Jenny: Hey, everyone, and welcome to Cooking and Meal Planning for Distractible People. My name is Jenny Eden Berk, and I’m a distractible person, and maybe you are, too. I’ve always struggled with meal planning and being able to organize meals for myself, for my family and in the way that works for my brain. I really hope you leave here today with some really, really solid, effective and valuable ideas that you could start right away. I can’t wait to dive into this topic. Let me just minimize my screen here, minimize me and we’ll jump right in.
Just quickly, a little bit about me. I have a master’s in psychology and education from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Also 20 years experience as a coach in my own practice but also 13 years as a clinical health educator at a national weight and health management company. I have certificates in culinary nutrition, eating psychology and mindful eating. Lastly, I’m also the best-selling author of the book, The Body Image Blueprint, which was published in 2017. Just quickly, a little bit about my neurodiverse brain, so you understand my lived experience a little bit.
First and foremost, I’m a highly sensitive person, empath. Also have generalized anxiety, as well as OCD, dyscalculia. I don’t know if I pronounced that correctly. I suspect, but I’ve not been diagnosed yet with ADHD, an attentive type. I’m actually next month going to be getting an evaluation, so I’ll learn much more soon about that. What we’re going to cover today is a few things. First of all, we’re going to talk about the benefits of meal planning and prep and home cooking, even if it’s difficult for you, even if you’re distractible, if you’re not organized.
I’m going to be hopefully giving you a lot of really great tips that could help you push through some of those challenges. I also want to explain why so many neurodiverse entrepreneurs struggle with meal planning, with balanced healthy eating and eating rhythm. Then I’m going to launch into helping you understand my main meal planning protocol, which is what I call the sweet spot of nutrition. Then going further, my red, orange, green day protocol. Then finally, I’m going to just dump at you a whole bunch of ideas and tips and things that I’ve used to help build the best tools and strategies that work for your individual beautiful, diverse neurodiverse brain.
The first thing that I want to really, really hone in on is that you can be inconsistently consistent and still really, really support your self-care and support your family. I really want this presentation to be your permission slip to get out of black-and-white thinking and to be really okay with being inconsistently consistent. What I mean by that is I’m a very capricious person. I really like being flexible. I don’t like being too rigidly planned. I like being whimsical. If the girls are saying, “Hey, let’s go out for dinner tonight,” I’m not going to be like, “No, because I have pre-cut vegetables in my fridge, and I’ve already batch cooked this.”
I want to have that flexibility to be able to be like, “Yes, let’s go.” If I’m not in the mood for something, like I’ve prepared something, but I just don’t want to eat it today, that I can be okay with, and you can be okay with making different decisions in the moment that it’s going to work for your current self as well as your future self. In this presentation, I’m going to throw a lot of stuff at you, but really I want you to be able to work through this in your own way using what’s best for your brain. Most importantly is that you come out of black-and-white thinking and slowly become comfortable and tolerate that there are going to be weeks and days that it’s just not going to happen.
That’s totally okay. The most important thing is just to pick yourself up again and try again. Maybe even work on micro meal planning as opposed to full-on weeks. Maybe you just focus on one meal a day, or maybe you just focus on one day a week initially. Hopefully, you’ve got the picture and that you can feel really comfortable just being inconsistently consistent. The benefits of meal planning, cooking and preparation. It took me a really long time to even be willing to broach this topic because I am so in the moment all the time, and I have a really difficult time with planning anything.
I’ve learned over the years that there are some truly wonderful benefits of even just doing a little bit of conceptualization of plans of dinners, meals and then learning some basic home cooking and preparation. Number one, it has the potential to save you time during the week so you can focus more on your business. Also making any food decisions in advance. What that means is less mental load at night or when you’re overwhelmed, stressed or distracted.
Any decisions that you can pre-make before your brain gets overloaded, before you run out of spoons, before you don’t feel well, before you’re in a brain fog is going to be very, very helpful because for so many people it’s the decisions that are the hardest part, not actually the implementation. It allows you to make healthier choices. Because if you are planning in advance, you can plan to have a macronutrient-balanced meal. It allows for more intentional balanced and nutritious eating and meals. Then lastly, it can be so much more cost-effective and sustainable. It reduces food waste and unnecessary spending.
