Health and fitness guru Laura Hulley discusses why you shouldn’t just wing it when it comes to health and fitness goals.

”The diet starts Monday” is a phrase I’ve heard all too often from clients (and one I catch myself saying occasionally). While I understand the sentiment behind it and the logic of starting a new health kick with a clean slate, constantly waiting for the perfect time to start is not a good idea. Unfortunately, it will never be a convenient time or season for you to lose weight or focus on your health and fitness. Life throws you all sorts of obstacles and curve balls, and it’s important to learn to pivot, refocus and regain momentum and consistency.

In this instance, I’m going to embrace the saying, “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” Although a cliché, it has some merit. If you rely on “winging it” and just exercising when the stars align and randomly drumming up healthy meals, you will probably find reaching your health and fitness goals difficult. It is important to take the time to set yourself up to make small and realistic changes to your current lifestyle. Here are some simple ideas and strategies to create structure and a routine in your life.

Choose a day or time of the week that suits you best to allow yourself a two- hour window to create a plan of attack for the coming week. I know two hours may seem unrealistic, but if you add up all of the time spent scrolling on your phone or watching Netflix, I think it’s achievable to allow yourself this time to plan your week (even if it is broken into several smaller blocks). Write down everything you have on in the coming week – what are your hours at work? Where will you be situated? What personal and social commitments do you have? The next task is adding what exercise sessions you can realistically complete. What time are these sessions? Where are they? How long are they? What do you need to get ready/bring to these sessions?

For example: Monday – 6-7pm one-hour cycle around the block, Wednesday – rugby training 7-9pm, Friday – 6-7am walk around the block.

That way, you can line up your work and personal commitments with the commitment to move your body. It aligns your mind and makes you realise that it is doable to complete however many exercise sessions through the week; even just writing it down can help to solidify your commitment.

Sometimes, I can feel a mess if I start the week disorganised and not knowing what I have on and where I could fit in my exercise sessions. Quite often, this will lead to the week running away with me, and I end up completing little to no exercise because I wasn’t organised, had too much on and didn’t prioritise or commit to any active sessions. The more specific and organised you can be with your time, the better chance you have to successfully complete what you set out to do. I personally feel like planning seven days is achievable. Some people like to do a fortnight or month at a time, but I normally suggest a week as it is not as overwhelming and time-consuming to plan all aspects of your day for that length of time.

Nutrition is the second and arguably most vital aspect of your health and fitness. Planning and preparing meals for an entire week is a lot more taxing than noting down your personal, work and exercise commitments. If a week feels like too much of a strain, try for two or three days. If you spend an hour or so planning and preparing what you will have for breakfast, lunch, dinners and snacks for the next two/ three days, you are a lot more likely to eat healthy and make good nutrition choices. Prepping dinner can be as simple as making a meal in bulk (enough for three or four servings).

Lunch can be as simple as making it the day before. For example, a sandwich, some fruit and nuts. If you wanted to be fancier, you could also make your lunches in bulk, like a large quiche or soup that can be used over several days. You can get really good meal-planning apps or even a meal- planning magnet for the fridge. You simply write down what you’d like to have for each meal and get a clear idea in your head.

I am a creature of habit, and my days tend to look quite similar. As long as you’re getting plenty of variety, fruits and vegetables into your diet – it doesn’t matter if you are being repetitive throughout the week – keep it easy. Many people think eating healthily is complex with so many weird and wacky ingredients, but it certainly does not have to be. Lean meats, vegetables, fruits, eggs and grains make up a large portion of a healthy diet and none of those things are fancy, frilly or difficult to prepare and work with.

You may think that you’re not much of a planner and writing down all of your exercise sessions and meals for the week sounds over the top. But I can tell you confidently that my clients (and myself ) have found amazing success with planning and committing to exercise sessions versus that strategy of just “winging it”.

The same goes for planning out our meals. It may seem tiresome and overboard, but it does give you an idea of what groceries you need to buy, what meals you need to prepare and how much/little you’re actually eating throughout the week. Often, if we grab random food/takeaways on the go, we may not realise that we are consuming a lot of unhealthy food throughout the day. So choose your time of the week when you can sit down and focus on planning out your exercise and food for the week (I recommend a Sunday) and be more prepared to tackle the week and focus on committing to being healthy and active for the next seven days.