Mel's Sunday Shift week of Jan 18th

Just reflecting on my Sunday Shift, my personal one, very inspired by what I’m leading in the group Sunday Shift. It’s not too late to join in. The theme is systems that support my health and more specifically this week, meal planning as a system.

I had a really productive recorded ramble to transcript session and made the time to reflect. A lot of themes came up, many possible systems I could improve, and the challenge quickly became choosing which one to work on first using that 80/20 lens.

What kept rising to the top was meal planning, next-level planning. There’s still a lot of work here and more iterations to come, and I’m trying to normalize that this is how progress actually works. You don’t master meal planning in one pass; it’s a bunch of small skills stacking together over time.

Last year I built a solid freezer meal system, making and storing meals ahead of time. Now I want to take that one step further by creating a weekly rhythm, inspired by my son’s daycare where they rotate through Week 1, 2, 3, and 4. I’m essentially copying that structure, obviously not their menu, but building our own family rotation with meals I already know freeze well.

My focus is Monday to Friday after school and after work dinners. That’s it. No planning or structure for weekends. My husband genuinely enjoys cooking and it’s a creative outlet for him, and I don’t want to over-systematize the parts of life that actually feel nourishing and totally fun and amazing for me.

These weekday meals are where I carry most of the responsibility. Even when my husband gets home earlier and cooks, I still hold the mental load of the master plan. That’s the part I want to ease. Cooking in the tired, hungry, end-of-day window isn’t relaxing or creative, it needs a different system.

So this week, my focus is creating a weekly meal planning system. Does that mean following it perfectly? No. I can absolutely go rogue. But having a backup plan, a system I don’t have to think about, feels like real support.

Good, better, best.

Good is mapping out dinners for one week.

Better is getting two weeks done.

Best is having all four weeks planned out.

Let's go

💜 Mel

5 comments