I’m the person who goes to the supermarket and just gets totally distracted and be like, “There’s a new chutney I want to try. Let’s put this in the basket.” Then before you know it, I’ve lost all my intentions about what I needed to get and what I want to get. For me, making a shopping list ahead of time has been incredibly helpful, even though it’s not natural for me to do it. Making sure I have, at least, a wireframe plan of what I’m going to get while I’m at a store really, really helps. Let’s get into why feeding yourself is so hard as a neurodiverse entrepreneur.
You have so many things on your plate, figuratively, you’re launching, you’re blogging, you’re building your systems. In that process, sometimes you forget to put healthy and balanced food on your literal plates because either it’s so exciting, or you’re completely inundated with your business. For many people with neurodivergent brains, meal planning can be tough for the following reasons. You know what? Put in the chat, if you don’t mind, put in the chat which one resonates with you the most out of this list. It feels too overwhelming. You’re lacking time or motivation.
Maybe you’re so into your business, you’re so hyper-focused and inflow that you forget to eat. Sometimes you feel shame for not being consistent. Again, that’s that black-and-white thinking, or you might feel shame for not taking care of yourself, even though you know you should, you need to. What I’ve always shared with people is that the knowing doesn’t equal doing. I know I should be flossing my teeth every night, but that doesn’t always translate into doing. The doing is the hardest part. We all know in some way what we should be doing, but I feel that the implementation is often what keeps us stuck.
Not knowing what you want to eat, not knowing what you’re in the mood for, so you put it off. “I don’t know what to eat, so I’ll just put it off.” Sometimes perhaps there are sensory issues related to eating. Some people may have ARFID, maybe picky eaters. Perhaps you’re avoiding certain textures or temperatures in your food. Lack of energy or having chronic pain. These are for my Spoonie friends. Every day it’s a crapshoot where my energy level is going to be. I really try to honor that, and I’m going to share more about that in a little bit.
Maybe you find it incredibly boring, and you just dread the task, so you just put it off and don’t do it. Also, one thing that really resonates for me is Pathological Demand Avoidance, PDA. It’s not so much the demands of other people, but my own demands like, “Oh, I got to go do this. I got to batch cook. I’ve got to cut up some veggies.” I just really rebel against that. It has to come from this internal motivation place. For me personally, it has to come from this place where I know that I’m doing a favor and giving my future self a little gift.
That tends to help, but be aware of rebelliousness, be aware of Pathological Demand Avoidance. Lack of interoceptive skills, cues, hunger and satiety cues. Maybe you just don’t have the mind-body connection, and you really don’t know when you’re hungry until you’re starving. Then it’s too late, or you end up binge eating, or you just eat whatever’s in the cabinet because you’ve put it off. That is very, very common. Learning mindful eating, mindfulness and mind-body connection tools can be very, very helpful in being able to understand your hunger and satiety cues much better.
Decision fatigue, so not having made all these decisions during the day, you can feel really overloaded and just not care. “I’ll just eat whatever’s in front of me,” or, “I’ll just going to order takeout,” or, “I’m just going to do whatever’s the lowest hanging fruit.” Decision fatigue, not just with meals but with all the decisions you make during the day but also decision anxiety, like, “What’s the best choice? Should I have this or should I have that?” What do I want versus what does my body need? There’s often a tug of war going on, and that can make nutrition and feeding yourself really, really hard.
Diet culture goes right along with that. I used to be very steeped in diet culture, and I was always on a diet. I was either being perfect on the diet, or I was completely ricocheting on the other side and just eating whatever I want, Skittles for dinner, chips, whatever it is. I’ve had to work very hard to let go of diet culture and really adopt and feel into intuitive and mindful eating which has been so helpful for me. I hope something that you’d like to explore as well. Then lastly, people who have neurodiverse brains sometimes have trouble remembering.
