In part one of this two-part series, we talked about why ADHD families need a weekly meal plan. Now let’s take a step-by-step look at how I make it work for my family. We don’t eat anything fancy, and I don’t spend hours in the kitchen — especially now that summer vacation is upon us. Eating meals cooked from scratch isn’t difficult. It just requires planning, which doesn’t come naturally to most people with ADHD.
This is the meal planning process I repeat each week:
Step One: Plan Your Menu
This takes more than writing down seven nights of meals you want to eat. You need to take your life into account, or you won’t stick to the plan. Here’s how I plan a menu I’ll actually follow:
- Look at the calendar
Start your menu on a day of the week that works for you — i.e. a day you can and will go to the grocery store. Then look at your schedule. Plan labor-intensive meals for slow days. Go for lazy solutions on days you know you’ll walk in the door exhausted. I love the slow cooker for busy afternoons. If I take my kid to an afternoon birthday party, I plan a leftover night because he’ll be full of cake and not interested in eating anyway. - Look at the weather forecast
My husband won’t eat hot foods on a hot day. We eat a lot of Thai peanut noodles and build-your-own burrito bowls in the summer. I love a big pot of spicy chili on a cold, wet February day. Weather-dependent appetites aside, consider your own comfort. Minimize your time using the stove or oven on the hottest summer days. - Browse your favorite cookbooks, Pinterest boards, and past successes
Despite my constant racing thoughts, asking my brain something like, “Hey, what dinners have we enjoyed recently?” produces nothing but a troubling silence. Even though I create a menu every week, I need to page through a collection of recipes for inspiration. My husband, our family’s pickiest eater, made a list in Google Keep of dinners he loves. However you stash your ideas, make them easy to flip through as you make your menu. - Plan leftover nights
Some of your meals will produce leftovers. Unless you have a house full of leftovers-for-lunch enthusiasts, you should slip the occasional leftover night into your meal plan. It’ll give you a night off and prevent leftovers from going to waste. - If you can’t stand having everything planned out…
Decide how many easy meals you need, how many leftover nights, how many more labor-intensive meals, etc. Then make a list. On an easy meal night, you can choose from the list of easy meals instead of following a calendar.
Step Two: Make Your Grocery List
Once you know which meals you want to prepare, it’s time to make your grocery list. Here’s how to write a list that’ll give you supplies for the whole week:
- Write your grocery list in order of where items appear in the store.
If you don’t know, guess. You’ll learn over time as you get used to your store. An organized list saves your brain from having to sort through crossed-off vs. not-crossed-off items in the list. - Go through your recipes one at a time and read each ingredient list.
Sometimes I need to run my finger down the list to make sure I’m not skipping over anything. - Check the public grocery list for items other people in your household have requested.
- Check supply levels of any staples.
For us that means milk, eggs, butter, and flour. - Think through your breakfast, lunch, and snack routines.
Is there anything missing? - Try to avoid going to more than one store.
If you do need to shop at multiple stores (e.g. a specialty ethnic grocery and a standard supermarket), write a separate list for each store.
Step Three: Go to the Store
This is obvious, right? But you actually have to make time to go to the store before you run out of food and cave to the takeout habit. And remember:
- Don’t go to the store hungry, exhausted, or otherwise compromised.
You’ll end up with a cart full of stuff that’s not on your list. If you need to, grab a latte at the beginning of your trip. - Take your list with you, and only buy items that are on it.
If you forget your list, go home and get it (or have someone text you a picture of it). - Write any pertinent reminders on the list itself.
For example, a stop at the wine store or a return you need to make at the customer service desk.
Step Four: Prep and Cook
Sometimes the hardest part of meal planning is sticking to the plan. If you consistently fail to make the meals you’ve planned, change your approach. Simplify your meals, enlist help, or prep ahead on the weekends to take the pressure off on work nights.
Also, don’t be afraid to shift your schedule mid-week. There’s a reason our menu is dry erase. Sometimes I’ll notice fresh ingredients starting to wilt and I’ll make that meal sooner. Other times we’ll make last-minute plans and need to adjust.
Step Five: Save it for Later
If you make big batches, package the leftovers into labeled containers and put them in the freezer. I rely on big batches to fill in days when I don’t want to cook. A container of homemade pasta sauce or beef stew from the freezer will give you a from-scratch dinner as easy as takeout.
Step Six: Track Your Results
Write down meals your family loves, or meals you find particularly easy or enjoyable to cook. Make notes on meals that go differently than you’d hoped, including any modifications you made to the recipe. Don’t assume you’ll remember anything, including what you ate yesterday. Always take notes.
Step Seven: Use Helpful Services
Unless you’re an experienced cook, you’ll probably find some level of help…helpful. Of course, you’ll want a few standby cookbooks, a Pinterest board, and maybe even a collection of family recipes. Consider these options as well:
- Meal delivery services like HelloFresh, SunBasket, Blue Apron, etc. cut down on grocery shopping and remove the burden of decision-making.
