Overview

Welcome to Fitness Blender's new 1 Week Meal Challenge! This program is a one week program developed by Registered Dietitians and Recipe Developers, and reviewed by Doctoral-level Mental Health Professionals, to provide a meal plan that is not only easy to use, nutrient dense, tailored to busy people but also as simple to follow as possible. 

Our goal is to teach you how to do that in the most healthy, enjoyable, and optimal way.  

No matter what your goals are, this plan has been built so that it can easily be customized to meet your needs to lose weight, gain weight, or maintain your weight. And at the same time, build a foundation of healthy meals, eating practices and ideas. 

This guide is an overview of both the meal plan and a guide of nutrition and food science.

New features
There are many new features to this meal plan and we are so excited for you to use these as tools in your fitness and health journey! New features are outlined below:

• Customizable calorie goals and time needed in meal preparation
• Focus on mindful eating and learning how to listen to your body’s hunger and fullness cues.
• Ability to hide nutrition information (macros, calories, ect) if that is your preference. 
• 1 week of focused meals. Combined to give you the most optional nutrition in a themed week of meals, snacks, nutrition information and articles along with recipes developed by our Recipe Developer and Registered Dietitian. 
• Easy to use week schedule built into your week and compatible with any workout program that you choose! 
• Specifically created for busy people who need simple recipes and meals. 
• Grocery list that corresponds to the meal plan for a week. 

Our nutrition and food philosophy

1. Eat real whole foods: Eating foods that are as close to their natural form and that has been processed or refined as little as possible and is free from additives or other artificial substances. Limiting processed and packaged foods with a focus on foods that are fresh and close to their original form in nature. 
2. Balanced Nutrition and Exercise: We believe in balance when it comes to nutrition and working out. You don't have to be perfect all of the time; you just need to learn to do your best, most of the time. Aiming for perfection is a great way to sabotage yourself. 
3. Balanced Nutrition: This meal plan operates under the principle of teaching you how to eat nutritionally  – giving you insight on a balanced breakdown of carbohydrate, fat, and protein, as well as what portion sizes might look like when you are trying to reach or manage your bodyweight goals. Eating nutritionally is not separate from being able to listen to what our body’s telling us. This in combination with growing in awareness of our bodies internal cues.
4. Mindful Eating and building foundations for “intuitive eating”: We have created this meal plan to not only be a nutritionally balanced program but also one that teaches you to become more aware of internal cues of hunger, fullness, and cravings. 
5. Keeping things simple and sustainable: There are a lot of different ideas out there when it comes to nutrition, but we think ours is one of the simplest and most sustainable. 

Learning to eat well the rest of your life

Our goal is for you to learn how to eat well for the rest of your life - this is not a diet but a lifestyle change. This is a tool, a general guideline and an idea generating tool for you to use. We want to...

1. Teach you how to meet your nutritional needs with real food – not with meal replacement shakes, powders, or supplements but with real life food. 

This particular meal plan has been built in conjunctions with registered dietitians, based largely off of the kinds of foods that we regularly include in our own personal diets. We believe in eating real, whole foods as often as possible, in order to create a diet that is nutrient dense, filling, and fully capable of supporting an active lifestyle.

1. Support you in reaching your goals- Whether your goal is weight loss, weight gain, or weight maintenance, this program is going to make reaching your goals much easier. We have laid out everything you need to know in a clear, easy to follow format that lists exactly what to eat each day.

Whether you are brand new to the concept of healthy eating, or you feel like you are a veteran at making smart food choices, there is a lot to be gained from reading this guide and following this meal plan (after gaining express approval from your personal health care physician, of course).

What is Included in this Meal Plan

• This meal plan will include 7 days of meals and snacks. Scaled to your nutritional needs, calorie needs, and needed number of servings. 
• We include a grocery list that corresponds to your unique meal plan. This will include all ingredients to the recipes and snacks incorporated in this meal plan. 

• Linked articles, resources, and infographics planned into each day for educational resources.

• This links into your FB calendar so that each day you can check off meals, snacks, and write notes or observations each day. 

• Meal Plan User guide with chapters on everything from proper hydration to the psychology of food, choosing the right workouts to healthy grocery shopping. 

• Recipes that are FLAVORFUL, HEALTHY, EASY TO MAKE. Our emphasis in all of our recipes and in these meal plans emphasizes our value for: a healthy diet that consists of fresh, whole food ingredients, a careful eye on packaged options, and avoiding heavily-processed foods whenever possible.

First steps: 

Start by personalizing the meal plan. When you click into this page, you have the option to pick your dietary approach (intuitive or and also set your nutrient goals and caloric range. Once you set these things, you can schedule your meal plan and then read through the Meal Plan Guide.