Maybe it’s a working memory issue. You don’t know what you have in the house. You feel too overwhelmed or distracted to take inventory. Maybe you have 80 cans of corn and 5 packages of apricots. I’m not using personal stories or anything, but I’ve had the experience of doing the shopping list, and I’m like, “I don’t think I have corn.” Then I come home and I have 80 cans of corn because I haven’t done inventory, and I haven’t taken that time to think in advance what is it that I actually need and that I’m actually going to use. That’s something that’s I think very significant that– It’s an ongoing issue for me.
One thing that really helps is mindfulness and being able to make decisions and do certain steps before I just whimsically go to the store, or before I start cooking to really take a minute to see what do I have in the house and what is it that I actually need versus is it going to be more extraneous. Let me know in the chat, what is the most challenging part of cooking and meal planning for you. A little bit later, we’re going to talk about what are the stop gaps for you. Because if you can identify what’s the thing that’s really stopping you from consistently doing home cooking or meal planning in general, it doesn’t have to be cooking by the way, but just putting together meals for yourself.
You want to know what the stop gaps are, and we’re going to talk about that in a bit, but I would love to hear your comments in the chat. What comes up for you? This is a concept. This is a protocol that I use with my students and with my clients, and it’s called the nutritional sweet spot. Sorry, I’ve just taken a sip of my coffee. Basically, you’re going to be using this as almost like an exercise that you can do right now while you’re watching this. If you pull out a piece of paper, there are three categories. One is macronutrient-balanced foods.
What I mean by that is there contains a lean protein, a healthy fat and a complex carb, so like fiber. Let’s say a bunch of roasted vegetables with some chicken, and it’s cooked in olive oil, and you have some avocado on the side. That’s an example, but it can be super simple. It could be a handful of nuts and Ezekiel bread. That is another example. It could be whole wheat toast with eggs and arugula or something like that. The idea here is that you’re going to take any protein that is healthy, lean, not processed, et cetera, a healthy fat and complex carb.
The second one is convenient fits lifestyle. In my days at working at a national health and weight management company, I worked with people who had all kinds of jobs like truck drivers and night nurses and stay-at-home moms and everything in between. Very often it was hard to find the foods that are convenient and that fit their lifestyle. That’s something that has to be problem-solved.
The last part of it, the one that’s in blue is making sure that whatever you choose to eat is delicious and comforting and pleasurable. The reason why I pick these is because very often there is a tilt. When I was dieting obsessively, I didn’t care about whether it was delicious or comforting or pleasurable. All I cared about was that it was healthy and low-calorie. On the other hand, when I was ricocheting in the other direction, I didn’t care that it was healthy. All I wanted was it to be convenient and delicious and comforting and pleasurable. You’re going to find that sometimes you’re working all of these, but you really want to find something that fits right in the middle.
Even having a list of 10 foods or 10 meals that contain that small part right there in the middle is going to be your nutritional sweet spot. It’s going to be the thing that is easy for you to make. It fits your lifestyle, fits your schedule. It’s going to be ideally macronutrient-balanced and healthy, although there’s a workaround for that, too. It has to be delicious, comforting and pleasurable, or else your brain isn’t going to get the message that it feels satisfied. It’s very important that you do not let yourself eat things that you just either really don’t like or that you’re eating it only because it’s healthy for you, that isn’t going to be sustainable.
While you have your piece of paper out, I want you to start writing down things in three different columns. One, what are the proteins you like to eat? What are the healthy fats you like to eat? What are the complex carbs you like? Then really think about your schedule day-to-day and understand for yourself what constitutes an easy win, something that is easy for you, that’s convenient, and it fits your lifestyle. Then lastly, that also write down the foods that you find really delicious, really comforting. That could be chicken soup. It could be, I love a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich, for instance, mac and cheese.
