MEAL PLANNING MADE EASY

“I had almost every diet-related disease—breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. I was also about seventy pounds overweight and almost completely sedentary. Since I started the Whole30 I have lost twenty-four pounds. I am completely off my diabetes medication and my high blood pressure medication. I had a checkup with my oncologist today, and he asked me what I was doing to look so much better. I told him about the Whole30, and he said it was wonderful that I was eating real food and doing it for health, not just to lose weight. He told me to keep it up!”
—Beth T., Richmond, Texas

It’s time to put all your Good Food smarts to work building healthy meals. But before we get to the details, we’re going to address one question right off the bat.
No, we are not going to tell you exactly how much to eat.

We won’t give you calories, grams, ounces, blocks, or points, because you don’t need us to tell you how much to eat.

Know why?

Because you’ve got built-in hormonal regulatory mechanisms designed to do just that. Put simply:

Your body knows how much you should be eating way better than any calculator you can find on the Internet.

The trouble is, your body’s signals may have historically been very unreliable. Because of the foods you’ve been eating, and the resulting overconsumption and hormonal dysregulation, you’ve been getting mixed messages. Your body has been telling you to eat when you’re full, that you’re hungry when you’re not, and sending you unsolicited cravings for foods you know don’t make you healthier. And because of your metabolic status, you’ve never been able to trust the signals your body has been sending you.

Until now.

Because when you make consistently good food choices, you can rely on your body to tell you what you need. Leptin’s message (eat more, eat less) actually registers in the brain. Insulin’s message (store energy) is nicely balanced by glucagon’s message (release some energy). Your blood sugar levels stay within a nice, normal range, neither spiraling you into hyperactivity, nor plummeting you into crashes and cravings. And your brain is finally at peace, so you can drive right on past the bakery without blinking an eye.

Once you’ve been making good food choices for a while, you’ll finally be able to trust what your body is saying. And no snazzy mathematic calculations based on your height, weight, body fat, and activity levels could possibly compete with the awesomeness of the human body.

THE MATH WORKS

We ran our meal-planning template past some really smart folks and a large test population before we unleashed it on the public. We were fortunate enough to meet one of those smart folks, Michael Hasz, MD (a spinal surgeon and longtime advocate of a Paleo diet), at one of our nutrition workshops a few years ago. He evaluated our template and ran the math for us from his perspective. As someone who has been prescribing this way of eating to his patients for ten years, his opinion carried a lot of weight. Dr. Hasz said: “While it’s obviously important to have excellent food quality, you also have to be in the right neighborhood with macronutrients. I tore your meal-planning template apart, put it back together, and did all the math, and realized you have a really well organized plan. You put thought into your recommendations and your meal-planning template, and you got it right.” So, you know … just tooting our own horn a little. And making sure you know we didn’t just pull this stuff out of a hat.

In addition, you won’t be weighing, measuring, or tracking your calories at all. We think those are all unnatural, unsustainable, psychologically unhealthy processes that take the joy out of food and eating. Eating is an organic, natural, intrinsic behavior that we were all blessed with at birth. Digital scales, spreadsheets, and calorie monitors have no place in our new, healthy relationship with food.

Having said that, we’re not going to let you fly blind.

We’ll give you some general estimates as to how much, and how often, you should be eating. But let the record reflect that our “how much” and “how often” recommendations are just a starting point. It’s up to you to pay attention to the cues your body is giving you—hunger, energy, sleep quality, mental acuity, performance in the gym or in your sport—to tweak our plan until it’s just right for you.

We can’t do that for you.

Tough-love point #1:

This does require effort on your part.

You have to make sure you’re eating enough, that your nutrients are plentiful, and that you’re getting enough protein, fat, and carbohydrates. You’ll have to figure out what to eat for lunch, how to order at a restaurant, and how often you’ll need to go grocery shopping. You must teach yourself how to read labels, stay on course when you’re on the road, and cope when you run into old cravings and compulsions.

