During my Planning Classes, I ask how many people notice that they ate less well or didn’t sleep enough during crunch periods. People often respond affirmatively.
Good nutrition is a foundational practice that enables you to sleep better, cope with stress and anxiety better, think better, and so on. Dropping this ball has consequences. (A post on the HBR blog network provides more detail about how that works.)
Eating well at the evening meal is particularly difficult because you are tired and have no energy left to make decisions. This is unfortunate since many people have their main meal of the day at this time. While the principles in this post apply to all meals, I am writing as if the main evening meal is the focus.
If cooking is a form of creative rest for you
For some people, cooking is a creative activity that restores them. I am lucky to live with someone like this. My partner is also someone who will just look at the available ingredients and come up with something.
If you find cooking a kind of creative rest but need more planning to make sure you have the right kinds of ingredients around, you still might be dropping this ball but the solution will be very different for you.
Also, you have permission to not do it every day. Really. It’s okay to order take out or have a frozen pizza available for the days when you aren’t feeling it.
Expectations & division of labour
First, lower your expectations so that you can meet them.
One of the Studio members recently said to me “I don’t cook. I put meals together.”
Figure out your essential criteria: healthy and tasty are probably on your list, but is no reason not to have “easy to prepare” as an essential. You’ll need to consider your budget, but it may be worth making savings somewhere else so you have funds in this budget category to have higher quality pre-prepared meals, a meal preparation service (like Hello Fresh or similar) or more frequent take-out.
Second, work out whether you have to be responsible for every evening meal.
If you don’t live alone, make sure you have reviewed your habits and adjusted appropriately. Also depending on the age of household members, meal preparation does not need to be a collective responsibility. It can be a personal responsibility (like brushing your teeth, having a shower, and getting dressed). Or, it doesn’t have to be collective always. Breakfast and lunch are the easiest things to transition to personal responsibility. But even if you value eating meals together, you can decide to do that only a few times a week.
Other adults can reasonably be expected to contribute. Having a limited repertoire or disliking the task might influence how often they contribute. It is acceptable to renegotiate the division of household labour regularly. There is no reason that the decisions you made when you first moved in together need to hold forever. (This is actually my area of academic expertise.)
Kids can also contribute at a level appropriate to their age and development. You are not being a bad parent. You are giving them an opportunity to develop essential skills for independent living. Assigning a teen responsibility for one evening meal during the main part of the week is a reasonable starting point. You may be surprised how keen your teens are to do this. You might need to be there to teach techniques. Meal preparation kits might be good for this purpose because they have pre-measured ingredients and detailed instructions.
If you have been primarily responsible for meal planning and preparation, you will need to give up control as well as effort. You can’t ask people to do the things you would have done in the way you would have done them. You can collectively decide what is essential, and when menu plans need to be made to ensure ingredients are available when needed. You may need to think of “balanced diet” over a longer time period. Every single meal does not have to have all the key ingredients. You can set a minimum for things like vegetables or protein and then use your own contributions to the weekly diet to balance things out.
Making a plan
Here are a few ideas to consider so that you don’t drop the “eating well” ball. They are based on noticing that eating well involves several different kinds of work:
- deciding what to eat
- making sure you have the ingredients
- actually preparing the food
- sitting down to eat it
I assume you get to the last one but tend to default to things that happen to be in your cupboards, are easy to prepare and/or are easy to order from your favourite take-out place.
Here are a few ideas to help you eat well while reducing the amount of time and energy spent. Please share your thoughts and other ideas in the comments section so others can benefit.
- Make a list of easy, nutritious meals with a shopping list to go with each item. This reduces time and energy spent on making decisions.
- You could do this just for the meals you have most difficulty with.
- You could do separate lists for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.
- Make a weekly menu. Transfer the shopping list items required to your shopping list so you have what you need in the house. This reduces decision making and ensures you have the stuff you need handy.
- You can do this weekly as part of your end-of-week ritual, planning food into your following week, and adding some of the preparatory activities to your “weekend”.
- You can do this once for the whole semester and put it on the wall. Create a document for your shopping list and check the cupboards to cross off things you don’t need to buy each week. This also makes it easier to use the store flyers for deals if you like to do that.
- If you like the idea of a repeating weekly meal schedule but are worried you’ll find it boring, create a weekly schedule with limited options. For example, Mondays can be chicken and your menu can have 3 different chicken recipes to choose from.
- Have prepared meals available to heat up, either for days you can’t be bothered cooking, or as part of your regular plans. This reduces preparation time.
- Buy prepared meals from your grocery store, deli, or a local service that specializes in this sort of thing.
- If you enjoy cooking, use some of your weekend or evening time to cook large batches and freeze portions for later use. OR when you do cook, make a double recipe so you have leftovers for another night or can freeze some for later use. (If you live alone or in a couple, you may find that a full recipe is enough for 2 meals and can do this anyway.)
- Plan leftovers from dinner for lunch the next day or two.
- Try a meal preparation service. There are now several of these, some national and some local small businesses. It’s worth investigating what’s available locally.
- Some provide space to do preparation, recipes, and ingredients so you can go in and prep your weekly meals in one session with support.
- Some deliver all the ingredients and recipes so that you can prepare meals yourself.
- Some will deliver meals you just need to heat up.
- Put take-out or eating out into your plans. Eating out is not necessarily unhealthy or expensive, though it is obviously less of an option in the pandemic. Make a list of good options in advance to reduce the time and energy spent on decision making and increase the chances you will make what you consider good choices (for both health and budget).
You can mix and match from these ideas and add others to suit your preferences and budget.
