Struggling to Stay on Track With Your Weight Loss Diet? Overcome Cravings, Slip-Ups & Meal Prep Overwhelm in Your Busy Routine

I know that sticking to a new way of eating isn’t always easy.

Some days, you feel motivated and on track.

Other days?

Not so much.

In fact, you're likely to have to have more days where you're not motivated than days where you are.

And that’s completely normal!

You are not at fault.

There's nothing wrong with you, in any way whatsoever.

Because of this, I would like to share with you simple steps you can take action on right away in case you are struggling with any of the following that many people also do:

✅ Figuring out what to do when cravings hit

✅ Feeling like you've ‘messed up’ after eating food you feel or know you shouldn't have eaten?

✅ Getting overwhelmed with preparing your meals or feeling stuck in a tight routine?

Click on the relevant topic above that highlights what you are struggling with to see how you can take care of it.

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✅ Figuring out what to do when cravings hit

Here's the thing.

Hunger. Cravings. And appetite.

These are all your body's mechanisms to look for nutrients.

When you eat and the nutrition of your food isn't enough, guess what? Your body will keep looking. And that is why the appetite doesn't go away. You eat your lunch, but shortly after, you feel like snacking or drinking this and that.

Even when pregnant or breastfeeding. It is not that you need to eat a lot to make sure the baby is healthy or that you have enough breast milk. Rather, it is that you need to provide your body with proper nutrition so that it has everything it needs to develop the baby properly or to produce enough nutritious breast milk.

If your body doesn't have all the nutrients it needs to achieve this, to maintain and repair itself, it will always ask you to look for more by constantly having an out-of-control appetite. And when the lack of nutrition is severe and not taken care of for a while, your body takes over in a desperate attempt to urgently get nutrients, and this when you experience cravings. Which will often involve craving whatever is easy to get.

So when you experience any of these: appetite or cravings challenges, understand that this is simply an indicator that your nutrition is low. Therefore, the best course of action is to improve your nutrition.

In your next meal; not "On Monday," not "Next month," but rather, in your next meal.

If you're looking for a deeper dive into proper nutrition, diets, and improving your relationship with food, grab my Meal Plan Recipes Guide here.

For those already using my meal plans, I recommend reviewing pages 10–21 for valuable insights.

If you want an even more in-depth guide to truly understanding food, explore my Every Bite Counts ebook here.

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✅ Feeling like you've ‘messed up’ after eating food you feel or know you shouldn't have eaten? And you happened to eat a lot of it?

Here's the thing.

One bad meal or snack won’t ruin your progress.

Even 2 can't.

Not even 5.

The "ruining" of your progress comes in when you feel you need to "restart" because you will hold off all efforts until the new start date you have set for yourself.

Let me ask you a question...

Let's say you are cleaning the house.

Sweeping, dusting, and eventually mopping the house.

Towards the end of your work, you happen to spill the dirty water—just a bit—and it falls on the newly cleaned floors.

Will you:

a. Clean the dirt again anyway?

b. Stop cleaning altogether/kabisa until next week/Monday?

c. Pour the remaining dirty water you used to mop because you feel bad you messed up as you wait to start cleaning afresh "next month"?

You have probably chosen choice A—cleaning the dirt again anyway—as the action you’d take. Unless you need some help...😅

But believe it or not, when you mess up your diet, you don’t pick A—getting back on track right away and making amends with your next meal.

Neither do you even pick B and start fresh tomorrow with better eating habits.

No.

Believe it or not, you usually pick choices B and C.

Think about it.

Not only that, but you will most likely go with C. Because you ate a cake, some chocolate, or some chapatis over the weekend, you decide you might as well eat terribly for the rest of the month (since it’s already the end of the month) so that you can "start afresh" next month!

Hehe, we are really funny. And a little sad.

But now that you’ve noticed this pattern, what if you tried something different? What if, instead of letting one meal ruin everything, you just moved on? No overthinking, no guilt—just a small correction and back to your journey.

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✅ Getting overwhelmed with preparing your meals or feeling stuck in a tight routine?

I understand that sometimes life can get busy, our schedule can drastically change when we get new work or change jobs, and we can have a busy and unpredictable routine that might make it hard to follow through with a meal plan.

Even I go through the same thing, which might make it hard for me to eat along the eating patterns I had determined.

Here's what I usually do and what I would do if I were you.

I would learn to keep it simple.

And here's how you can do that:

Turn your journey into a learning process and really absorb the knowledge shared:

1. On the page immediately after the 5th week of the meal plan, titled What Time You Should Eat. Here, I talk about how you can make your eating times more flexible. For example, if you get home late or if you leave for work too early.

2. Allocate time to read from pages 10 through 27 of the Meal Plan Recipes Guide. This valuable information will equip you with important knowledge that can teach you how to substitute your meals with what you can find readily at work, at restaurants, events or workplace buffets. This will make it easy for you to make the right choices even if you don't have control over your meals.

3. Finally, if you can, especially if you usually have extremely busy weekdays but relaxed weekends, learn how to batch-cook your favourite proteins, prepare staple ingredients ahead of time, and rotate meals every week for variety without the stress.

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What I want you to remember through all this is that: perfection isn’t the goal—progress is.

A one-off day doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

It’s what you do next that matters.

If you ever feel lost, take a moment to journal about what’s making things feel difficult.

Is it your schedule? Your environment? Your mindset?

Then, make one small tweak to get back on track and apply the knowledge shared here on this blog.

You’ve got this, my friend!

Your future self is counting on you.