When you have issues with food, diets and weight loss, the thought of constructing a meal plan can be overwhelming.

For me personally, the less I focused on food in the past, the more successful I was in terms of weight control. I would just eat whatever, when I was hungry.

Then I started a blog about food, weight loss and diets and now am torturing myself a bit more!

This is why when I write about diets or a meal plan, it  has to be so simple, that you and I can just live our lives in peace. I don’t want to count calories, macros and log food for every meal.

What a nightmare!

Which is why I created the cup system in the ZEN Beach Diet. It is a mechanism of freedom, so that we can all be on track, without having to think about it too much.

Before we get to the freedom and bliss part though, we need to do a bit of background learning about the make up of foods, so we can apply the cup principle by sight moving forward.

Let’s use an example of my lunch today. So the header picture was lunch – cucumber, grated apple, tuna, cheese, and then a dressing of low fat yogurt and Dijon mustard. I had this with 2 cups of orange juice. Here are the stats from cronometer.com:

I don’t normally have this combination. It was a case of ‘what was left in the fridge‘ before shopping day. However it demonstrated an important point in light of a recent comment in the private FB group.

A great question

The poster was asking about appropriate snacks. They were so hungry even after their meal. A few questions later and the real issue was they were not having enough carbs in the meal. It was an attempt to lose weight, as they felt that indulging in too many carbs was the cause of weight gain. However the reduction was far too low.

She was having about a quarter of what is recommended. This is not enough food . It also would also mess up the protein to carbs balance.  It would cause a cascade of cortisol issues in the body as she endured hunger.

So the main point is that low carb fruits and vegetables like zucchini, squash, cucumbers and even tomatoes are low carb options. If we are going by the cup measures, we may need 2 or 3 cups in place of say a cup of apple or mango which are higher in sugar and carbs.

The make up of your meal plan is so important to your weight loss success. Many people get such a shock when they input one of their typical meals into cronometer.com and see the stats of what they are actually eating. Mostly it’s too low in protein and carbs and too high in fat.  We do this only to learn initially.  Afterwards using the cup method and once you get the hang of it, you won’t have to count or log anything ever again.

Now that sounds like a better lifestyle to me!

Learn how to do this properly via the ZEN Beach Diet. All you need to get started for under AU$10. So cheap it’s totally worth a look and as some have already found, it’s all they needed to know.

All bliss.

Kristy x