We’ll give you all the tools, guidelines, and resources you’ll need, but the rest is up to you. Because getting healthy doesn’t happen just because you’re taking a pass on bread.

GOOD FOOD REQUIRED

In addition, this meal-planning template will work only under the condition that you are filling it with the kind of Good Food we’ve been talking about. We did not design our template to work with less-healthy foods: you cannot meal-template your way to optimal health if you’re still eating sandwiches, pasta, and microwave dinners!

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s start with what your typical day should look like.

YOU + FOOD (THE BIG PICTURE)

1. Eat meals at the table, in a relaxed fashion.
2. Do not allow distractions like TV, phone, or email during mealtime.
3. Chew slowly and thoroughly; don’t gulp.

The first thing we want to talk about isn’t how much, how often, or how many. It’s just how. Health initiatives work only when people successfully and sustainably change their habits. And a major focus of our healthy-eating program is changing your deeply personal relationship with food—breaking old habits and patterns and creating new associations with food and eating.

Changing those habits starts at mealtime.

Start thinking of eating as a nourishing experience. Don’t fall victim to reductionism—our meals are not just fuel, calories, or nutrients. Our meals are so much more than just the sum of their ingredients! Our meals are our culture—the things our parents taught us and their parents taught them. They are memories and emotions, reminding us of other meals and other experiences we have shared with those we love. Mealtime is about building new traditions within our own kitchens, with our own families—and setting a good example for future generations.

But when you eat meals in your car, inhale lunch at your desk, or mindlessly shovel in dinner while watching TV, well, you’re not really fostering a relationship with your food at all. There is no cultural significance, you recall no fond memories, and you create no traditions—unless you count passing your negotiating-rush-hour-traffic-while-eating-a-Big-Mac skill down to your kids a tradition.

And the manner in which we eat our food—hurriedly, automatically, without presence of mind or consideration—plays a large role in creating our psychological and hormonal issues with food.

We don’t just want you to change the food on your plate—we want you to change the way you eat it, too.

That starts with creating new mealtime habits.

First, eat as many meals as possible at the table, in as relaxed a fashion as time and company will allow. Establish a healthy-eating routine that allows you to appreciate your Good Food, savoring the experience. Be present, if only for a few minutes. We know most folks usually can’t spend an hour at every meal, but just because your schedule is tight doesn’t mean you can’t relax for fifteen minutes and devote your time, energy, and senses to your food. (And for the record, your office desk is not a table. Take a break from the stress of work and enjoy your meal elsewhere.)

Eating slowly and in a relaxed fashion not only assists with digestion but also helps us take a much-needed break from the stressful pace of our normal lives. Tough-love point #2:

You are not that busy.

We know you think you are so busy that you can’t spare fifteen minutes to sit down at the table and eat, but that is not true. You just choose to spend your time elsewhere. There is a difference.

When you do sit down to eat, do so without electronic distractions. Don’t sell your experience short by eating while watching TV, sending email, or managing your calendar. If you took the time to prepare a healthy meal for yourself (and, perhaps, your family), give it the respect it deserves when it comes time to eat it. Appreciate your hard work and the final product.

If possible, share your meal with others. Conversation around a meal does not serve to distract, but rather enhances your experience. Remember, reward, memory, and emotion pathways in the brain are all interconnected. The same series of biochemical events that connected you to that downtown-bakery cookie could be used to reinforce your love and appreciation of healthy, home-cooked meals shared with the ones you love.

Taking time with your meal also means chewing your food carefully. Wolfing down food not only harms digestion because it arrives in your stomach without being properly broken down, but it doesn’t give your satiety hormones a chance to send their signals, either. As you eat, receptors in the stomach are activated as it fills with food or liquid. These receptors communicate your level of fullness to the brain through various hormones (including leptin). But these signals take time to start to register in the brain—at least ten minutes. By eating too quickly, you’re not giving your hormones enough time to do their job—so you eat more than you should because your brain doesn’t yet know you should stop.