Just write down, it can be absolutely anything. What you’re going to do is find that sweet spot in between and write them down. If you would like to email me or put it in the chat, I would love to hear what you’ve come up with. Then the next thing you’re going to do is determine what kind of day or week it is because I put them into three categories. It’s a red, orange or green day or week. I’m going to describe each one and help you to determine when you get up in the morning, is this a red day? Is this going to be a green day? Maybe you don’t know till later on, but you’ll have a sense.
The red days, these are the days where I’m completely exhausted. I don’t have any more spoons. I feel really overwhelmed or stressed out, or I’m really in flow. I’m really hyper-focused on my business, or I’m going through a launch, or I’m hyper-aroused. Those are the days that I go for the low-hanging fruit. What I mean by that is I have alarms that remind me to eat and drink. I always keep healthy snacks on hand. Actually, I love keeping pumpkin seeds right on my desk so that if I realize I’m hungry, I can just start snacking until I’ve taken the edge off, and then I can really make a decision about what’s best.
You can also have trail mix, you can have beef jerky, you can have whatever you want but have it in your environment, have it in right near you so you can grab and go. Red days also include frozen meals. Those are the days that I heat up Amy’s or whatever or reheat leftovers. Sometimes a protein shake is what it takes, a peanut butter and deli, just opening up a can of soup. It’s a meal. It doesn’t always have to be the most pristine, perfect, healthy meal. Sometimes you just got to get some food in you. I love the concept of the girl dinner.
Just putting together a bowl or a plate of olives and cheese and crackers, pickles, nuts, whatever you have in the house and just changing your idea of what a meal could be. Because if you think about it from a macronutrient balance place, almost anything, you can put together any meal. It could be a breakfast for dinner. It could be a girl dinner, snacks situation. You just could really open up your mind and flexibility to what any kind of meal can be for you. Just allow yourself to think outside the box here. This might be a day where you order takeout. This may be a DoorDash day. This might be a week where you do Instacart for groceries instead of going to the actual store.
You want to determine like, “Okay, I know this is going to be a red day. I got to go easy on myself.” Maybe there are days where it’s actually more of an orange day where you feel okay. You may have more energy and motivation but not enough to sit down at the computer and plan every single meal out for the entire week. Maybe it’s on those orange days or weeks that you have quick put-together meals that it maybe takes 5, 10 minutes. Avocado toast with hemp seeds and arugula is one that I love. Oatmeal with nut butter and berries, maybe some scrambled eggs on toast. Salad kits are great if you just want to put together a quick salad.
You can open up a can of tuna and a can of beans, stick it in a bowl or boxed or canned soup over rice. Those are the things that I go for when I’m in an in-between phase. Then it’s hard to determine when these show up, but again, this is the beauty of being inconsistently consistent, that when you do have a green day or a green week, these are the weeks and the days that you just inherently have more energy. Maybe your period is over, you just have more time, you have a burst of motivation. I love when that happens, but I can’t predict when it happens.
Those are the times when I make more complex recipes. Those are the times that I do do-it-yourself meal kits, like I’ll portion out smoothie packs and mason jar salads and casseroles that I’ll freeze for batch cooking. Those are the days and the weeks where I employ the anchoring technique, which is, if I’m in the kitchen, and my anchor is the kitchen, and I have motivation, and it’s top of mind, I will cut up some vegetables and stick them in the fridge for later, or I’ll make a quick condiment and put it in the fridge for later. This is when I use the when-then method, so when I make my coffee, I will then cut up veggies for my snack later.
You’re anchoring it, and you’re keeping it contained within something that you’re already doing. It’s not a new task, you’re just extending the task, if that makes sense. This is also when I make decisions for future meals, like, “Okay, I have a clear mind, I have energy, let’s go see what I have in the house, let’s see if I need to go shopping, what can I make, how many decisions can I make in advance.” This is, like I said, when I check inventory, and this is when I go shopping for food. I also wanted to share with you a couple of extra ideas or strategies to make when it’s a red day.
