Monday Reset: When the vegetables in your fridge are a weekly guilt trip

This week’s focus: Stop the meal planning guilt cycle

You saw a recipe online, got excited, and bought all the ingredients. The vegetables are sitting in your crisper drawer right now. But every night, you stare at the fridge and feel nothing. The recipe that seemed so good on Sunday feels impossible on Wednesday. So you order takeout. Again. And the vegetables rot. Again.

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Your Brain This Week

Meal planning requires a lot of executive function. Deciding what to eat, remembering what you planned, having the energy to cook it when the time comes. Our brains struggle with all of this. And generic meal planning advice makes it worse by telling us to plan seven different dinners every week, as if variety is the goal. It’s not. The goal is just feeding ourselves consistently without the daily mental battle of “what should I make?”

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This Week’s Strategy: The Meal Loop

Stop trying to plan different meals every week. Create a short rotation of 5-7 meals you actually like, and just repeat them.

Here’s what to do:

1. Write down 5-7 meals you actually like to eat (not meals you think you “should” make)

   • Meals you’ve made before and liked

   • Meals that don’t require a lot of steps or fancy ingredients

   • Meals your family will actually eat without complaining

2. Keep this list visible (fridge, phone notes, wherever you’ll see it)

3. When it’s time for dinner, pick one from the list. That’s it. No meal plan. No calendar. Just pick from the loop.

4. Buying groceries every week is easier as the ingredients don’t change because the meals don’t change.

Why this helps: This removes the decision-making every single night, and instead you’re just choosing from a menu you already know works. And when you eat the same rotation every week, there’s no guilt about wasted ingredients or abandoned plans. You’re feeding yourself consistently, which is the actual goal.

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The 2-Minute Worksheet

My 5-7 Meal Loop (meals I actually like and will make repeatedly):

1. _______________________
2. _______________________
3. _______________________
4. _______________________
5. _______________________
6. _______________________ (optional)
7. _______________________ (optional)

Examples: spaghetti, tacos, rotisserie chicken + rice, frozen pizza, scrambled eggs, grilled cheese + soup

The guilt I'm letting go of: _______________________
(Fill in: "Not being creative enough" / "Eating the same thing too often" / "Not being the Pinterest mom")

Grab a piece of paper or open a note on your phone and fill in the blanks above. It takes 2 minutes and it might just help :)

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