I’m a 28 year old female who doesn’t truly enjoy the aspect of cooking, but I’m the Beyoncé of baking. Let me just tell you about the mean confetti cake I can make. Cooking lunch, dinner… not so much. I’ve been on a rollercoaster the past few years with this ‘meal planning’ phenomena.

In the whole scheme of things, meal planning seems pretty straight forward.

Plan your meals for the week, make a grocery list based on your recipes, go shopping, and prepare your food. Done. When you actually get your elbows in it, you realize that you’re spending your entire Sunday cooking multiple things, and separating them all out in Tupperware or baggies. Forget one little step and your meal plan goes up in smoke (literally and figuratively).

Just Prep It!

I’ll do the grocery shopping, devote my entire Sunday, I’ll even go above and beyond by picking up those salad dressing Tupperware things so I’m not dousing my bed of greens with salad dressing. Those who know me, know I love my sauces. Me and sauces are the new age peanut butter and jelly duo.

This lasts for one week; you know, all good, eating my planned out meals. The next week comes and all hell breaks loose. No way do I want to waste another Sunday in the kitchen. No way do I want to eat the same thing for lunch every day, nor do that for dinner. Now that my weekly meal plan is shot, I may plan a meal or two for lunch with the idea of coming home to cook dinner after my workout class… but, news flash! I’m either too stressed, lazy, or busy to cook that I find myself grabbing a protein bar for dinner. I mean who wants to deal with a cleaning dishes being away from home since 7am. Nope, not this girl.

Welcome to my wild ride on the meal planning rollercoaster. I climb to the top for one week and then corkscrew drop the following week.

I’m the A+ meal planning student for one week then the dropout the following week. And you know what? I’m ok with it. After all these years, this has become the norm for me and it works.

I applaud you, boys and girls, who may not have a love/ hate relationship with meal planning like myself. While you’re in the kitchen with your towers of Tupperware, I’ll be tipping the delivery boy for my large pizza—but, hey, there’s no shame in either game. It’s OK to be flexible—we’re not failures if we have a week where we just. can’t. do. it. anymore. It’s OK to be consistently ALL IN with our Tupperware towers and all—find what works for you, and don’t forget the ATL community who loves you for it no matter what.

By: Meghan Irwin / Instagram: @spiltcoffeeblog