This is what I make when I really don’t feel like cooking, I really don’t feel like meal planning, I’m really tired, or I’m overwhelmed, I will make the following. Avocado toast with arugula and pepitas, because I love my pumpkin seeds. If you have a Trader Joe’s near you, they have some amazing things that are very easy. They have these frozen boxed brown rice or regular rice. I just heat it up three minutes in the microwave and throw on a can of beans and some condiment, and that’s my meal. Same thing with Dr. Praeger’s black bean burgers, I’ll mix it with some leftover roasted vegetables. There’s my meal.
LIke I said, Amy’s is a good one for me. They are processed food, but out of all the frozen dinner offerings that there are, I find Amy’s consistently good. It tastes good, has very few ingredients. It has a really good variety, and a lot of it is organic. I already talked about oatmeal with almond butter, berries, banana, boxed soup over Trader Joe’s rice. This one’s an easy one, too. You get to do mashed chickpea toast, so it’s just simply a can of chickpeas with mayo or plant-based mayo, then you add it to toast. This is a great time to heat up leftovers from a batch cooking session.
Like I said, I’m not consistent with this, but the weeks that I batch cook soups or stews or casseroles, I always feel like I’m giving myself such a gift to my future self. When I open it, I’m like, “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for doing this.” Because it feels so nice when you realize like, “Oh, there’s a nice chili waiting for you in the freezer, and I don’t have to cook tonight, or I don’t have to do anything.” Again, back to Trader Joe’s, I love them. They have soycutash, masala burger or Soyaki sauce, which is a great condiment that you can put over stuff.
Then lastly, I’ll sometimes just microwave a potato or sweet potato, I’ll throw some cheese or plant-based cheese on top, some canned red beans, reheat for 30 seconds, and you have that macronutrient-balanced meal. I hope some of these ideas spark some inspiration in you. You can also do ricotta toast, which is just ricotta cheese with some cinnamon and cardamom and a teeny bit of maple syrup and put it over toast. Really delicious, my mom used to make that for me as a kid.
Now, I want to get into some more specific strategies to try for motivation, momentum and progress, even if you’re easily distracted, you get bored easily, or you’re not a naturally organized person. One of the things that’s really helped me, and I have to give my husband credit because he is really, really great about this, but buying in bulk has really helped me. We have a Costco subscription. We do a lot of Amazon subscribe and save. For instance, I get a big– I guess it’s a bag of raw cashews every month that I use for cashew cream, for snacking, for all kinds of things.
What I like about buying in bulk is that you don’t have to do inventory as often. We have this big thing of rice, we have this big thing of flour, we have dried legumes, we have rice, all kinds of greens, all kinds of seeds. Because it’s there, I have less to think about. I know that, “Oh, I can batch cook something, and I have beans, and I have rice,” so you can just add a protein to that. Frozen veggies and fruits should be your best friend. I love frozen fruits and vegetables. I often put frozen fruit in my oatmeal and then put it in the microwave or for smoothies.
Frozen vegetables are great in a crunch. Also canned or boxed veggies, fruits and soups, hugely convenient. Pre-cut veggies and fruits, it’s definitely more money, but it feels really nice when you open up your fridge, and there’s cut up cantaloupe, and you don’t have to take your big knife out and cut up a watermelon or a cantaloupe or a pineapple or whatever. Then theme night. If you’re somebody who wants more structure, and you don’t want to be thinking and making decisions all the time, you can pre-make those decisions with theme night.
Assigning each day of the week a different type of cuisine or type of dish. Also, this helps with decision anxiety. If you know every Tuesday is Taco Tuesday, and every Wednesday is breakfast for dinner, you get some of the big decisions out of the way, and then you can just focus on, “Okay, what am I actually going to make here?” Here are some more Neurolicious tips. First one is Mise en place. I don’t know if I pronounced that correctly, but this one thing changed my life in terms of cooking and meal planning and everything because I’m actually somebody who just jumps right into things.
I actually need to sit back and look at the steps because for a very long time I’d be the person cooking, and it would say, “Add your chopped onions.” I’d be like, “Oh, I didn’t even cut up the onions, and now it’s wanting me to put it in the pan.” It would totally make me feel flustered, and I’d have to shut off the oven, or I’d burn things, or I didn’t have things out. This one step, it’s not easy, but if you’re present, and you’re mindful for it, and you practice it, and you get into the habit of it, it’s really game changing. How I do it? I’m vegan for myself, but my family eats meat and everything else.