Decision making may be the essential element
The most important thing to tackle is probably the decision making. Decision making takes time and energy. Reducing the number of decisions you have to make during busy periods or at the end of a busy day will help you keep the “eating well” ball in the air.
- Make a bunch of decisions at once, when you are more rested.
- Delegate some of the decision making to others.
- Allow yourself to experiment with things, reassess in a few weeks, and adjust.
Related Posts:
Changing your relationship to planning
You’re coping, until you aren’t.
Thanks to Beverly Army whose Tweet prompted this post, my friend Liz Mander who made a weekly meal schedule years ago, and to my many friends on FB and Twitter who share their lunch and dinner ideas. Originally posted August 29, 2014, updated with link the HBR piece and republished 24 October 2014. Edited Sept 14, 2015. Content updated and republished 11 January 2021. Re-edited August 2024. Added to the Spotlight On: Burnout in August 2024.
Jeanette Hannaford (@jmhannaford) says
I started doing just what you recommend years ago, because I would come home from work to a pair of hungry kids saying ‘what’s for dinner?’ I have a collection of recipes in a ring binder. At the front of the binder, the names of the recipes are listed on separate pages for meat based, poultry, fish & veggie. The lists have grown over the years. If I try out a new recipe, perhaps on a sunday night, and it is quick, easy, and healthy, I cut it out or photocopy it, add it to the list and stick it in the binder. On Fridays I have a ten minute routine – chose 4 meals for the following Mon-Thurs – we are more spontaneous on the weekend – either what’s next on the list, or something that is seasonal from it. I write the choices & their ingredients onto a menu & shopping list, adding whatever staples need to be replaced in the cupboard & whatever we need for breakfast and lunch, which tend to be more limited and individual choices. (Eggs, porridge, tuna, salad, fruit & nuts for me.)
I shop for the ingredients at the weekend. It’s manageable and we eat well.
beverly says
Terrific ideas. I’ve been making eggplant rollatini from the CSA bumper crop & freezing it in lunch-sized portions. I love this meal, and I hope to have enough stocked that I actually eat a decent lunch on campus instead of relying on the department admin’s stock of crackers and candies!
PrairiePoppins says
A few speedy ideas:
– coleslaw in a bag is amazing – lasts almost a week in the fridge, and is a great base for salads (think grilled chicken or tofu, green onions, red peppers), soups (eg curry, onions and garlic in a bit of oil, add broth), or as the base of a stir fry.
– scramble eggs with salsa and eat in a whole wheat tortilla
– mash canned beans with salsa and cheese, spread on half a tortilla, fold, ‘bake’ in a frypan
– instant porridge for really quick, hearty meals/snacks (apple and cinnamon is like eating pie!)
– yogurt and granola with cottage cheese and fruit – frozen works well and even gives you an ice-cream like cold treat
Aven says
We definitely do meal planning, and once-a-week shopping. Another thing that works well for us is planning meals specifically to have leftovers for lunch; our Sunday meal (usually a ‘roast’ of some sort in the winter) gives us lunch for Monday, and then on Monday we make a soup or other big dish in the slowcooker (usually prepping it Sunday night). We have it for dinner on Monday, then for lunch all week. That has saved me from bad lunches and/or spending money on junk food, and it makes packing lunches easy. We also designate Friday “frozen food night” (it used to be “takeout night” but it costs too much!) and always have a (usually not too good for us but tasty) prepared frozen meal from the grocery store. We’re too tired on Fridays for anything else, and it makes the evening feel like a mini-celebration.
Andrea_R says
Meal planning hasn’t worked well for us in the past, but what has worked for us recently is having the same thing for breakfast & lunch every day.
Is it boring? Yes. But it’s fast, it’s easy and neither of us have to think about what we’re going to eat for those two meals. It saves a good 20 minutes of mulling.
Chris A says
My worst vice used to be the vending machines on campus, because the refectory kept quite narrow hours, especially in summer. The vending machines sold fatty things (which I mostly don’t like) and sugary things (which I do) and caffeinated things (which wreck my skin and digestion). When I had a bit more cognitive wherewithal to spare, I would plan food and buy stuff to have around so that I would not sink to the depths of consulting (consorting with?) the vending machines. It’s hard to do that thinking ahead when you’re tired; these days I make it a habit to buy healthy choices on my way to the office, while I’m still fresh enough to have the energy to act on my good intentions. That said, I work in an environment where fresh food is much more available; campaigning for access to healthy choices seems like a thing we ought to do more of.
M-H says
i have a recipe app called Paprika on my iPad. It has changed my life! I have collected many recipes there, and if I want something new with ingredients I have, I simply Google from within the app. When I have found something the app will import the recipe and I have it for the future. My partner and I both have the app and it syncs across our devices. We also write things on a list on the fridge to ensure a comprehensive weekly shop, and keep a decent store cupboard, including supplies of quick-cooking food in the freezer (such as lamb and pork chops and good sausages).
Jo VanEvery says
A friend shared this link on Facebook. The idea of pre-preparing ingredients for things you can cook in the slow cooker. That really cuts down on the cooking time during term. https://newleafwellness.biz/2015/08/06/31-crockpot-freezer-meals-for-back-to-school/
Catherine says
What I struggled with was making the time to make a meal plan for the week. What worked for me was to assign meal-planning to a time that I would otherwise be “captive”: that hour when I’m sitting during the kids’ skating lesson / basketball practice / choir rehearsal. I store recipes in Pinterest, browse them on my phone while the kids do their thing, and write up my meal plan + shopping list.