When you're low on energy, it can feel like an uphill battle to cook and take care of yourself. This lack of motivation can lead to a cycle of fatigue, stress, and emotional eating, often followed by guilt after overindulging or just eating less “healthy” than you’d like. 

While there are countless reasons for feeling tired or burnt out, let's explore a few factors that might be contributing to your struggle with cooking and eating well. 

- In this article -

• When being disciplined works against you

• Identifying why you’re not motivated to cook

• Don’t want to cook, but feel like you should?

• Overcome lack of motivation to cook

• Your needs come first

• Simple tips to inspire you
  

When being disciplined works against you

How controlling are you around food in general? Sometimes, a lack of motivation to cook or eat healthily is a reaction to previous strict regimens, clean eating kicks, or plain old diets. If you're coming out of a period of meticulously planning meals, tracking calories, or adhering to rigid nutritional guidelines, you might be experiencing the pendulum swing to the opposite extreme. 

For me, I spent years trying to eat as little as possible while maximizing nutritional density—sometimes for health reasons, other times to maintain or lose weight. This approach usually involved intense research, meal planning, shopping, prepping, cooking, and often tracking my food as well. Talk about energy-intensive! 

Burnout is understandable when we hold ourselves to unrealistically high standards – being overly militant about food can suck all the joy out of cooking and eating.

Identifying why you’re not motivated to cook

Our eating habits and self-care routines aren't static. We aren’t machines. They evolve with the seasons, our family situations, work environments, and various life stages. Our bodies and needs change too. Consider what season of life you're in right now and how it might be affecting your relationship with food and cooking. Why we cook for ourselves or others is key to our motivation.

In my late 30’s when my daughter was an older teen and I started my first full-time job as a health coach, I decided I was going to get into the best shape of my life and closely monitored every morsel of food that passed my lips. 

My “why” was that I wanted to “look the part” and “walk the talk” at a new company that pushed weight loss as the way to health. I call this season of my life, “drinking the Kool-aid.” I wanted to fit in and be a role model. I saw one of the easiest ways to do that was by using the tools we were teaching clients. While somewhat empowering to take control of my eating, there were some downsides, too.

For several years I ate the same foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with little variation, no matter what time of year it was. I constantly mentally chastised my family and the people I ate with when there weren’t enough “healthy” ingredients in a meal. 

Finally, I got tired of eating so strictly and worrying about my weight. I was also dealing with some grief with the transition in my life after my only daughter moved away to college, a job loss, and some other gnarly life situations. Suddenly, being a paragon of moral virtue when it came to my eating and how others saw my physical body seemed less important. My “why” changed and I stopped cooking in the same way.

I consider that period when I was hyper-focused on eating “healthy,” undereating, and stuck in a meal prep rut of the same smoothies, salads, and protein and two vegetables for meals every day as a getting stuck in the “Summer” season of eating. 

I eventually realized it’s okay to have periods where you're not cooking elaborate meals, doing meal prep, or prioritizing fresh food. I promptly moved into a more “Winter” season of eating more convenience food, using fewer ingredients, and simple meals in the slow cooker or instant pot. I still eat fresh and homemade dinners now - just when I feel like it, instead of as a matter of principle.

What season of your life are you in when it comes to how you’re eating and taking care of yourself? Why are you not motivated to cook right now?

Don’t want to cook, but feel like you should?

Another reason you might feel like you’re bandwidth is low is because you’re burdening yourself with too many "shoulds" around eating and cooking. When there's a significant gap between what you think you should be doing and what you're actually doing, it can either lead to guilt and shame or it can lead to acceptance. 

When it leads to guilt and shame, this mental burden can make eating well feel like pushing a boulder uphill. 

I've been in periods of my life where I felt like I should be eating less or better, but I wasn't willing or able to make the effort. It would have been easier for me to accept this if I had looked it squarely in the face instead of continuing to listen uncritically to the constant niggling voice in the background that I'm not doing enough.

Try to examine these "shoulds" critically. Are they serving you, or are they just creating unnecessary pressure?

There’s also the potential for acceptance of wherever you are with your current energy levels, lifestyle, motivation, or lack thereof.

Dropping the shoulds and digging into what is really underneath the ambivalence can help reconcile the parts of yourself that seem to be at odds with each other to feel lighter overall. 