I typically will make two different meals, a vegan meal for myself and then something else for my family. Often I’ll just swap out the proteins to make it easier. I will get a cookie sheet, and I will measure out all the ingredients with little bowls and little– There’s little stacking bowls that are glass, and I’ll have everything that I need pre-measured, pre-portioned, ready to go on a cookie sheet. I don’t know. It just makes it so much easier to stay organized, to know what you’re doing, to not miss steps in your recipe, et cetera. I also sometimes use AI to help.
There’s a great site. I want to show this to you. It’s called tastebuds.ai. This is what it looks like. I just put in vegan mac and cheese. Let’s say I really want a vegan mac and cheese today. Let’s see if I can do that. What it will do is actually– I can’t vouch for all these recipes, how good they are, how well they work, how good they taste, but it gives you basically a recipe to try and tips and the method and everything else. Also estimated nutrition. You can do this over and over again with whatever you want, a quick and easy stir fry, vegan comfort food, et cetera.
There’s a few here, tastebuds.ai. There’s also mealmind.ao– Wait, not that, MealPlannerAI Vercel. This is just another meal planner type of AI app. They also have other types of apps, like meal planning and inventory apps, including Out of Milk, Anymeal, Mealime, which is $2.99 a month. Some of them are free. Some of them are not. One thing I do is make the environment really appealing for me. Because I find a lot of the tasks really boring and really hard to get through, including the mise en place, including chopping vegetables. I hate it, basically.
What I do is I make the environment really appealing. I listen to music or an audiobook or a podcast. I’ll often have fresh flowers in the house. The lighting’s nice. It smells good. I clean the space and do the dishes before cooking. Again, this is something that I’ve done in the last few years because I didn’t think I was the type of person who could clean the kitchen before cooking. Now that I have specific techniques and ways to work around my own brain, my own challenges, it is so much easier. I feel less cluttered and less overwhelmed when my kitchen is clean.
I often use the June bugging technique, which is basically I’ll anchor myself at the sink where the dishes are. The first thing I’ll do is I’ll do all the dishes, clean the sink and pull out my cookie sheets and after the dishes, start to build my meal kits, I guess. The June bugging technique is really great for distractible people because time and again, I’ll start with the dishes, and then I’ll get distracted. Someone will come into the kitchen asking me for something, or I realize I got to turn over the laundry or whatever. What the June bugging technique is, you always have a home base, and then you don’t have to follow a specific order of operations.
You can really go with the flow in terms of your own sense of what works. A lot of times, I’m not judging myself for doing three dishes, and then I get bored, and I’ll go over and get a cookie sheet, and I’ll start to build that, pre-portion things, and then I’ll get bored with that, and then I’ll start chopping vegetables. It really doesn’t matter what order it’s in as long as it gets done, and it gets done in a way that works for you. That’s just an idea to try mindful eating and building interception skills. This is what I talked about earlier.
The more that you can tune into what your body wants and needs and then really eat slowly and eat with presence, the more you’re going to be able to notice when you feel energetic from that food, how good you feel from that food, what foods you actually really like or that have just become habitual, et cetera. Incorporating a variety of textures and colors and flavors to keep the meals interesting and engaging. Experiment with different cooking techniques, roasting, grilling, air frying, again, all to add variety. If you feel like, “Oh, I don’t like this food, I never have liked this,” what I would say is try a few different times.
Try it roasted, try it grilled, try it fried, try it with this condiment, try it raw. Just keep trying until you find things that really work for you. Again, decide your plan for dinner before you make any big decisions during the day and when you have the most energy. You can also use a meal kit delivery service. I use Purple Carrot. I’ve been using it since 2016, and it’s been a total game-changer for me. It’s made me a better home cook, a healthier eater, and it’s majorly reduced the dread of making decisions because I have three meals a week, I have the leftovers for lunch, it covers six meals, and I don’t have to make any decisions about those meals.
