M. Suzanne Terry

It takes a full 24 hours to prepare my heart and mind for the supermarket.

Today’s task is simple – setting yourself up for success.

It doesn’t matter how awesome and detailed your plan is if you don’t remember to follow it. A plan without action does you no good.

Who in the world would do all this work and forget to follow it?

*raises hand*

When I went through these steps the first time to make a meal plan, I hardly ever got past the calendar stage. I would put all my meals on it, proudly display it on my kitchen wall, and then proceed with my life as if it didn’t exist.

There are many reasons why this happened. I was so relieved to have a plan, but I had already worked so hard at creating it (oh, gosh – all those recipe cards) that I lost steam when it came to implementing it. Thus, I fell into my common habits. I liked to go through the drive-through on the way home, and I often chose that instead of going to the store. I made huge portions of my first two meals, and those lasted much longer than anticipated. I planned meals that I thought I should eat rather than meals I knew I actually would eat. I tried to resolve too many bad habits at once.

This went on for a good six months. Ridiculous – I know. I expect that almost everyone in the world will have faster success than I did, if for no other reason than they have the benefit of learning from my mistakes.

The main thing that finally got me on track was putting an alert reminder for shopping and cooking days in my phone. My phone let me know a full day in advance so that I a) remembered to do it and b) didn’t feel like I was being rushed into it. This was especially helpful with cooking days, because after changing my meals to things that I enjoyed cooking and eating, the alert meant that I spent the whole day looking forward to them.

Meal planning is not a new phenomenon. And you have not survived thus far in your life without eating. If this is the first system you have ever used, there’s a reason for that. Your tasks today are to list your heel drags – the obstacles that might keep you from making the work you’ve done so far actually work – and to list what you need in order to overcome them.

I’m sharing my Epic Meal Planning strategies for Write 31 Days – click to see the master list.