I used to use meal plans for clients back in the day when I thought all client's should 'meal prep' just because the majority of personal trainers and bodybuilders do and it's what the majority of the personal training industry will tell you. But in my opinion and in my experience, it's the worse possible solution for you to get in shape.
There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach but I nearly always get every client to track their macronutrients and calories at the start. My clients have had huge success from this and here's why:
1) Awareness
When it comes to achieving a fat loss transformation and being able to sustain it, you need to know exactly what you're putting in your mouth and what your body is doing with it. A meal plan doesn't teach you anything, it just tells you what to eat and when to eat it. Tracking macronutrients will help you understand the difference between a quality protein source, fat, and carbohydrate, and what these nutrients contribute to in terms of hunger, energy, gut health, training performance, and recovery. It teaches you what's a good food choice for managing those variables and what's probably best avoiding.
2) Variety
Variety is important not only for enjoyment of food but also to prevent nutrient deficiencies and a wide spectrum of beneficial bacteria that you need to nourish your gut. Meal plans don't provide variety and you could be following it for months or years before you introduce anything different, not to mention the fact that you could potentially increase the likeliness of you binge-eating junk food as soon as you get a break. Tracking macronutrients and calories will enable you to at least have a variety of foods that you enjoy providing they're nutrient-dense, not processed junk food. More variety and less restriction will improve your consistency and commitment to follow the plan.
3) Accountability
When following a meal plan, it's more of a trusting process. You're trusted to 100% stick to that meal plan at all times. That lack of variety and freedom of choice can lead to lack of adherence, and for the average person, that can be difficult to admit. Tracking macronutrients and sharing your food diary with your trainer provides accountability because you're making the choices, you just have to learn lessons from those choices.
4) Preventing Social Isolation
Trust me, I've been there. I've taken tupperware boxes to parties and hotels with the whole ignorant 'I don't care, I'm on a strict plan' mentality. For some of you, this is the only way for you to maintain control but for others, you're isolating yourself and putting yourself in the cross hairs for negative attention. There are ways to enjoy yourself at parties, weddings, restaurants and other events without undoing the progress you've made, you just have to improve your awareness (point 1) and make a decision to not overeat. That way, your friends and family don't even need to know you're on a strict regime.
5) Avoiding a Bad Relationship with Food
I've lost count of how many times I've seen other PT's get their client in incredible shape by giving them a meal plan and telling them to follow it, only for them to relapse and more often than not, gain more weight than when they started. The worse thing about this is that these clients often abstain from a variety of foods (often junk food which I'm not a fan of) for as long as 12 months and as soon as the diet finishes, BOOM, an all-you-can-eat buffet of chocolates, fast food, donuts, muffins, you name it. Imagine surviving on an island for 12 months living off meat and fish, and then you finally come across some juicy fruit... there's no way in hell you're stopping yourself after one bite. There's a flood of hormones and brain chemicals telling you "we don't know when the next meal is so eat all the damn fruit!"
So, after 12 months of avoiding variety (and I'm not just talking about junk food here because you can enjoy variety without filling yourself full of stuff that's going to give you a heart attack), what happens? You end up with a very bad relationship with food, or worse case scenario, you end up with an eating disorder.
My Recommendations
Nobody needs to track calories or macronutrients for their entire life but I explain it like using tracing paper at school. You use it first to get good at drawing the basic lines etc, and then you can get rid of it later and draw without.
Tracking food intake is to improve your awareness, create consistency, to learn about the benefits of macronutrients (proteins, fats, carbs) and fiber intake, and to actually achieve a fat loss transformation, and then when you're proficient later down the line you can follow a more 'intuitive' approach such as eye-balling portion sizes, or using the hand portion sizes (fist, palm, etc).
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