The Food Situation: Magic Mac & Cheese

As I have previously mentioned, I regularly feel like shit over how much money I waste by not cooking and wasting food. I have done a lot of thinking about the causes of "the situation" and am experimenting with how to fix it. Perhaps there will be a monthly check in on this topic?

Contributing factors to the food situation include:

• Being tired and stressed. There are many days when I get home from work and just want comfort food to appear in front of me with no effort on my part. 
• Food issues. Like many people, and as is expected of women, I have some hang ups about what I "should" and "shouldn't" be eating. There's a cycle of either eating super "good" for a while or eating a bunch of junk. This cycle stresses me out. 
• Poor planning and losing track of time. Too many lovely fresh vegetables have died an unfortunate death in the bottom of my fridge when I didn't get around to making anything with them. 

Fixing everything at once is impossible. The first goal I picked is simply that I am going to prepare all my food myself. I'm not worrying too much yet about the price of particular products. 

The lesson from month #1 has been that this isn't going to work without self acceptance. Of my strengths and weaknesses and where I'm at emotionally. So what do I need to accept for this to work?

First: How my brain works. I feel like I "should" be able to just spend 20 minutes cooking something healthy every night. Because I really can cook a healthy meal in 20 minutes! Part of the problem is that I lose motivation to do that if I'm tired. But also, I have a really, really, really hard time switching tasks. For me, ADHD doesn't mean that I can't focus--I actually tend to focus on one thing VERY intensely, to the detriment of anything and everything else around me that needs to happen. 

So, in light of that, my plan is to pick a couple days a month to front load food preparation so that I don't have to worry about it the rest of the time unless I feel like cooking. Last weekend, I cooked a bunch of meals that I froze, listing them on a piece of paper like this: 

And crossing them off as they got eaten. I had tons of fun spending the weekend cooking. And those days when I got home and just wanted comfort food to magically appear, well, magically in my freezer there was delicious baked Mac & Cheese waiting for me. I also baked a quiche and made a batch of oatmeal with apples and cinnamon to have on hand for breakfast and came home for lunch every day (when I usually make a cucumber & avocado based salad). And when I didn't want the magic comfort food, I cooked and had a couple nights of roasted brussels sprouts and carrots for dinner. Also, there has been a lot of hot chocolate.

All in all, I feel good about how it's going. I'm realizing that I also have to accept that sometimes I am going to eat "bad" food and it is ok and it needs to be part of the plan (because otherwise I'm gonna throw my money down the drain and get pizza delivered, let's be honest).*

* I have many thoughts about "good" and "bad" food and the subject of intuitive eating. I do not in my actions always live up to these beliefs. If you are interested in this subject, please let me refer you to this post on intuitive eating and the (sadly closed, but fully archived) size acceptance blog Shapely Prose in general. The blog wasn't in any way about frugality but it's a good read.