You get to have a say in your training and nutrition.
Personal preference is often overlooked, yet one of the most important aspects in a plan, yet one that leads to long term success.
Why? Well it is a driving factor for consistency, and at the end of the day, consistency is the means by which we achieve results in the long term.
The best part is, personal preference is rather flexible. It can ebb and flow with changes in your life and your goals. As long as broad principles are taken into account, the nuance of day to day can be as rigid or as fluid as you’d like.
So what does this actually look like in practice?
In the nutrition realm, it looks like adopting a style of eating that makes hitting intake targets easy.
As long as total intake is accounted for, protein is being consumed, and you are making sure you are eating fruits and veggies throughout the day, you get to have a say. You get to pick whether you would like to eat high carb or high fat. One meal a day or six. You get to select the foods that you enjoy and want to keep in your plan.
In the training realm, it looks like training in a way that gets you excited to show up to the gym.
You get to pick your training style, and there are no wrong answers as long as you are picking up weights a few days a week and move in some sort of way most days. Caveat here is that you want to have a bit of structure in your training so that it is not random workouts always, but on the whole, you get to pick the style of your workouts.
This is all to say that whether you are developing your own plan or hire a personal trainer to do it for you, make sure that your preferences are considered. A plan should be individualized completely to you and not one size fits all. Your say makes an impact.
All roads lead to Rome. As long as you set off in the right direction and stay the relative course, the nuance and the specifics of the route are completely up to you.