Let me tell you about the time I lived in my first apartment. It was the fall semester of my senior year in college, I was working long hours in a hospital. After looking at food all day I am much less motivated to cook for myself, so I did a lot of meal prep during this time. To stay within budget, I did batch recipes that I could use for weeks at a time.
Enter chili.
I cannot make this up. I had chili almost every day from September to December. Just thinking about it makes me a little nauseous. (Sidenote: there’s a batch of chili in my freezer right now for emergencies. Just in case money gets really tight, I have at least one meal prepared. But I truly struggle to eat it.)
Needless to say, I got burnout. I still don’t eat much chili. So let me help you avoid burnout.
One complaint I hear often is that people stop a style of eating because they got bored. Their meals became repetitive. Whether you’re a vegan, vegetarian, or you trying to lose weight. Whatever the situation, eating the same foods over and over often leads to us getting bored. Eating is no longer exciting or an experience. It’s just another task on the to do. Food was not meant to be that way.
Food is a experience to be enjoyed!
So how do you fight food fatigue?
Menus with variety!
This could look a couple different ways.
One way is a seasonal menus.
To keep certain foods pleasant, I reserve them for certain times a year. Yes, I love pumpkin spice. All pumpkin everything. Only from September to November. I eat more fresh fruit during the summer, like berries and tropical fruit.
Rotational Menu
For this style, I recommend incorporating one new recipe a rotation. Whether you plan for one week, two weeks, or one month. Incorporate at least one new recipe. I usually try to aim for a new cuisine, an ingredient I’m not familiar with, or recreating a dish from a restaurant. This is how I learned how to make and Indian okra and eggplant stew, kale and butternut squash lasagna, and pumpkin scones. Experiment, have fun, don’t be afraid to fail. It’s an opportunity to learn. You just don’t know what kind of happy accidents you can come up with.
A third way is simple but important, aesthetic appeal.
By this I mean, does the meal appeal to you visually? Does it smell appetizing? One of the easiest way to switch up is changing color palettes. I love green things, so if I’m not careful will be predominantly green. As I’m assembling a meal I check for multiple colors. Reds, greens, oranges, yellows, and so forth. It really adds variety not only in flavor, but in the visual. Sometimes we get bored with our food because it all looks the same.
Changing up the cuisine, the seasonings, trying something seasonal, and adding colors are all ways to avoid burnout with an eating pattern.
Today is the best day to change your life!
