Written by Hannah Spaeth (’23)
No matter what age you are, schedule organization never gets any easier. As a college student, your schedule is constantly flooded with deadlines, club meetings, and an intense social calendar. As you age, the struggles of balancing work-life while entering adulthood come into view. And as a mom, it can feel like you have no free time at all. So how can you keep a more organized schedule in a way that is beneficial to your health, both physically and mentally? Consider the “trifecta method,” a three-point plan for lifestyle organization with certain advantages in all forms of personal growth. With the trifecta, you maintain a focus on weekly scheduling and planning in three parts of life: (1) meals, (2) physical fitness, and (3) repeated positive affirmations. By providing consistent structure to these corners of your life, you will see almost immediate benefits.
Meal prep is essentially a system of organizing, scheduling, and oftentimes cooking, a couple of days or a week’s worth of meals ahead of time. Meal prepping has skyrocketed as a health trend in recent years, and the organizational benefits are obvious (as dietician Anna Kippen MS, RDN, explains, “You can make multiple days’ worth of food and then not worry about meals the rest of the week”), but did you know that the perks of prep extend far beyond just that? Experts suggest that meal prepping may benefit your finances, time management, and health!
A study published by the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (where meal prep was observed as a tool for dealing with time scarcity and better nutrition) found that “meal planning was associated with a healthier diet and less obesity.” In a recently published meal prep guide by the Harvard School of Public Health, meal planning was also shown to “help save money…ultimately save time, [and] reduce stress as you avoid last-minute decisions about what to eat and rush preparation.”
For the mamas reading, did you know that all of these advantages can extend to your little ones, too? A study conducted in 2014 by Appetite Journal found that involving your kiddos in meal-prep could increase their positive emotions and raise their intake of nutritious foods. As the conclusion cited, “this study [gave] a first indication that encouraging parents to involve their children in preparation of healthy and balanced meals could be a promising intervention strategy to improve the diets and food intake of children.”
As you might expect, planning your workouts can be super helpful as well! A variety of health experts have found that engaging in exercise programs and planning workouts ahead of time can provide advantages that go beyond the obvious of reaching weight goals.
It’s clear from multiple sources that the foundation of workout planning is personalization. As the Independence Foundation stated, “[personalized planning] is based on your current fitness, level, it’s focused on your goals, it fits your personality, it supports your schedule, and it caters to your motivation style.” The objective in creating a plan for yourself is to make it fit into your life, not the other way around. Workouts no longer become a hindrance to daily activities but rather a realistic part of your schedule.
Roger E. Adams, Ph.D., a personal trainer, and doctor of nutrition, described that “making the time” to exercise insinuates priority for personal health, whereas “finding the time” suggests that it is unimportant. Another field expert, Tothbori Health Network cites that “with a plan, you can never suffer from burnout. [Good plans] have a good balance between working out and rest. Sometimes, when you feel tired, and you do not want to exercise, a program will remind you to exercise a little more since it could be what you need to relax.” Better Health Channel, too, has shared the knowledge that other “benefits of exercise programs include […] improved sleep, increased energy and physical confidence, improved social life, and improved general and psychological well being.”
At this point, you may be thinking to yourself: “It seems that with the benefits of meal planning and workout planning being so wide-spanning, all bases for peak mental and physical health are already covered. What else is there? Why tack on something else?”
Let me bring you into the world of self-affirmations. With the rise of spirituality on platforms like TikTok, Twitter, and even Instagram, the practice of verbal manifestation has grown in popularity, especially with younger audiences. The idea behind self-affirmations is that when one repeats positive phrases daily, such as “I am worthy, I will get the job I want, I am loved, etc.,” those phrases will eventually ‘manifest’ themselves into reality. Positive Psychology states that the key idea underpinning the science of positive affirmations and manifestations revolves around our sense of self-integrity. Ultimately, we will maintain our self-integrity by acting in ways that merit praise which we give ourselves — for example, if one repeats that they’re a good mother or student, they are more likely to behave that way so that the praise feels warranted.
On top of this, there’s been a ton of research conducted where we can see the benefits of self-affirmation in action! The journal for Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience has actually done a couple of studies on the topic, two of which found genuine evidence of self-affirmation is a beneficial practice. Results of a 2016 experiment, in short, highlighted that brain systems will, over time, place a positive valuation on self-related processing due to continued positive reinforcement. A second study by this journal also confirmed similar benefits. Positive self-affirmations among threat-prone individuals (people more likely to experience feelings of worry, stress, or anxiety on a daily basis) were found to reduce defensive responding (moving away from a threat). In a personal case, ‘defensive responding’ could mean not asking for a promotion, going to a social event, or reaching for a goal if it scares you. Ultimately, “affirming core personal values reduces defensive responding,” which suggests that using self-affirmations can, in a way, rewire your fight or flight response.
A separate study conducted by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology found powerful results that further show how positive daily affirmations can change personal flaws. As the research shows, “[psychologists] proposed and provided converging evidence that affirmations curb the negative consequences of powerlessness on inhibitory control by promoting a more efficacious self-view among the powerless.” In saying this, researchers conclusively found that mental differences between those who felt powerless and those who felt powerful could effectively be bridged by repetitive self-affirmations.
Work-life balance is difficult enough to maintain, but fitting in your health is even harder. With the trifecta method of planning, the stress of squeezing in nutritious meals, workouts, and time to improve your self-image is completely alleviated. Research across medical fields has proven the sure advantages to planning your meals and exercise programs, and multiple psychological studies have concluded that, despite its spiritual roots, the practice of manifesting a positive reality via self-affirmations has a true neurological benefit. Organization can be difficult, though, and that’s why wall organizers and command centers, especially those made by companies like 1Thrive, can be extremely helpful in effectively planning and carrying out meal prep, workout scheduling, and positive affirmations. With attachments like calendars, whiteboards, corkboards, to-do lists, and more, these wall organizers offer plenty of space to bring your “trifecta method” plans to fruition!
Cited Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5288891/#:~:text=Conclusion…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261443422_Involving_children_in…
http://www.independencefoundationinc.org/the-benefits-of-creating-a-pers…
https://aaptiv.com/magazine/scheduling-workouts
https://www.tothbori.com/benefits-of-having-a-workout-plan/
https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/HealthyLiving/exercise-progra…
https://positivepsychology.com/daily-affirmations/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814782/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6022649/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167219853840#_i34