Saturday, 2pm. The kitchen smells like roasted beef and hearty vegetables. There’s also chicken in the oven, cilantro lime rice cooling on the bench, and 11 containers lined up waiting for all lunch and dinner for the week.
Four hours from grocery list to the last washed pan. Every week. Without fail.
I always ask my partner if we’ll eventually get bored of this routine (and my cooking). Staying in on one weekend afternoon for this. Cooking the same proteins and vegetables.
A little, maybe. But also: I only have one body. No one else is going to fuel it for me.
Today in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn:
✔️ Why doom scrolling is the opposite of meal prep — and the mind equivalent to try this week
✔️ The question that reveals what you’ve quietly outsourced
✔️ Why the “repetitive” habits are the ones building your real life
Doable ideas 💭
This week, try one day of intentional information intake.
Before you open your phone in the morning, decide what’s going in. One podcast. One article. A chapter of something. Anything you chose — not what an algorithm handed you.
Then notice the difference between what you reached for out of habit, and what you actually selected.
I do meal prep so I’m not making decisions when I’m hungry and tired. My mind is running on inputs too.
Be proactive in your diet – what you put in your body and your mind.
Reflections 🪞
What’s one area of your life where you’ve quietly outsourced the responsibility — and what would change if you took it back?
Mindfulness 🧘🏻♀️
Four hours a week. That’s what batch meal prep costs me.
Grocery shopping. Chopping. Cooking. Portioning. Washing every last pan. From start to finish, most of a Sunday afternoon gone.
Yeh I know — I could let my hair down a bit. Order takeaway. Sign up for one of those meal delivery kits. Eat out more.
Sure. But that’s not the point.
The point is control.
Not control in a rigid, anxious way. Control in a “this is my body and I’m responsible for it” way.
One body, one shot
No one is going to fuel my body for me. Not my partner. Not a meal delivery service. Not the café downstairs that uses emulsifiers and food colouring I can’t pronounce.
If my energy crashes at 3pm, that’s on me. If I can’t recover from a workout, that’s on me. If I feel sluggish and foggy and irritable, well, that’s also on me.
It sounds harsh. It isn’t. It’s freeing.
Because once I stopped waiting for someone to hand me good health, I started building it myself. One Saturday at a time.
What I’m actually buying with 4 hours
It’s not convenience. Meal prep is the opposite of convenient on a Saturday afternoon.
What I’m buying is energy that doesn’t crash mid-meeting. Muscle that’s slowly being built rep by rep. A workout the next morning that doesn’t feel like dragging a corpse to the gym. Zero decisions about what I eat all week. And knowing exactly what went into my body.
Four hours upfront. Saves me hours of low-grade fatigue and decisions all week.
The “boring” thing
Yeh, it’s boring. Same proteins, same vegetables, same containers.
But I’ve started noticing something. Most of the things that actually work in life are boring.
Sleeping and waking up at the same time. Eating real food. Moving your body. Getting sunshine. Staying hydrated. Surrounding yourself with people you love and care about.
None of it is exciting. None of it makes a good Instagram reel. But it’s the stuff that quietly compounds into a life that feels good to live in.
The exciting stuff (the supplements, the biohacks, the new diet protocols) mostly exists because the boring stuff is too hard to sell.
Control over what gets in
This extends past food, by the way.
What I read. What I watch. Who I listen to. What podcasts run on loop while I’m chopping vegetables on a Sunday afternoon.
If I’m careful about what goes into my body, I might as well be careful about what goes into my mind. Both fuel something. Both compound. Both decide how I show up the next day.
Anyway
Four hours a week. One body. Mostly whole food. Mostly my own ideas.
Not exciting. Not impressive. Not going viral anytime soon.
But it’s mine. And I’m the only one who can do it.
Ideas Worth Pondering 🧠
“Meanings are entirely in your mind. But their effect on you is real.” – Derek Sivers
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If so, please let me know by either:
- #1: Forwarding this to a friend whom you think would benefit from actionable well-being tips
- #2: Hitting reply. Send me a sentence or two about what you enjoyed. I meant it when I say I’d love to hear from you. Typing into the void isn’t nearly as fun as interacting with real humans 🙂