or addition to spaghetti or pho noodles, and long, thin slices of zucchini make a great addition to vegetable lasagna.
Buying a veggie chopper and chopping vegetables into small pieces. This can help make a salad more palatable and make it easy to "hide" veggies within other dishes, such as soups, curries, stews, casseroles, and pasta dishes.
4) Deciding in advance what your daily / weekly priorities will be and making sure good nutrition + healthy behaviors are on that list
You need to think through "when," where," and "what" in detail. Meaning:
When (time of day) do you plan to eat?
Where will you be (as this often affects food choices)?
What foods are you going to eat?
What days will you workout / walk / do cardio?
When (time of day) do you plan to workout?
Where will you be (home, gym, hotel room, etc.)?
What will you do for your workout? (Again, winging it won't work. Have a plan / periodized program to follow.)
You'll need specifics. "I'll get something on the way to the office" isn't specific enough. What store specifically and what foods will it be? "I will stop at the grocery store and pick up a banana and an orange on my way to work at 8am and have them with my protein shake" is the type of plan that will actually work.
5) Use the Planning + Time Use Worksheet
If you find yourself constantly saying, "I don't have time," I encourage you to use the Planning + Time Use Worksheet (in the Links + Resources below) to get an accurate snapshot of where, exactly, your time is going. If you are honest with yourself, this exercise can be very eye-opening. Many people often discover that the problem is not a lack of time in the day. Rather, it's a lack of priorities.
How to use this worksheet:
Start with the time diary.
Pick a day to keep a time diary. (You can do this for more than one day, but one day is often enough to tell you where your time is going.)
Capture your activities in 30-minute increments. You don’t have to write stuff down every 30 minutes, but try to do it once an hour so your recall is accurate.
Obviously, if you’re doing something for a few hours (like sleeping) just fill it in when you can.
You don’t have to be super-detailed, just get the general idea.
The goal here is simply to show how you spend your time. Try to be as accurate as possible. Then, look for patterns and consider what to adjust.
The time diary will show you where your time is going, and what things you might need to anticipate in your routine.
Work to explore options for planning and preparing more effectively, as well as plugging any “time leaks”
LINKS + RESOURCES
BLOG: 5-MINUTE MEALS RECIPES
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