You think you’re too busy to eat healthy, but that’s not true. The reality? You’re making it more difficult by being too creative. Here’s how to keep it simple.

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By the end of my days as a stay at home dad, my brain was mush.

I survived an endless array of diapers, tantrums, playdates, meal prepping and just the general assault on all of my senses that two small kids can rain down upon an unsuspecting dude.

The cost was a daily hit to my sanity.

After making decisions and being in charge all day long, the last thing I wanted to do was decide on dinner for the family.

When your brain is fried and stomach is growling, that’s a dangerous place, my friend.

Because we get the urge to dive into comfort food that is convenient; and usually loaded with excess calories.

It leads to a slow creep of insidious weight gain.

Then you look back a year later and wonder how the scale is tipping in the wrong direction and that pair of pants are less than comfortable around the waist.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Like many obstacles, the solution often lies in simplifying.

Today you’re going to learn a little system I developed to help me automate my eating, remove the decision fatigue and save time in my week while still staying healthy.

Let’s get into it.

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Too many decisions lead to poor decision-making

We make 35,000 decisions over the course of the day. Seriously.

Many of those decisions revolve around food:

• “What’s for dinner?”
• “I’m feeling a bit snacky, what can I grab right now?”
• “Should I eat this taco or settle for a salad? Or combine the two and have a taco salad?”

So. Many. Decisions.

And making all those decisions can wear on you. It’s called decision fatigue.

We literally get tired of making choices and our brain wants to check out.

When decision fatigue sets in, you’ll feel many of the same symptoms as burnout. It’s like a micro version of the larger sibling. Both making you more likely to default to making easier choices.

This is why at the end of a long day of putting out a bunch of fires in the office and at home, you’re no longer craving that chicken breast dish you planned to make for dinner. You’d rather have the pasta or just order UberEats.

You might be in the camp that gets super busy and skips meals.

Then you get hangry later in the day.

Decision fatigue sets in on top of the hanger and here comes the end of the night ritual of crushing on a bunch of highly-processed foods while binge watching shows and passing out on the couch.

Eliminate that decision fatigue by developing a system.

Introducing the 1-2-3 Meal Plan Framework

President Obama wore similar suits every day.

As leader of the free world, he made enough decisions and his fashion needed to be on autopilot.

“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

– President Barack Obama

Of course except for the tan suit abomination that ended up being a national state of emergency. Remember when fashion choices were the biggest scandal to come out of the White House?

But I digress.

You can do the same thing with eating that President Obama did with his suits.

I eat the same breakfast and lunch every single day.

For dinners, I’ve worked up to about 10 different options for some variety.

Then once or twice per week, I’ll ease up a bit and I might enjoy a little something outside of my usual plan like cooking up some pasta or wings or even pizza for the family.

It’s what I now call my 1-2-3 Meal Plan Framework.

It stands for:

• 1 Breakfast
• 2 Lunches
• 3 Dinners

Why this works:

We all usually have that one go-to breakfast that we like to eat every day.

It’s just that most of us start the day with less than optimal options:

• Cramming that bagel down your face hole while pushing kids out the door, scrambling to get to work on time.
• Running into a Starbucks or Dunkin and grabbing a donut.
• Reaching for whatever processed junk the office provides.

Instead, you’ll have a specific and healthy breakfast that works for your hectic morning.

Less decision fatigue throughout your day on what to eat.

You’ll also save time and money on grocery shopping.

Less food waste from grabbing items that you thought looked cool at the store but then forgot to make at home and now it’s gone bad.

I used this meal plan to lose 15 pounds and get into the best shape of my life along with my minimalist workouts (I talk about those here).

It works so well that I still use this system today. And will keep using it for the foreseeable future.

How to make the 1-2-3 Meal Plan work for you

Take the next 30 days and work on this approach. Get a sense for how it makes you feel, if it saves time and alleviates some stress.

To get started, like always, we start small. Simple.

Just like the name implies, you’ll pick:

1 Breakfast that you can eat just about every single day

Examples:

• Protein smoothie with fruit and almond butter and protein powder

2 Lunches that you can rotate throughout your week

Examples:

• Wrap with chickens and fruit on the side
• Grain bowl with farro and salmon and lots of veggies

3 (to 5) Dinners that you can cycle through each night

Examples:

• Meat, potatoes, plus lots of veggies
• Chicken sausage and peppers with pasta
• Stir fry with beef/chicken/shrimp over brown rice with lots of veggies

The rules to make this work

1) All meals must be something you enjoy.

Don’t force goat piss wheatgrass smoothies down your face hole just because Chad on TikTok said it’s part of his 27-step morning routine.

Pick foods you enjoy.

2) All meals must be simple to prepare.

Especially the breakfasts for those super busy mornings.

3) And all meals must satisfy the 3Ps of Health Eating.

The 3Ps are Protein and Plants (fruit or vegetable) at every meal and Portion sizes that match my portion control approach.

You can read more about that here.

Or you can mimic this simple graphic that I created below.

Try to make just about every meal fit this template.

What happens if and when you get bored of eating the same things again in your meal plan?

Here’s exactly what I tell my students: no one said you have to do this forever.

Start with this structure and slowly build into something a bit more robust for you.

That’s why I now have about 10 different dinners that I can cycle through.

Crawl before you run.

Start basic. Earn creativity.

You’re not too busy to eat healthy; you need a system

Whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed about anything, the answer almost always comes from slowing down and simplifying.

I’ve coached people to lose weight for almost 20 years and the most successful students are the ones that find a way to eat similar meals just about every day.

You don’t need to eat the same breakfast forever.

Just start with one.

Work on that for a few weeks.

Learn the rules of this meal plan framework that fits your life, schedule and taste, and then create a new breakfast to enjoy for the next few weeks.

Don’t let the online fitness and nutrition misinformation machine chew you up and spit you out with a bunch of complicated nonsense.

Keep it simple. Similar.

And get started today. I’m rooting for you.

I hope you found this useful. If so, I’d appreciate it if you sent this newsletter to one person you think would benefit from my writing today.

And if you’re new here and enjoyed this newsletter, I’d be honored if you subscribed for more at this link.

And as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “too busy to eat healthy” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Until next time,
Pete