Now, if you’re reading all this while shaking your head and saying, “In your dreams, Hartwigs,” we get it. Lest you think we’re envisioning some fairy tale where we all have hours upon hours every day to eat, drink, and be merry with our friends and loved ones, rest assured, we are firmly in the grip of reality. We’re just asking you to make some effort here, keeping in mind our ultimate end goal: helping you change your dietary habits, and permanently instilling a new, healthy, lifelong relationship with food and eating. Your behaviors around mealtime will play a part in that change. So, please, try to meet us halfway.

And if you still feel as if this is all hippie-foodie-kumbaya mumbo jumbo, don’t worry—we suppose you can still eat Good Food while driving and listening to your voicemail.

But you really should chew.

Now, on to the specifics.

DAILY GUIDELINES

1. Eat three meals a day.
2. Start with breakfast.
3. Don’t snack, if you can help it.
4. Stop eating a few hours before bedtime.

First, there’s nothing magical about three meals, but the concept generally works quite well from a hormonal and social perpsective. First, having a four- to five-hour break between meals gives glucagon time to do its job and mobilize some energy and keeps leptin levels normalized. In addition, most people tend to organize their work and social lives around three meals a day. Of course, if you work exceptionally long days, or have an especially active metabolism, you may end up needing four meals a day. That’s OK—just make sure you allow a good chunk of time between meals to encourage the optimal hormonal response.

REDEFINING BREAKFAST

We will immediately encourage you to stop thinking about meals in traditional terms like breakfast, lunch, and dinner We just call them Meal 1, Meal 2, and Meal 3. You’ll find much more freedom in building your meals around what you feel like eating, what is available at the grocery store or farmers’ market, or what happens to be in your refrigerator. Plus, it will keep you from eating nothing but eggs at Meal 1. That gets boring.

As for Meal 1, don’t put it off for too long, even if you’re not hungry. If you’re not hungry first thing in the morning, that tells us that your hormones are off. And one of the best ways to get those hormones back in line is to eat something in the morning, when it’s biologically appropriate.

Ideally, eat Meal 1 within an hour of waking. It doesn’t matter whether you wake at 6 a.m. for your day job or 3 p.m. for shift work—wake, then eat. This is important.

Remember, leptin has a daily rhythm tied to your eating schedule. Which means that if you start eating too late in the day, your entire leptin pattern can be thrown off. Which means that at night, when leptin should be high, it won’t be. And cortisol, correlated with leptin dysfunction, will tend to make you crave more food. Usually not the good kind, either. Which means that you’ll be prowling through your pantry or freezer after dinner looking for a snack. Which leads to more hormonal disruption.

So, wake up and eat Meal 1 pretty soon afterward.

THE COFFEE CONNECTION

Our healthy eating plan can include a cup or two of coffee in the morning, with a few caveats. One, your coffee pot is not a cup. Two, if you need that cup of coffee first thing, it means that cortisol levels are not as healthy as they should be. Too much coffee is going to make that worse, so keep your intake down. Make sure to always drink your coffee before noon, so the caffeine doesn’t interfere with sleep: do not underestimate caffeine’s impact on this. And caffeine is a potent appetite suppressant, so if you’re one of those people who just isn’t hungry in the morning, here’s your rule: You must eat Meal 1 before you get to enjoy your coffee. It’s for your own good.

In our experience, a good Meal 1 focused on satisfying protein and fat and nutrient-dense veggies (and not overloaded with fruit) sets you up for less hunger, more consistent energy levels, and fewer sugar cravings, which makes it easier to make good food choices throughout your day. We’re not saying you can’t include some fruit with your first meal, but just don’t make it the star of the show.

Now, each meal should be designed to hold you over until the next, eliminating your desire or need to snack. And as you become fat-adapted (a process that starts in just a few days, but can take weeks to really kick in to the point that you notice the effects), your body will begin to utilize fat as fuel more readily, helping you avoid between-meal cravings, energy slumps, and brain fog.

