Café Physique doesn’t sell meal plans, but if I had a dollar for every time someone asked for one, I’d be rich very well off. So if meal plans are so popular, why don’t we offer them? Well, they rarely actually work. If we start selling things that don’t help people reach their goals, we’ll quickly be headed out of business.
While there is a very small segment of the population who can and will faithfully follow meal plans for months, or even years, it is rare. Most people seek out a meal plan with the intention of going on a diet…bad idea. They think they’re going to eat the magic combination of foods on the plan and end up with a miraculous new body, but I have yet to see it actually happen.
Another reason we don’t sell meal plans is that you can get them for FREE from almost any health magazine or website out there. Don’t believe me? Here are bunch of free meal plans from one of my favorite magazines. Now, moving on…
So if we don’t think selling meal plans is the way to go, what do we offer? Hold on to your seats, folks, because this answer will be shocking…
We actually teach you how to plan your own meals!
Whoa. Crazy, eh? Yeah, we like living on the edge. In all seriousness, our approach is based on that old saying,
“Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”
What if I don’t even like cottage cheese???
Selling meal plans would make you dependent on us to know what you can and should eat. It also assumes that we know your lifestyle, preferences, budget, family circumstances, work schedule, tastes, allergies, etc. We don’t know all of those things, and even if we did, we would have to charge hundreds of dollars to create weekly meal plans that were that customized. But YOU do know all of those things about yourself, so you are the perfect candidate to plan what you and your family eat.
So do meal plans have any redeeming qualities? But of course. I love to have clients check out a handful of healthy meal plans at their recommended calorie count (found for free all across the web), so they can see examples of how much food they should be consuming daily. That’s it. Beyond that, meal plans can become a crutch that prevents people from learning to feed themselves healthfully over time.
If you think you want a meal plan, but what you really want is to learn how to eat well for a lifetime, check out our dietary counseling and wellness coaching services. You won’t regret it!
Note: Please don’t confuse “meal plans” (a noun) with “meal planning” (a verb). We are huge proponents of planning out your meals in advance!
