How Formulas Can Help Fix Cooking Decision Fatigue

Here’s the dirty truth: even we professional cooks get burned out by the constant grind of meal prep.

Even if it’s your job to think about food 24/7 (do I dream about food? yes, sometimes I do), it’s still possible to be haunted by the blank calendar pages of meals unplanned and the question marks of what do I need to make?, what are we going to eat?, or what am I going to be in the mood for in two weeks?

And as my friend Leanne Brown writes in her book Good Enough, “If you feel weighed down by the general sense that there is too much to deal with when you enter the kitchen, know this: You are not alone.”

So there you have it. The pros will even cop to being over it. I have yet to find a single person who will swear up and down that they love to cook and prepare food every single day of their life.

Why do we feel so burned out by these daily tasks?

Because our brains are actually worn down by the unending strings of tasks we make them compute on the reg. It’s called decision fatigue, and yes, this is a real scientific phenomenon.

So when you’re staring into the fridge blindly for 10 minutes, or when you throw up your hands and shout, “screw this, we’re getting pizza,” or you just sit on the couch eating a box of Cheez-Its for dinner— yes, my friend, you’re feeling the effects of decision fatigue.

It gets to the best of us. But the way I give my brain a break and combat decision fatigue is… you guessed it… having systems in place!

Yes, a meal plan is one type of system, but there are nested systems that help make your efforts to put a meal on the table run more smoothly.

And I’m not just talking about step-by-step recipes—I rely on a bunch of basic frameworks and mental flowcharts that help me create meals out of what’s available.

Fight decision fatigue with recipe formulas

Think of these as your own personal automations, your little kitchen IFTTTs that produce results without too much active thought.

I bet you have some of these in place already. Think about it: how do you make a quesadilla? How do you put together a wrap?

You’re relying on control elements—pantry staples like tortillas and cheese—and adding in variables like beans and salsa or hummus and lettuce.

By building these flexible flowcharts and formulas into your repertoire, you most certainly can be satisfied without loving to cook every day. Not every meal needs to be a three-course showstopper, remember that.

I can’t wave my fairy godmother wand and make the work disappear, but I can help give your brain a break.

Over on Instagram, I’ll periodically be sharing some of my favorite recipe ingredient flowcharts and mix-and-match formulas that will help ease decision fatigue in the kitchen.

(Hint: sheet pan meals are also very good vehicles for swapping one ingredient out for another.)

Follow along there, and subscribe to get my meal planning updates directly in your inbox. I’ll be sharing lots of tips and tricks on how to make your own personalized kitchen systems that work for you.