Meal Planning with ADHD
Have you ever heard of choice paralysis?
Popularized by Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice, this theory suggests that more choice does not actually present us with additional freedom and happiness, but rather with an increase in anxiety as we struggle with making the “correct” decision for ourselves.
Imagine a new ice cream shop has opened in your town. Everyone is talking about it, and come on, who doesn’t love ice cream? Of course you have to try it. So you go to check it out, and find that for opening weekend there are 50 flavors on the menu, plus 4 seasonal specials and 2 that are unique to the opening of this location. How much time do you need to make a decision? Can you manage it before you reach the counter to order, or do you have a default flavor that you fall back on?
I personally do this all the time when my friends suggest going out to a diner, “because they have something for everyone.” Now listen, I’m from NJ, I love a good diner and I take them pretty seriously. But when I’m presented with a menu with that many pages of options, it’s a problem, and I’ve been defaulting to the same order since I was seven years old: chicken tenders, mashed potatoes, and a side of gravy. I don’t care how good the burgers are or what kind of daily specials they make. If I don’t have the spoons to make a decision, I’m eating chicken tenders.
But the real problem isn’t ordering out. There’s nothing wrong with chicken tenders, and lots of people have a favorite ice cream flavor. No, where choice paralysis becomes an actual problem is when I open my refrigerator at home, and there are too many options to choose from and I freeze up and default to none of them.
If this particular brand of executive dysfunction sounds familiar, then keep reading, this blog post is for you.
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Now to be clear, I’m not here to belittle the “easy meal,” or the recent trend of the “girl dinner” that’s been going around TikTok. I have my stash of peanut butter, jam, and crackers for those really bad days, too. I’m talking about the average week or month, the periods over which we plan to be good, and about behaviors that go along with the ADHD experience whether we like it or not. Impulse control makes us purchase something that looks good at the grocery store, or bulk-buy a lot of something we tried once in the past, but then goes uneaten because we never had a plan to use it.
In previous blog posts I’ve talked about the importance of specificity when you’re dealing with goal setting and ADHD or other neurodivergencies, and it’s no different when it comes to meal planning and prep. Every planner I’ve ever had has featured some kind of meal planning checklist, but I’ve struggled with how best to use it because the usual approach — plan your meals based on what you have on hand, fill in your shopping list based on what you use in a week — just plain doesn’t work for me. But here are a couple of things that have helped me over the past year as I’ve tried to get myself back into good, mindful eating habits:
Nix the Grocery Shopping
I can’t, for so many reasons. The average supermarket is an overstimulation nightmare for someone like me. So let’s talk pros and cons of some of the alternatives out there:
Online shopping with pickup or delivery: This is great for people who are comfortable keeping a well stocked kitchen and making their meals on the fly, maybe even without a recipe, but need help sticking to a list and not getting overwhelmed and distracted. Shopping online allows you to stay focused, and because you see your total before reaching the checkout, you’re more likely to stay on budget as well. The biggest reason that I don’t do this is schedule; either I can’t go pick it up on the day I realize I’ve run out of something I need, or the delivery windows are so limited that I can’t be home for them. (Or they’re only available for, like 8:00 AM, which I’m sure is perfectly fine if you’re a morning person, but I’m very much not.)
Meal kit delivery: (Not a sponsored post, just a satisfied customer.) If your goal is to eat at home more but need a set recipe to follow, in my opinion a meal kit is the best way to go. Cooking for one is a pain in the ass, no way around that. But shopping for one is even worse, because most recipes are designed for between 4-6 servings. But even as the internet pushes more recipes for single cooks, food production hasn’t quite caught up. Say you’re craving burgers. You get a pound of ground beef, that’s 3-4 patties. Buns though come in packs of 8. A bottle of ketchup, if it isn’t something you use regularly, now takes up space in your refrigerator because it’s open. And that’s not even getting into produce, if you like that on your burger, that you need to use up. Kits like Hello Fresh pre-portion their recipes, making it easier for home cooks to explore new recipes, and come with all of the above pros of ordering online and selecting your menu well in advance — it’s basically it’s own little planner! The biggest cons? If you aren’t super adventurous, some of these meals are not especially picky-eater friendly.
Shop small at your local farm store, farmers market, or specialty shop: Of course, this isn’t an option everywhere or for every budget. But I’ve been fortunate enough to see a large uptick in these options, and it both makes shopping less overwhelming, and more friendly to the single cook. A dedicated butcher shop is better able to cut the right portion for you. A lot of farm stands also offer prepared options, baked goods, soups, and yes, some even offer complete meal kits! Now yes, that means more stops if you’re doing all your grocery shopping at once and looking for a replacement to the big stores. But the way I’ve made it work best is to use it supplement what’s delivered to me and take care of my pantry staples like oils and spices.
Build Flexibility into Your Plan
One of the biggest challenges I ran into trying to plan my meals in advance was exactly that: advance. I was sitting down on Monday and writing in what I’d eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day. I mean, that’s how it’s supposed to work, right? But then I’d get invited out for lunch at work, or mom would call and offer to cook dinner, or plans would emerge to hit up a new bar or restaurant. I love a BYOF, but it’s not always friendly to heating up leftovers, so unless I had a salad written down for that day my plan suddenly went out the window (and I’m not a salad person, so that happened a lot).
What I learned is to build myself in a choice. So for the day my grocery delivery arrives, if I know I’m getting ingredients for a pasta and a quiche, on Monday I’ll write down pasta or quiche for Tuesday dinner. Then on Wednesday, knowing which I’ve made, I’ll fill in the leftovers for one meal and give myself the option of the alternate choice from the day before and something new for the other.
What this has resulted in is making meal planning a daily activity rather than a weekly one. Like some other great habits I’ve developed since using my Silk + Sonder journals, what this helps with most is keeping the habit of eating at home front of mind. I don’t forget about it halfway through the week and give in to that craving for a burger from Five Guys.
(This is the second time I’ve mentioned burgers in this writing. Something tells me that maybe I ought to make myself a messy, cheesy, mushroom smothered burger soon.)
By narrowing myself down to two-maybe-three choices in the morning, I also make it easier on myself later in the day when I’ve used up all my spoons, and I’m staring at the full refrigerator. It’s no longer a matter of “do I want to cook this or do I have produce to use up or should I just go for a microwavable meal and if I do that which one do I make—?” It’s just “are you in the mood for chicken or fish?”
Coming back to our ice cream analogy, it’s the meal planning equivalent of bringing the choices down to those 2 unique-to-the-event flavors. Because if you live with ADHD, you know the joy of impulse picking something weird, something new, especially when it’s limited availability, whether you think you know what it’s going to taste like or not!