SNACK ATTACK

In general, avoid snacking between meals because it turns your eating habits into grazing, and grazing can disrupt the normal functioning of leptin, insulin, and glucagon, and may promote inadvertent overconsumption. It may take you a while to figure out the right-size meals, though, so if you find that you didn’t eat enough at any given meal and need more nourishment, then we’d rather you have a snack than spend hours being cranky, tired, and hungry. Make sure your snacks are just smaller meals, and include both protein and fat—don’t snack on veggies or fruit alone, as they’re not very satiating all by themselves.

Finally, make your last meal the end of your daily eating cycle. If you’ve been doing everything right, satiety hormones should be at their peak in the evening, which means dinner should leave you feeling satisfied right up until bedtime. But if you’re still in that transition period, or your dessert habits are firmly imprinted in your reward, pleasure, and emotion pathways, avoid the cravings as if your health depends on it.

Because it kind of does.

Eating before bed not only messes with leptin levels, but it can impede growth hormone release, which is critical for tissue regeneration and growth and repair of many cells in the body. And if that snack is sugary or rich in refined carbs, it also pushes insulin levels up, which may lead to a blood sugar crash in the middle of the night. This affects melatonin secretion, which governs our sleep patterns, and means you could wake up hungry at 2 a.m., unable to get back to sleep.

Your mom was right. Don’t eat before bed.

BUILD YOUR PLATE: PROTEIN

1. Create each meal around your protein source.
2. Each meal should include one to two palm-size servings of protein.
3. As often as possible, choose high-quality meat, seafood, and eggs.

We build each meal around protein in part because that’s how we grocery shop, prioritizing high-quality protein sources in our budget. But there are more science-y reasons for building each meal around your high-quality animal protein source.

First, as we’ve learned, protein is highly satiating and helps us stay full until our next meal. In addition, making protein the main event ensures that we’ll get enough protein over the course of our day. This is critical when you’re eating only three times a day. Skipping protein at one meal means you’ll have to overload at your other meals to keep intake adequate, which can be difficult. Finally, eating protein with each and every meal helps to stabilize blood sugar levels (via glucagon) in the absence of large amounts of insulin-promoting foods.

Which, of course, you don’t eat anymore. Good for you!

Now, we know you have questions about this, because “palm-size” is still too general for most people. So we’ll give you some additional guidelines, but also caution you not to get too caught up in analyzing your portions. The exact portion size doesn’t really matter, because you’ll be adjusting it based on the signals your body sends you.

The bulk (thickest part) of your protein source should be roughly the same size as the palm of your hand. If you’ve got some thinner parts hanging over (like with salmon, or a chicken breast), don’t sweat it.

For whole eggs, a meal-size portion is the number of eggs you can hold in one hand. This is usually between three and five. (If Dallas is very hungry, he can hold six.) And to all of you ladies who would respond to our breakfast inquiry by demurely responding, “Oh, I had my egg this morning,” we have one thing to say.

We don’t care how petite you are, we know you can hold more than one egg.

Adequate protein is the key to this whole plan. And if there’s one meal at which you can afford to overindulge, it’s breakfast. So err on the side of generous, please. Also, yes, you’re eating the whole egg. We’ve already talked about this. Plus, half the protein is in the yolk, so it’s darn hard to get enough protein if you’re eating only the whites.

For deli meat, stack slices to approximately the thickness of your palm. For oddly-shaped protein (tuna fish, shrimp, scallops, etc.) simply do your best to estimate a palm-size portion. Again, don’t sweat the exact portion size. We don’t want to see anyone playing shrimp-Tetris on his palm. That is wholly unnecessary, and kind of gross.

Now, our guidelines say “one to two palm-size servings.” So how do you know whether you’re a one-palm or two-palm kind of person? Go by your size and your activity levels.

If you’re big, try two palms. If you’re small, try one palm. (If you don’t know whether you’re big or small, we can’t help you.)

