How to Stick to Your Nutrition Plan: Habits, SOPs, and Battle Drills

How to Stick to Your Nutrition Plan: Habits, SOPs, and Battle Drills

Building habits underpins long-term behavior change. Sustainable change comes from actions you can repeat and live with over long periods. Whether you are following Lean in 12, Barbell Logic’s structured 12-week fat-loss program, or working toward a nutrition goal on your own, learning how to stick to your nutrition plan means building strategies you can use in real life.

For lasting nutritional change, you need nutrition habits for typical, predictable situations, standard operating procedures for abnormal but expected scenarios, and battle drills for surprises.

For the daily, predictable challenges, consistent meals and actions will help move you toward your goals. Bring a healthy lunch to work, fill your water bottle at least five times each day, and eat dinner at home with your family. Together, these simple nutrition habits build a healthy diet.

When you are out of your routine but prepared, developing a few go-to moves or standard operating procedures will keep you on track. For example, while traveling, you may have to grab a meal at the airport. What can you get without having to hunt around the food court or grab in a rush on the way to your plane?

Finally, battle drills are responses that you prepare for surprises. For example, your wife might surprise you by bringing home a pint of your favorite ice cream. How do you react? Knowing ahead of time will save you from spiraling.

In this article, I want to look at how to develop standard operating procedures and battle drills that help you stick to your nutrition plan in atypical situations.

Nutrition Standard Operating Procedures for Predictable Challenges

Nutrition standard operating procedures are actions you take during abnormal but expected situations. Some common scenarios include the following:

• An airport layover
• A meal out with family
• A long car trip

Develop plans for these situations. Your plans may identify go-to items you can find at convenience stores, gas stations, or ordinary restaurants. For instance, you might grab a specific protein bar at a gas station or a low-calorie breakfast sandwich at a restaurant.

You may develop an approach rather than identify specific food items to help curtail overeating. Order the cheeseburger with steamed vegetables instead of french fries. Skip breakfast at the airport if you know that you do well with intermittent fasting. To prevent overeating during long car rides, set mealtimes and stick to them (e.g., “It’s 8:05, and I’m hungry, but I know that if I eat now, I’ll be hungry well before lunch. I’ll wait until 9:00 a.m. to eat my protein bar”).

Maybe you pack a massive salad and prepare for weird looks as you go through airport security (I might be speaking from experience here).

The more frequently a situation occurs, the more important it is to master the applicable standard operating procedure. If you eat out every day, you cannot choose a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake every day. Not every day is a special occasion. If you eat out only once a month, you might be able to get away with it.

You have to make the decision ahead of time and stick with it. No deliberation. No worry or second-guessing.

Nutrition Battle Drills for Unexpected Challenges

Many people are familiar with standard operating procedures, but what is a battle drill?

It’s an Army concept: a predetermined response to a probable but unexpected scenario.

Army units prepare to react to a near or far ambush, indirect fire, sniper fire, and other attacks (mostly different ways of reacting to bullets and bombs).

Well-trained units begin the battle drill automatically. Soldiers do not wait for commands. Everyone understands the scenario and acts accordingly.

Leaders remain essential, and the drills empower them. Proper violent action saves soldiers’ lives. Leaders need time and detachment to understand the situation before making decisions. Having to tell soldiers to take simple actions (get down, return fire, seek cover) wastes time and attention. The leader needs to gain situational awareness and prepare for the next decision.

Battle drills allow leaders to focus their critical thinking on the most important decisions. This applies to nutrition as well.

Just as soldiers expect to get shot at, you should expect to confront dietary challenges. Your mom makes your favorite pie around Christmas. Donuts materialize in the conference room at work. These situations vary, but they are all less than ideal and contain an element of surprise.

As with standard operating procedures, you execute a decision made in advance. In this case, however, you can plan only your response and how you will communicate it. You cannot pack a meal for these situations.

When you kindly decline the donut, someone may insist that you take it. Remember, they may be used to the version of you who takes the donut or splurges on dessert. Firmly but kindly let them know that you are sticking to your nutrition plan. There is no need to get angry or defensive or to give a long explanation.

Say something as simple as “I appreciate it. I’m sticking to my nutrition plan today, so I’m going to pass.” Expect them to insist. Stick to your guns, firmly but kindly.

A battle drill does not necessarily require you to say “no.” You might allow yourself a small portion. You might cut a slice and take it home for another day.

How to Stick to Your Nutrition Plan in the Moment

Regardless of the action, stick to the plan. If you decide the drill needs to change, make a note and come back to it when you have some distance from the temptation.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola recommends always sticking to your plan in times of temptation:

In time of desolation never make a change, but be firm and constant in the proposals and determination in which one was the day preceding such desolation, or in the determination in which one was in the preceding consolation. (The Spiritual Exercises, sec. 318)

Changing plans in the face of temptation rarely ends well.

You don’t change the battle drill in the middle of a firefight.

What are your nutrition battle drills?

You might have some, even if you haven’t thought of them this way. The problem may be that they are moving you away from your goals.

For example, you may always get a slushy and a large popcorn at the movie theater. Similarly, you might drink wine after dinner or always get yourself a bowl of ice cream.

Build better battle drills, better standard operating procedures, and better habits.

Identify a scenario for which you would like to develop a battle drill. Create the drill, plan and prepare for it, and stick with it. Once it has become a habit, create another.

Build a Nutrition Plan You Can Follow in Real Life

Long-term nutritional change depends on what you do when life follows its usual rhythm and when it does not. These strategies grew out of my own experience losing more than 60 pounds and breaking the weight-regain cycle. Build habits for ordinary days, standard operating procedures for disruptions you can anticipate, and battle drills for surprises. Start with one situation that regularly pulls you away from your goals. Decide in advance how you will respond, prepare what you can, and stick to that decision when the moment arrives. If the plan needs to change, revise it later, when you have some distance from the temptation. Then move on to the next situation. Over time, these prepared responses become part of how you eat, making your nutrition plan easier to follow through both routine and disruption.