- CookSmarts is a meal planning service that, unlike the options mentioned above, lets you shop for your own stuff using an auto-generated grocery list. This is great if you like to select your own produce, buy ethically raised meat, reduce packaging waste, or buy special allergen-free ingredients. CookSmarts also lets you choose between a number of different recipes if you don’t like what’s on the menu, and it includes checkboxes to modify recipes for common dietary restrictions (gluten free, vegetarian, paleo).
- If you’re a rebel wishing you could free yourself from recipes entirely, check out Samin Nosrat’s delightful book Salt Fat Acid Heat. She provides a lovely overview of the art and science of good cooking and will help you lay the foundation for confidence in the kitchen.
Let’s talk about food!
I love talking about food. If you’d like to be friends on Pinterest, check out my recipe board. Or just leave me a note in the comments. What does your family like to eat? What are your secrets to low-stress meal planning and prep?
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This is my meal planning process almost down to a T! And the one that I’ve tweaked and fine-tuned to make it work for me and my brain. I’ve tried other systems/methods but they just didn’t stick. Thanks for sharing!
Your post pretty much nails it. I started doing this several years ago, after my partner & I split up and I had less money. I set a budget for the supermarket and another for the local vegetable market. If the recipe asks for 2 medium onions, and I have no onions in the bin, I buy 2 onions. It means little waste and keeps costs down. The other thing I learned, was that lots of experts suggest that you make a decision on what to cook based on what’s cheap and in season. I go with the seasonal thing, but if I decide to buy a fennel bulb, for instance, because it looks gorgeous and is cheap, but isn’t on my list/menu, I almost always end up not using it. I’ve learned to be pretty rigid about that, but make a note on my shopping list for the next week, so it’s there when I start planning my next week’s menus. I’m out a couple of nights a week, so cook two portions the night before. This ensures I eat well AND get out the door on time. I periodically use the slow cooker, and freeze. I have 3 or 4 exercise books of recipes, either written or photocopied and when I try a new recipe that I like, I put it in the latest one, along with my notes (which includes which dish I cooked it in). All of these have contents lists, which helps considerably. I have a tendency to want to try new things (I wonder why!!), and sometimes what looked interesting at menu planning time, actually just feels overwhelming. If I do have a dip in energy, etc, etc, I will swap things around. On my white board I have two columns: one is the menus, which I write up as if it is a restaurant, because it’s fun, and the other lists my appointments for the week, because it’s another reminder of what commitments I have. If I don’t feel at all like cooking I always have the makings for a tuna and salad sandwich, or an omelet, both of which require very little effort, mostly because I don’t have to consult a recipe to make them. That is the greatest challenge – forgetting what comes next in my meal prep, sometimes second by second. Your blog is terrific.
That’s so funny, it was a big deal for me to start buying onions like you described. My family taught me to be frugal and buy based on the lowest unit price, which means you buy the big bag of onions. The problem is, sometimes I use a lot of onions, sometimes I don’t. And maybe I’m just getting old and cranky, but I feel like onions aren’t as good nowadays — they go mushy faster and won’t keep in the panty. It took a while for me to accept that the most economical, least wasteful choice was to buy the exact number of loose onions I need every week.
I have trouble with the farmer’s market because I’m so tempted to buy big bags of produce that looks gorgeous — but if I don’t have a recipe planned for it already, I won’t use it. And I really hate throwing out food.
Thanks for stopping by! I’m glad you enjoy the blog 🙂
I should hasten to add that what I’m describing above is when everything is going reasonably well. There are times when I’ve begun something and can’t stop, for instance, and suddenly it’s 10pm and I’ve not had supper or even a cup of tea, and of course I’m exhausted. With ADHD, everything is a work-in-progress. I just try very hard not beat myself up over it.
Ha, I’m *always* thinking about how eating will factor into any plan, and I really can’t forget to eat. But my husband is a bigtime hyperfocuser who can absolutely forget to eat for entire days at a time if I don’t feed him. I’ve learned, like you, that berating him for it doesn’t help a bit. It’s never a conscious decision for him, like “Oh, I’m going to skip lunch and dinner and then stay up half the night working on this project.” So it doesn’t make sense to treat him as though it was.
My kid and I both struggle with meal planning and even just eating. Between my wonky work schedule – sometimes I work nights, some times days – and the kid’s social schedule we get thrown off course pretty regularly. In order to cut back on the expense of take out or delivery food and the potential for impulse purchases we narrowed our meals down to salmon, eggs, chicken breasts or tenders, fresh vegetables and fresh or frozen fruit. Those limited ingredients, with the right seasonings, opened up a variety of meal options that don’t require too much thought or planning. Grocery shopping (either “big” shopping or for incidentals) happens every 2 weeks whether we think we need to or not. The routine helps us stay on task.