If you’re very active, either with your job (construction worker, landscaper, firefighter) or with your sport or exercise routine, try two palms. If you’re less active, try one palm.

Also, for the record, these are not your only options. You’ve also got 1.25 palms, 1.5 palms, 1.942 palms, and every possibility in between.

This should not be overwhelming. You all have palms. Choose your protein, look at your meat, look at your palm, call it good.

TOO MUCH PROTEIN?

Some of you may be thinking, “Is this much protein bad for my kidneys?” The answer is no—for three reasons. First, as long as your kidneys are functioning normally, even a high level of dietary protein (25 percent of total calories) won’t cause problems. Studies show that your kidneys can easily adapt to accommodate the elimination of the waste products from protein metabolism—and that adaptation is not at all harmful. Second, our plan isn’t to turn you into a carnivore. Our recommended protein portions are just right—enough to support activity levels, recovery, and build muscle mass but not excessive by any means. Third, even if we did recommend stuffing your face with meat at every meal, you probably wouldn’t be able to. Remember, dense protein sources (from real food) are satiating, which means they’re really hard to overeat. Processed protein shakes and other forms of “liquid food,” however, are another matter. Bodybuilders use those to gain weight, since you can chug large amounts of liquid protein faster than your brain can register that you’re full. But we’re not bodybuilders trying to gain weight at all costs, are we?

BUILD YOUR PLATE: VEGETABLES

1. Fill the rest of your plate with vegetables.

Um, that’s it. We could pretty much end this section right here. Put your protein on the plate, and fill the rest with vegetables. How easy is that?

Of course, you have some questions.

First, we do mean fill your plate. Because seven leaves of spinach don’t really provide you with the carbohydrate or the micronutrients you need to be healthy. And don’t try arranging the meat on your plate so it takes up as much space as possible, either. (What are you, twelve?) Don’t worry, by the time we’re done, you’ll like certain vegetables so much that you’ll gladly make room for them. Really.

That having been said, we’re not the Veggie Police, insisting that you eat your weight in leafy greens every day. And we also know that some days you won’t even have a plate—like if you’re eating a bowl of curry or stew, in which the veggies are already mixed right into the meal. We’re just encouraging you to do your best to eat a healthy amount of vegetables with each of your three meals. That’s all—just do your best.

To help with variety, we like to include at least two vegetables with each meal—sometimes more. An entire plate full of green beans can feel pretty boring, and including a variety of veggies per meal helps to maximize nutrients too.

SPICE IT UP!

This is one area where you’ll benefit tremendously from keeping a large assortment of herbs and spices on hand. You can change the flavor of a dish in a snap, just by varying your seasonings. (We’ll give you plenty of examples in our Meal Map.) Think cumin, cayenne, basil, cilantro, oregano, curry powder, garlic, and onion … even salt! Most of the salt in an unhealthy diet comes from processed foods—which we are no longer eating. So feel free to add a few shakes to your meals, alternating between iodized table salt (often the only source of valuable iodine in our diet) and sea salt. Just be sure to read your labels—you may be surprised at how many seasoning and spice mixtures add sugar, fillers, and other not-so-healthy ingredients.

Finally, there are vegetables that are both nutrient-dense and carbohydrate-dense. You don’t have to be afraid of sweet potato, beets, butternut squash, acorn squash, parsnips, or pumpkin just because they contain carbohydrates. We assure you, no one ever made herself diabetic by overeating beets or pumpkin. In fact, if you’re healthy and active, you’ll need to make a point of eating some of these carb-dense vegetables on a regular basis to support your activity levels.

If you’re overweight and insulin resistant, you don’t want to fill your whole plate with mashed sweet potato, because your metabolism isn’t good at managing energy. In this case, include the more carb-dense veggies in smaller portions and fill in the rest with leafy greens or other fibrous vegetables.

BUILD YOUR PLATE: FRUIT


1. Start with one to two servings of fruit a day.
2. A serving is about the size of a fist.

Feel free to add some fruit either with your meals or immediately after. Remember, fruit should not take the place of vegetables during meals! However, adding fruit to meals, or enjoying a sweet treat after a meal, is a great way to take advantage of nature’s nutritious sweetness.

