AI wrote me a perfect meal plan. I didn't follow that one either.
I have AI open beside me for most of my workday now.
It helps me brainstorm, research, and pressure test ideas. It keeps my project board current, and gives me a little morning brief that highlights the day’s to-dos. It poked holes in my website recently and gave me ideas for updating it.
It also helped design the quote card I posted the other day, after I told it my first version looked like a template.
Most of all it helps keep my seemingly always maxed-out brain from spiraling.
I say this with love: it's the best assistant I've ever had.
So naturally, I asked it to help me figure out my meals for the week.
It asked smart questions first: what my schedule looks like, what kitchen appliances I have, how much time I actually have to eat lunch on a Tuesday.
Then in just a few minutes, it produced the most reasonable plan ever. Balanced. Doable. Grocery list included, sorted by aisle.
I think you know where this is going.
If you've ever asked ChatGPT for a meal plan or a workout plan, or any plan really, you probably still have it saved somewhere.
It was a good plan. You were excited about it, ready for Day 1. And within two weeks it was living in the same folder as the Pinterest board for the major bedroom refresh and the January photo of the fridge full of vegetables.
Here's what that plan showed me, and I think it's the most useful thing AI has revealed about my industry.
We now have access to unlimited plans, for whatever we want, on demand, and basically free. Anyone can get one built from the details they give it in 40 seconds.
Some will be useful. Some will be slop. Either way, the plan is there.
And I still didn’t follow mine.
Which brings me back to the question at the center of my work: if knowing what to do were enough, we'd all be exactly where we want to be by now.
We know. We've known for years. Drink the water, move more, sleep earlier, eat a balanced plate of food. A robot will even sort the list by aisle now.
So why don't we do it?
There are a hundred reasons. Money and time. The environment around you. Beliefs, trauma, and the emotional history wrapped around food and movement. All of it shapes what a person is ready, willing, and able to do.
The part I know best is the gap between a good plan and a full, real, stressed life.
And the basics are boring.
Getting a new plan (from AI, a new coach, latest trend, wherever) is exciting. Drinking the same glass of water for the 40th morning in a row barely feels like anything.
A plan runs on attention and decisions. And a stressful morning eats up both before breakfast.
By Thursday your meal plan is out the window. You're back on autopilot, and autopilot does what it always does.
Your brain is doing what stressed brains like to do: defaulting to whatever needs no thought. Willpower gets far too much blame for that.
So I look for the smallest useful parts of the plan. One tiny action, tied to a moment in your day that already exists.
Adding a glass of water before your first meal. Taking a few long exhales before you open the inbox.
Small enough to still be possible on the worst day of the week.
That single action is the beginning. Something you can actually do, and then keep doing, until it becomes just what you always do.
Then maybe the plan gets out of the folder and into your life.
So go for it, ask AI for your plan. Maybe it will be a good one.
It just can't drink the water. That part is always going to be you.
And you don't have to do that part alone. The Unstuck Circle is free, we do one small habit a week, all of us together, and there's a chair for you.
Alex Maxwell is a nutrition and stress recovery coach, a certified menopause coach, and the founder of Rise Unstuck. She helps women build the habits that hold when life is full, so a hard week stops meaning another Day 1.
She drinks her water before her coffee. Most days.