Hi Debra! That’s a great idea! It reminds me of the ‘capsule wardrobe’ concept that’s so popular nowadays: you narrow your wardrobe to a limited color palette and simple pieces that can all be mixed and matched with each other.
I’ve adopted a similar philosophy when it comes to food, in that I no longer buy a ton of specialty ingredients. I choose a type of cuisine to focus on for the time being, and keep a reasonable supply of staples and seasonings. My pantry has overflowed in the past with half-used containers of some weird spice or other ingredient that I only ever used for one recipe. In fact, it’s just about time I did a big cleanout of my pantry again 😉
Planning meals or even shopping isn’t the issue (I’ve started to have my groceries delivered instead of dealing with the painful task of going to the store). The issue for me is the actual cooking. I have everything I need, but then I just can’t bring myself to stand there and do it. I don’t want to deal with the mess (or have to clean dishes before I even start), I don’t want to do the prep, I don’t want to clean up afterward, I don’t want to put away leftovers…. I know a huge part of this for me is the symptom of having trouble beginning tasks, but you’d think something like eating wouldn’t be such a hurdle. But it’s just easier to have finished food brought to me, so I eat junk, gain weight, spend a LOT more money, and waste money tossing out all of the food I didn’t cook. Listening to podcasts doesn’t help. Keeping the kitchen clean so it doesn’t seem as overwhelming doesn’t help. Trying to cook up a ton of stuff and freeze/store it so I don’t have to cook everyday doesn’t help. (Things that take less than 5 minutes in the microwave is not a problem. Naturally.)
How on EARTH do I create a system for getting myself to cook, even simple things that would take 15 minutes or less if I could just get myself to be able to tolerate the overwhelm and not fear the mind-wandering??
Hi! It sounds like you’re most of the way there, but still struggling — which is sometimes more frustrating than being totally lost 🙃
I talk a lot in my book Order from Chaos about finding your Why: the connection between this thing you’re not getting accomplished and your core identity/values. For a lot of us, knowing what we *should* do isn’t enough.
It sounds like you’ve made progress but need to troubleshoot that last step. If you haven’t checked out the book, I definitely recommend it because I talk about both identifying that deeper Why behind our daily work and troubleshooting when our systems fail. It’s a lot more than I could stuff into a comment here 😂
I have this exact problem with cooking, laundry, dishes, and cleaning.
I meant to pick up the book and spaced it (of COURSE I did lol). Thanks for the reminder. Here goes nothin!
Just read your book. OMG, tools! Not just a bunch of theoretical fluff! ACTUAL tools I can implement, FINALLY! I took so many notes, they’re probably half the length of the book itself LOL.
I’m enormously time blind, and overwhelm triggers so fast that I’m usually not even conscious of it in the moment. I’ve spent decades managing chemical depression and bipolar disorder, and ADD was the afterthought. I’ve always known it’s there, I know where some of my obstacles are, I have meds…but it wasn’t until last year that I finally realized I was focusing on the wrong disorders to try to solve certain problems in my life. Your book not only helped me create a plan, it showed me that I was blaming ADD’s shenanigans on something else. I’m not as lazy as I’ve always told myself I am. I just had no sustainable system, and I didn’t realize how much I needed one.
So THANK YOU. In the past I’ve had forehead-smacking, a-ha epiphanies that totally changed my life for the better, so I know them when I see them. Your book has absolutely been that for me. Giant, grateful, digital high five! xox!!!
(Oh, and you best believe I’m reading Getting Things Done next. LOL)
Thank you so much for these kind words! I’m so glad the book was a help to you ☺️
My mom has 3 sisters and, when growing up, her mom worked full time and was going to school while her dad traveled for work. Her mom made THE SAME EXACT THING on the same day every week. She used the same grocery lists and it became routine, then her kids quickly learned the recipes so they could help with meal prep before she got home. While this could get extremely monotonous, i think it’s a great idea for someone just starting out with meal prepping or someone (like all of us with adhd) who frequently become either overwhelmed and give up, or too hyper focused and elaborate, when creating meal plans. Thank you for all these wonderful tips! I was doing many of them but, like so many other areas of my life, a couple crucial pieces were missing.
I love that system! Honestly, monotony can be our friend in the right situations. Too many choices lead to overwhelm and decision fatigue. My parents both worked full-time and while we didn’t have an exact schedule like that, we definitely had a limited range of menu items: stuff everyone knew how to make, didn’t cost a lot of money, and came together quickly after work/school.
There are subscription services now like Cook Smarts that don’t even shop for you, they just provide a menu and grocery list! It’s a godsend for people who get stuck on the deciding and planning part but can actually handle the cooking.