The planning stage is where you’ll likely feel the mental effort most heavily. While the internet makes menu planning sound like a quick, easy chore you can consistently tackle, the reality is different. Menu planning requires complex cognitive skills, including organizing, prioritizing, and managing multistep tasks.
Cleveland Clinic notes that cognitive impairment affects approximately 40 to 65 percent of individuals with multiple sclerosis. This helps explain why the multistep nature of menu planning — from brainstorming ideas and checking the inventory in your pantry to creating grocery lists and preparing meals — can feel overwhelming when you don’t have clear structure and support.
Understand Decision Fatigue
You experience decision fatigue when your brain has already made a thousand decisions that day, and choosing what’s for dinner suddenly feels impossible. It’s especially tough because food decisions aren’t one-and-done — they repeat multiple times daily. You have to juggle nutrition, ingredients, prep time, and energy levels when your decision-making batteries are already drained.
When you try to align everything with daily work and family schedules, the difficulty level ratchets up even more. Reduced cognitive flexibility makes it harder for you to adapt when you’re out of specific ingredients or when schedules shift unexpectedly. Emotional challenges like frustration or anxiety can further complicate the entire process.
You can acknowledge these challenges and plan specifically for them. Here’s how to make the planning process less overwhelming.
Start With a Backup Plan
Despite your best-laid plans, there will be days when plan A doesn’t work out. Don’t fight it — plan for it instead.
Your plan B meals don’t have to be fancy. In fact, the easier they are, the better! Ideally, they’re easy to prepare and don’t require a recipe.
Here’s how to create your plan B list of meals.
- Make a list of 3 to 5 easy-to-prepare meals that everyone in your house enjoys.
- Ensure that the ingredients are always on hand (add them to your grocery list once used).
- Stick the list of meals on your refrigerator or bulletin board.
- When MS makes plan A impossible, simply point to your meal of choice.
Some ideas for plan B meals include:
- Intentional leftovers: This means intentionally making extra when you cook, so that you have heat-and-eat leftovers for future meals.
- Breakfast for dinner
- Grilled cheese and soup
- Stir-fry with protein and veggies over grain
- Sheet-pan meal with protein plus any veggies in your refrigerator
Choose Simple Recipes for MS-Friendly Cooking
Look for recipes that require only a few ingredients and can be prepared in 30 minutes. The internet is full of them, and many cookbooks have been written on this theme. One of my favorite resources is a cookbook called The 5-Ingredient College Cookbook — available online — which offers simple, budget-friendly recipes using fresh ingredients.
Use Technology to Support Your Meal Planning
Use an online calendar to schedule meals and the tasks associated with them.
- Schedule your meals for specific days of the week.
- Set reminders for meal prep tasks like marinating meat or chopping vegetables.
- Use the calendar to plan around work and family commitments like soccer practice.
Use smart home devices like Alexa and Google Assistant to assist with planning and shopping.
- Have the apps add items to your shopping list with voice commands instead of typing them in manually. (“Alexa, add eggs to the shopping list.”)
- Set reminders for shopping trips or when to reorder staple items.
- Integrate your devices with grocery delivery services to streamline your purchases.
Meal-planning apps like AnyList and Paprika handle some of the multitasking for you. You can save and organize recipes, generate menu plans, and automatically create shopping lists based on selected ingredients. You can even share shopping lists or schedules with family members, which eliminates redundant communication and empowers everyone to participate in meal planning, regardless of who does the actual shopping or cooking.
In addition to any tech tools you use, keep printed calendars or templates on your fridge or bulletin board. These provide space to write in menus and corresponding grocery lists, eliminating the need for technology.
If you have vision problems, memory issues, or difficulty concentrating, consider using a hands-free, voice-activated recipe app like Voicipe, which will, among other things, read recipes aloud at your pace.
Simplify Your Decision-Making
You can reduce cognitive load by creating systems that minimize daily decisions:
- Create rotating two-week meal plans that you can repeat.
- Use themed cooking days, such as Meatless Monday, Crock-Pot Tuesday, and Soup Sunday.
- Build your meals around 5 to 7 base ingredients that you always keep on hand.
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