We do have some caveats with fruit, however, going back to that healthy psychological response and your hormones. These caveats can mostly be described in two words:

Fruit. Smoothie.

We know that sounds really healthy. Unfortunately, waking up in the morning and blending large amounts of fruit into a breakfast smoothie is not a good idea, for a few reasons.

First, liquid foods, while convenient, don’t promote the same satiety response as eating real food. Which means your fruit smoothie isn’t as satiating as the eggs, spinach, and avocado you’d have to chew and swallow. A smoothie is likely to fill you up short-term, but leave you hungry between meals, especially if you drink it all by itself. In addition, eating mostly fruit in the morning means you’ll have to make up for the missed nutrients and calories from protein and fat in your other meals, leaving you stuffed if you manage to jam it all in, or generally underfed if you simply can’t eat that much in one sitting.

In addition, it’s better to eat smaller servings of fruit throughout the day than a large amount in one sitting. Remember, fructose (one of the sugars found in fruit) must be processed by your liver. Large amounts of fruit in one sitting can put a burden on your liver, especially if you’re still working through insulin resistance or obesity. Research has shown that people who are insulin resistant and obese are more sensitive to fructose, so large amounts in one sitting is a very bad idea for that population—but that doesn’t make it a great idea for the rest of us, either.

Finally, from our perspective, when clients eat a bunch of sugar first thing in the morning, they are far more likely to experience volatile energy swings, sugar cravings, and abnormal levels of hunger throughout the rest of their day. So think about Meal 1 as setting the tone for the rest of your day, both physically and psychologically. If the first thing you taste when you wake up is sugar, it may be hard to shake that taste, and any subsequent cravings. But if your first meal is a nutritious and satiating combination of protein, healthy fats, and vegetables (with perhaps a little fruit thrown in for flavor), you start your day off with steady, long-lasting energy, nutrients, and the feeling of satisfaction and fullness that comes from a complete meal.

That sounds way smarter to us too.

Now, we’re not saying you can’t have any fruit at breakfast. We’re just saying don’t drink it, and don’t eat it all by itself. One of our favorite breakfast creations is an egg scramble with poached peaches, spinach, fresh basil, and chopped pecans—a dense protein, some healthy fat from the cooking oil and pecans, and just the right amount of natural sweetness from the peaches. Fruit and eggs are a surprisingly delicious combination.

Just don’t forget your veggies.

Finally, as we’ve already mentioned, if you find yourself reaching for fruit after every single meal, satisfying those leftover cravings for dessert, you may want to stop and think. Remember, addressing your habits is the most important factor in making sustainable healthy eating changes—and dessert just might be one of those habits you’d be better off shaking.

SLAY THE SUGAR DRAGON

So what do you eat when you find yourself battling the sugar dragon? Anything but the sweet stuff. As Dallas likes to say, you can’t battle the sugar dragon outright—the only way to slay it is to starve it. So conscientiously avoid the fruit, nut butters, Larabars or anything else that may prop up your sugar cravings. If you are legitimately hungry, reach for protein and fat, as they are both satisfying and calorie-dense enough to see you through until your next meal. And instead of reaching for fruit after a meal, try a cup of herbal tea instead. Rooibus (pronounced “ROY-boos”) blends, a Hartwig favorite, are naturally decaffeinated and rich in flavor, and may just help you break your after-dinner sweet-treat habit in a way that is satisfying and healthy.

One last thing—in nature, fruit is highly seasonal, available only for short periods of time during the year. If you want to go with the seasonal flow, as Mother Nature intended, we’re good with that. If you find yourself reaching for more fruit in summer, when it’s local, fresh, and delicious, that’s OK! Enjoy nature’s deliciousness while you can. But this also means that you shouldn’t eat much in the winter, when most fruit is out of season.