Then using visual aids, such as calendars, whiteboards and other organizational tips to create your meal plans and grocery lists. The use of timers and alarms. If you are hyper-focused, and you just want to like plow through, having an alarm to remind you to drink or to get a snack could be very helpful. Also timers for preventing you from leaving something in the oven or on the stove so that you can be sure to shut it off so things don’t burn, et cetera. Breaking down meal prep into smaller manageable tasks to prevent feeling overwhelmed, for example, chopping vegetables on one day and then maybe cooking the proteins on another day.
I work a lot with visual organization, and I like color-coded, meal plans, labeled, clear-labeled containers for storing your dry goods, your Costco stuff, your prepped ingredients or even a visual recipe card to make cooking and meal prep more accessible. Involve a partner or friend. Having someone to help you with batch cooking. Maybe you have a batch cooking party. I used to do a neighborhood soup swap with people in my neighborhood so we’d each have a different soup each week. It can just make it more enjoyable, and it can help you increase accountability.
If you take turns, you do different tasks, you have tasks, you have someone keeping company and gently redirect you if you get sidetracked. What I would say is depending on what you wrote for what was most challenging for you in the beginning of the presentation, I would start to look at and determine what are the stopgaps. Is it inventory? Is it actually cooking? Is it making decisions? Is it not having ingredients? Is it the shopping that stops you? Not knowing what to eat, not being in the mood for something, sticking with a plan that you’ve already come up with, or maybe again, rebelliousness.
As soon as you can understand what the major stopgap is, then you can take steps to address that particular challenge. Lastly, before I get into the freebie, which I’m really excited to share with you guys, is what to eat when you don’t know what to eat. I can’t tell you how many times this has come up, but a lot of times you just don’t know what you’re in the mood for. Here’s the six-step process that I use with my clients when that comes up. The first step is to determine whether it’s a physical or emotional hunger. Then step two, without judgment, tune into the type of texture you might be craving.
Do you want crunchy? Do you want something cold? Do you want something smooth, creamy, mushy? Slimy? Step three is determine what kind of flavor profile do you think that you could eat right now. Is this, do you want something sweet and salty? Maybe it’s savory, maybe umami, sour, bitter. Maybe there’s a combination of textures or flavors that you’re looking for.
Step four, do you want something warm, hot or cold? Step five, is there a time limit? Can you cook something, or does it have to be quick and easy? Then step six is to yes, and. Whatever you decide, you’re going to yes, and it. Let’s say you want something really delicious. I don’t know, maybe there’s some banana bread that you’d really like to have, but you’re like, “Oh, that’s not a full meal. What I would do is buffer that.” Buffer your yes with an and. Add a protein to that, add a fat to that, add some fiber to that. Any way that you can buffer the meal that you’ve decided to have with some nutritional density is going to be your quick win.
I hope this has all been really helpful. The next steps are to download my freebie for you, which is a 500-plus recipe database and weekly meal planning template. This is through Notion. What you can do, and I have an instructional video for you when you download it, but basically, you can filter recipes based on texture, on health benefit, on flavor profile, on how easy it is to make. There’s, like I said, over 500 recipes that you can just drag and drop into your weekly meal planning template. I typically charge for this, but I can’t wait to offer to you for free for this amazing event.
I just want to thank Claire for running the event and having me on as a speaker. I hope this has been so valuable for you. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter, X, at the handle coachjennyeden. If you have specific questions, I’d love talking about this. Anything you want to know, if you want the slides, just let me know, and I’d be happy to send that to you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoy the rest of the summit. Bye.
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Mindful cooking and meal planning is about being fully conscious and present for the task of nourishing yourself and your family with balanced and healthy meals for the week. Meal planning & prep doesn't have to be gruelling or tedious once you make it (inconsistently) consistent and learn how to make it part of your self-care for the week. Learn my 6-step process for building joy, ease and calm in the kitchen.
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