I’ve been a perfectionist my whole life, something I’m still working on. My brain tends to see things as black or white; all or nothing. It’s probably why my career has been focused on IT. That kind of thinking works when you’re troubleshooting a system bug, but it fails when you’re trying to build a new habit.
For a long time, I treated meal planning the same way. I told myself I had to plan every single day or it didn’t count. If I would miss a day or a week, the perfectionist would take over. I would convince myself that I failed, so I’d just stop.
Over the years, I’ve learned that the plan is still there waiting for me even if I walk away from it. It doesn’t disappear because you skipped a meal, a day, or even a week.
In addition to being a recovering perfectionist, I’ve learned that I have the most energy around things at the start. For meal planning, this means at the beginning of the week.
I tend to start the week gung-ho and organized, but by the the middle of the week my energy tapers off. Meal planning isn’t just dropping recipes onto a calendar and hoping they show up on the table. It means looking at your week to see where you have appointments or activities, or other days when getting dinner on the table isn’t realistic, no matter how good it looks on paper. For me, the mental load of what’s for dinner isn’t the same from Sunday to Wednesday, and I had to stop planning Wednesday like it was still Monday.
What Wednesday Feels Like
By the time Wednesday rolls around, I don’t have the desire to cook. Sunday is typically my big cooking day (I love to batch my meal prepping). Monday and Tuesday still carry that beginning-of-week energy, where I feel like I’m still organized and ready for whatever the week will bring.
Somehow, Wednesday hits and I’m tired. It doesn’t matter if there’s a plan sitting right in front of me telling me exactly what to make. I don’t have the mental energy to think about dinner.
I used to push through and get dinner on the table regardless. But I was crabby doing it, just wanting the whole thing to be over. And, that doesn’t help anyone. Our energy and our mindset go into dinner just as much as the ingredients do. If I walk in the door tired from the day, irritated by how it went… it’s hard to want to cook.
I’ve learned over the years that energy doesn’t just stay with me. It passes to everyone around the table.
How I Stopped Fighting It
Now I don’t fight it. I know by Wednesday I’ll be ready for a break, so I plan for it, and that’s why we made sure to build flexibility and filters in Weekly Table.
I open the Filters button in the meal planner and choose which days to plan. I checkmark the days I want to plan, and leave the days not wanting a plan left unchecked. For me, I never have Weekly Table plan Wednesdays.
When I told my sister that I had Wednesdays as a leftovers day, she was so confused. She had never considered a mid-week break in her meal plan. For her, Sundays are her leftovers day. She calls it Smorgasboard Sunday and cleans out the fridge as she’s getting everything on the table.
That’s the beauty of what we’ve built into Weekly Table. Between her and me, we are in completely different life stages. Our lives look very different. And yet, Weekly Table has the flexibility to work for both of us.
When my meal plan is delivered on Sunday, my plan only builds around the days and meals I’ve selected. I can change it at any time, so Wednesday can be whatever I want.
What It Looks Like Now
Some Wednesdays I’m just not feeling cooking at all, and that means we have a sandwich or protein shake. Other times breakfast sounds better than dinner, so we make pancakes with flour and eggs, ingredients that are always in my kitchen.
Most often it’s leftovers. In my house that doesn’t always mean reheating the exact same plate. If I made a roast on Sunday, Wednesday might be tacos or a beef bowl built from what’s left of it. I also freeze extra soup and meat on purpose, so if I wake up already knowing I won’t want to cook, I can pull something out that morning and have dinner on the table in minutes that night.
Wednesday used to feel like a day where I failed. Now it’s just part of the plan, whatever that ends up looking like by the time it gets here.
Weekly Table was built for the woman who carries dinner in her head long before anyone asks. Get it out of your head and start your free trial.
