SeanFromCanada's Blog

Originally posted on Oct 2, 2014

Sunday is a day of planning…rest is no more. Not with all the food required for the week, for the four of us. Envisioning the week’s food needs is the last thing that comes naturally to me. Ask me what I want to eat tomorrow and the only answer I can come up with is what I just ate today. I’m not gifted in the creative art of ‘food imagination’. Meal planning, for me, is the exact same act as packing socks for a business trip…how many days do I need to do this for?

To be honest, I never think of food until I’m either utterly starving OR (most often), someone / something triggers the event. Either I get a pop up in my calendar, telling me to go eat (like a lunch meeting) or one of the kids blows apart in a state of what they claim to be complete malnourishment…either way, I usually only think of food when it’s too late.

I’m frustrated by my lack of ability in this area, because it places hardship on my wife and kids. I wish I had the ‘advance food warning gene’ that everyone else seems to have – something instinctual to alert me to think of food a couple hours before it’s time to eat. But I don’t. I work, play or hang out until something external triggers my ‘you should eat’ instinct.

I try to help – to make up for my handicap. I schedule time in the weekend calendar to prepare my breakfasts for the week (same meal for 3 years running now, last run was 6 years before a change occurred) and I offer to help with general family food prep. I usually need to receive direct instruction, which I’m good at following, but I can tell my lovely wife wishes I could just help without being told what to do.

I usually end Sunday with a relieved feeling, knowing my breakfasts and lunches are pre-made or events have been scheduled in my calendar. I like knowing I’ve got the week’s food under control and that I won’t be last minute buying every meal and eating like crap. When the food planning is done, relief is my primary feeling.

If I could take a pill for 20 of the 21 meals in the week, I wouldn’t need to do all this planning. That’d provide me with more time for my kids, my hobbies and my work…things I’d rather spend my time on.