Behavior: Eating healthy during the week for under $100, less than 4hrs of shopping, prep, and cleanup, and food that tasted good.
Motivation: When I first started this diet, I was still training to be a professional basketball player. One of the things I was trying to accomplish was healthy weight gain. I wanted to gain about 20lbs. All through college this was my goal as well, but I did it by eating more unhealthy foods such as cake, ice cream, and just more of everything in general. I was also motivated to cut down on the amount of times I went out to eat. I knew going out to eat several times a day was much more expensive than if I could limit it to 3-4x per week.
Ability:
Time: Like most people I didn't think I had the time to cook every day and prepare meals. However, I had done quite a bit of reading on how people maximized their meal prep time. By doing a little meal planning ahead of time, I was able to plan out my meals for the week and prepare everything at one time drastically cutting the time for prep and cleanup (the main time wasters). When all was said and done, I had cut my food time to less than 4hrs/week.
Money: Another area that many people are confused with about eating healthy is how much money it will cost. While buying all of your groceries from Whole Foods will run up your expenses, I was able to shop at Costco and buy healthy (but not organic) fruits, vegetables, and meats. If you are trying to eat healthy, you don't need to start out with what is perfect, but you do need to start! All said and done, I would buy a large package of chicken, broccoli, brussel's sprouts, eggs, trail mix, peanut butter pretzels, milk, a type of fruit, and bread. Combined, this would cost me about $80-$100/week. (I also bought several canned items like canned green beans or canned black or pinto beans. I also bought large quantities of pasta. These served as alternatives for when fresh foods ran out and I needed something quick but still pretty healthy)
Physical Effort: The physical effort was tied into grocery shopping and cooking. All said and done, it took less than 4 hours of physical effort for the entire week, and it saved countless hours of driving and waiting because it meant I didn't have to go anywhere during the week for food.
Mental Effort: This is probably the largest barrier. Before starting this plan, I only really had experience grilling and making breakfast, so to limit the amount of cooking overload, I started with what I knew. I made a batch of pasta at the start of the week, I grilled the chicken, and I at the broccoli raw. I also made attempts at brussels sprouts (first batch not too good but major improvements since then) and other interesting veggies. I also spent time trying to understand what I needed to do to be healthy. (Again, while optimizing the perfect plan for you is great, if it keeps you from starting, don't worry about it now. Just make the changes you know you can and should make then work up from there. Baby Steps!)
Social Norms: No problems here, The only issue I had to address was dealing with the other food in the house that my housemates brought home. This wasn't too difficult because I don't like messing with other people's stuff so if they had ice cream in the house, I usually could reason myself away from having it.
Habits: In terms of habits, I needed to build grocery shopping and prep time into my weekly schedule. When I looked at my current habits, there was only one day that would work. I had to do this all on Sunday, or it wouldn't get done. Sundays where the only days where I had enough time and they were the most consistently free day. So I had to make myself keep my Sundays open. So I piggy backed grocery shopping on my way home from church and I did my laundry while preparing my food for the week. By the end of the night on Sunday, I had food for the week, laundry done and I usually did it all while watching a movie or some shows (the only time I watch tv during the week)
Rewards:
I saw many rewards for taking this course of action. First, because I am very interested in behavior design, I saw this as an interesting challenge to tackle. Second, I had a very clear goal of what I was trying to accomplish. When I started gaining weight and seeing a difference physically I got really excited. Finally, I was saving a ton of money and most of the time eating food that was better than what I could buy anyway! Finally, I built in no pressure weekends and meals where I could go out with friends without worrying that I was going out to eat. The difference now was that it was a conscious decision to go out to eat not an unconscious forced one because I had no other choices.
Iterating:
Iterating is really important. When I first started, most of the things I did were for the first time or had been so sporadic that I didn't know what I was doing. Each time I repeated my routine, I tried to optimize it to improve it. What foods do I like? How do I like to prepare them? What other ways can I prepare things? If everything goes wrong how can I have a backup plan? Making small changes each week has allowed me to optimize my routine, but it has also given me the stability to try new things that I am unsure of. Even if that goes wrong, I know I have backups but if it goes right then I have something new and exciting to add variety!
I know this was a long one and I wasn't able to get into all the nutrition details of why I chose my specific diet. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how you can take the same steps, please don't hesitate to send me an email.
Have a great week!
Andrew
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twitter @andrewzimbd