And you'll never know whether you need to accept that your habits are what they are at the moment or that you truly want to change them if you don't listen and respond to the running dialogue in your mind that you "should" be doing something different.

Overcome lack of motivation to cook

Food, eating, and cooking can be a source of joy, feel pretty neutral, or they can be a huge burden. When cooking, meal prepping, and eating are accompanied by a strong sense of duty, responsibility, or self-judgment, it's easy to lose motivation. 

Remember that food can also be a source of pleasure, satisfaction, and enjoyment. Finding simple ways to reintroduce fun and creativity into your cooking can help reignite your enthusiasm.

One way I’ve allowed more sensual pleasure into my eating and been able to overcome my lack of motivation to cook is by allowing myself to be fed by others.

I’ve also shifted how I experience other people’s cooking. My husband sometimes cooks for me, and occasionally my adult daughter, when I’m lucky. I was often letting the experience be fraught with worry and concern about the ingredients they were using or not feeling like what they were making was “healthy” enough for me to eat, not enough vegetables, too much fat, or whatever. 

Letting go of thinking about how a food was prepared and instead being present to the sensation - smell, appearance, taste, temperature, and texture of foods that arrived on my plate in front of me, without me having to cook, was revelatory for me. Tapping into that pleasure has increased my satisfaction not only with the food and meals itself but has had the side benefit of feeling more grateful for my family when they cook.

Getting a break from needing to cook for myself or others is one of the most restorative ways I’ve found to get back my motivation to cook.

Your needs come first

Low energy might be a sign that you're overextending yourself or neglecting your own needs in other aspects of your life. If you’re spreading yourself too thin or prioritizing others' needs over your own, you need to address this pronto. You likely need to consider prioritizing your needs instead of overgiving to others. Giving to others at your expense is a dirty little habit and not a badge of honor. The connection between stress and your physical health is real, and finding ways to honor your needs when things feel overwhelming is key.

For the nights, weeks, and even months when you feel like you should be doing a better job, but you’re just tired, give yourself some grace. I firmly believe we’re all just doing the best we can, and we’ve all been there feeling bad about our eating habits in some way. 

And on that note, are you actually eating enough? Sleeping enough? I know when I’m physically exhausted or genuinely starving the last thing I want to do is think about preparing or cooking food. 

I can’t tell you what a world of difference it made to my energy when I stopped ignoring my hunger and started feeding myself enough. I ate regularly, but it was always just under what my body wanted to be eating. Summoning energy from thin air, as much as we may want to, doesn’t work. 

We need to give ourselves the amount of food that satiates us, and the time and space to take care of our body’s actual physical needs, whether it’s more food or a nap. You may be surprised at how much easier it is to think about cooking something when you feel rested and pleasantly full or neutral and not overly hungry, tired, and stressed out.

Simple tips to inspire you

On a practical note, when I am feeling uninspired or burned out from cooking, here are some ways I can get a relatively healthy meal on the table more easily.

Weekly meal planning

My husband and I write a weekly menu on a sheet of paper we attach to the fridge with a magnet each weekend. The sheet simply lists each day of the week with the dinner we plan to make that night listed next to it.

While I’ve accumulated a binder of recipes to pull from over the years, I often include more ready meals on the list, too. You could get started with putting more of a structure to your cooking by finding just one recipe that you can start with or add to your repertoire.

Keep it small and don’t go overboard or it can defeat the purpose. Just one recipe, and once you have that one down you can move on to another one.

Shortcuts in the kitchen

Really understanding that meal preparation doesn’t have to be laborious - the simpler the better is what can get us going in the kitchen again. Whatever I can do to make meal preparation easier, I will do, including:

• pick up a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store

• cook frozen vegetables as a side and just add cheese and seasoning on top for some flavor

• make really simple dishes like pasta with butter and salt, steamed vegetables, and rice - these are ingredients I go back to over and over for their simplicity

• cook more than a single batch of food like spaghetti sauce and then freeze it and use it on another night for a second meal. These are some of my favorite stress-free nights of cooking. It’s kind of like leftovers, but better because it’s been longer since you last ate them.

Examining your relationship with cooking, your current life circumstances, and your mental patterns around food (and practical habits) with compassion and curiosity can point the way for what you might be able to do differently to start to shift out of the heaviness of pressure on yourself to be better.

Jayne Anne Ammar

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