BUILD YOUR PLATE: HEALTHY FATS

1. Choose one or more fat sources per meal.
2. Add fats in the following recommended quantities, per person, per meal.

All oils: (olive oil, coconut oil, etc.): one to two thumb-size portions.*
All butters: (coconut butter, nut butters, clarified butter, and ghee): one to two thumb-size portions.
Olives: one to two open (heaping) handfuls.
Coconut (meat/flakes): one to two open (heaping) handfuls.
Nuts and seeds: up to one closed handful.
Avocado: half to one avocado.
Coconut milk: between ¼ - ½ of a (14 oz.) can

This is the one area of our meal plan where people need the most comforting—or tough love. See, up until this point, you’ve probably been a little fat-phobic. (We can’t blame you, given the misinformation you’ve been getting.) And now, here come these crazy Hartwigs, encouraging you to eat an entire avocado in a single sitting.

We understand if that sounds a little scary … but we’ve already talked about this.

In the context of a healthy diet that doesn’t promote overconsumption or hormonal dysregulation, dietary fat isn’t going to make you fat. And remember, we need to make sure you’re eating enough fat to both cover your caloric requirements and promote satiety between meals. But it’s not like we’re saying everyone needs to eat an entire avocado with every meal. We’ve given you a range, because some people are big and some are little, some are very active and others less so, some people need to put on weight and some need to lose.

We’re pretty sure you know which you are.

So, if you’re little, not that active, and need to lose weight, choose fat from the lower end of our recommended quantities. If you’re Dallas (205 pounds, very active, with the metabolism of a teenage boy), you’ll probably eat more than we’re starting you off with, because your context requires the extra calories for energy.

REAL-LIFE COOKING

In reality, you’ll probably end up incorporating more than one of these fat sources in every meal. Most people cook with oil and may want to add another source of fat for texture, flavor, or crunch. No problem! Just choose the smaller quantity from the ranges, and you won’t end up consuming too much fat at any given meal.

Which reminds us to tell you that fat is probably going to be the meal-planning factor you experiment with the most, depending on your current health condition, your size, and your goals. Here is the basic rule for experimentation:

Feel free to add more than our recommended quantities, but never add less.

If you’re Dallas, and your body is telling you to eat more at each meal than we’ve suggested, that’s totally fine. If you’re smaller, less active, or still struggling with metabolic derangement, then stick with the quantities at the lower end of our spectrum, but do not cut your fat intake below the low end of our range, even if you’re trying to lose weight.

Trust me, we’ve got safe, healthy, sustainable weight loss built right into our model, because we know that is a major goal for the majority of you. So don’t try to outsmart the system in an effort to lose weight faster, as your efforts may backfire. Remember, it’s not about fat grams or calories; it’s about hormones. Your delicate hormone balance will be thrown off if you’re chronically underfeeding yourself—plus you’ll be hungry all the time, and your energy levels will take a dive, and you’ll be cranky because you’re tired and hungry. So stick to the lower end of our spectrum if you want, but resist the urge to cut your fat intake even more. Because as crazy as it sounds, you now know that eating less could be counterproductive to your weight-loss efforts.

YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY

Eventually, we want to hand our plan over to you to make adjustments as needed, but this probably isn’t going to happen right away. You’ve historically not been able to rely on the signals your body has been sending you, because of psychological factors and hormonal disruptions. This isn’t going to change overnight—and that’s OK. It generally takes a few weeks (or, in some cases, months) of consistently eating Good Food before this system starts to find its level.

For the first several weeks, use our meal plan as your baseline. We still want you to regularly check in with yourself, to evaluate how you think you feel: Hungry? Not hungry? Tired? Cranky? But we’ll ask you to filter the messages your body is trying to send you, because it probably won’t be telling you the truth just yet. Experience has shown us that most people with an imbalanced hunger mechanism fall into one of two camps: hungry all the time, or not really hungry at all.

