Eliminate Decision Fatigue: How Meal Prep Takes the Mental Load Out of Healthy Eating
In our busy lives, we make thousands of decisions every day. What to wear, which route to take to work, how to respond to emails—and perhaps most repetitively—what to eat for every single meal. This constant decision-making depletes our mental energy in a phenomenon psychologists call "decision fatigue."
Food decisions are particularly taxing because they're frequent, unavoidable, and often complicated by competing priorities: nutrition, taste preferences, time constraints, and budget considerations. By the end of a long day, the thought of planning and preparing a healthy meal can feel overwhelming, leading many of us to default to convenience options that don't support our health goals.
The Hidden Cost of Daily Food Decisions
The average person makes over 200 food-related decisions every day. Each choice requires mental bandwidth:
- What ingredients do I have?
- What's healthy but also satisfying?
- Do I have time to cook this?
- Will I have leftovers for tomorrow?
- Is this within my budget?
These decisions might seem small individually, but collectively they create significant mental load, particularly for those who manage household meals for others.