If you’re hungry all the time, you are either legitimately not eating enough or your brain is telling you that you’re hungry when you’re actually just craving. In the first instance, try making each meal a little bigger than the last and see if that quells your hunger. If it does—that’s your new baseline. If not, there’s more than just hunger going on.

CRAVINGS VS. HUNGER

It can be easy to confuse cravings for actual hunger, but we’ve got a quick-and-easy approach to differentiating between the two. Simply ask yourself, “Am I hungry enough to eat steamed fish and broccoli?” If the answer is no, then you’re not really hungry; you’ve just got a craving. So go for a walk, phone a friend, or drink a glass of water and ride it out. If the answer is yes, then you’re definitely hungry—so eat something!

Some of you will fall into the other camp—you’re simply not going to be hungry for the first few weeks. It’s partly because of the hormonal recalibration, and partly because you’re now eating meals that are sending honest-to-goodness satiety signals to your brain.

If you simply never feel like eating, common sense should tell you it’s not normal. In this case, you will have to temporarily override the signals your body is sending you, or risk further hormonal disruption because of chronic lack of nutrition. Our basic three meals a day are the minimum requirement for your caloric needs, so make sure you’re at least getting those. Consider adding some activity to your day too—a brisk walk, weight training, or an exercise class should fire up your appetite. Within a few weeks, your hormones and hunger mechanism should self-regulate, and you’ll be able to start listening to your body for real.

Generally a few weeks after changing your diet, you’ll be ready to take the wheel of your own meal plan. This is perhaps the most critical step in our entire program, so when you’re ready, start adjusting your own plate based on the signals your body is sending you.

We’ve given you the tools. It’ll be time for you to take off the training wheels. And here are three reasons that we trust you’ll do a stellar job of managing your food intake.

1. You have been developing a new relationship with food: spending time with your meals, chewing thoroughly, enjoying each bite, and paying attention.
2. You have been filling your plate with Good Food: food that isn’t going to mess with your mind, or your hormones.

Therefore…

3. You will be able to trust the messages your body is sending you.

For perhaps the first time in your life, you can rely on your own body to tell you what it needs. Hallelujah! Because you’re making good food choices and engaging with your food in a new way, you know that if you feel hungry, you’re actually hungry (and not just having a craving or suffering from hypoglycemia). So what do you do? You eat something!

When you’re full, you know you’re actually full, because you’ve given your food enough time to send the right signal to your brain, and your hormones are working the way they’re supposed to, to regulate your appetite. So what do you do? You stop eating!

And if you’re hungry or brain-foggy between meals, your energy is flagging or your performance in the gym or playing sports is starting to slip, then you can surmise that you’re not eating enough. So what do you do? You start making each meal a little bit bigger!

See? You’re brilliant at this already!

So here’s how it works.

Plan your first meal using your best judgment and our guidelines. Eat slowly, chew thoroughly, relax while digesting. Then, evaluate fifteen to twenty minutes later. Are you still hungry? If you are, eat more—particularly, more protein and more fat. Then evaluate your hunger levels, energy levels, and general mood in the hours before your next meal. Are you ravenously hungry an hour before dinnertime? Did your energy fade? Were you cranky, foggy, tired? If so, then your next meal needs to be bigger right from the start.

Make small changes—you don’t have to double your portions just because you noticed you’re a little hungry between meals. Try adding more protein and more fat, and see if that helps. If it does, that’s your new personalized template. If it doesn’t, then add some more fat—the great equalizer. Continue to add fat in small quantities until you hit that sweet spot—enough food to support activity levels, energy, and appetite, but not so much that you start getting flabby or putting on weight.

Finally, your own personal template will change over time. As your activity level changes and you lose weight or put on muscle mass, your nutritional needs will change too. So it’s always important to pay attention to those signals, and not to rely on today’s “perfect” template to fuel you a year from now.

So there you have it—you are now an expert meal planner!

Congratulations.

Written by Dallas & Melissa Hartwig in "It Starts With Food", Victory Belt Publishing,Las Vegas, USA,2012, chapter 16. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.