Hey — it’s Steven.
Another Saturday morning, another simple system to remove meal decisions from your week.
This week:
The No-Decision Menu
Adhoc delivery food is killing your meal planning goals
The No-Decision Menu
Remove food decisions from your week.
These are default recipes you can plug into your schedule.
Use one or two per meal category and repeat as needed.
I picked these so you don’t have to think about it.
Breakfast
Option A: High-protein sheet-pan eggs
Option B: Healthy smoothie
Lunch
Option A: Mediterranean Chickpea Salad
Option B: Hot Honey Ground Beef and Potato Bowls
Dinner
Option A: Slow Cooker Beef & Vegetable Stew
Option B: Chicken Egg Roll in a Bowl
When food is decided ahead of time, energy shows up where it matters.
The System
This winter has been arctic-level cold in New York, which meant a few things:
all I wanted eat was hot, greasy food
cooking healthy meals felt like a burden
working out took next-level motivation
Me thinking of pizza this entire hike.
So, I ordered a good amount of delivery food.
mainly pizza
An honestly, this could’ve wrecked my meal planning goals if I didn’t have a strategy behind it.
Let’s dive in.
Adhoc delivery food is the devil.
We’ve all had those weeknights where we want to do nothing but sit on the couch, eat pizza, and watch Survivor.
Why?
Because it’s easy.
And it’s comforting.
But unplanned delivery absolutely kills momentum, especially when it’s a rushed decision.
It’s usually leads to:
Greasy food 9 times out of 10
A rough night of sleep (grab the Tums)
An even worse morning of grogginess
Terrible decision-making the entire next day
Not too mention the subtle hit to your confidence. That feeling of, “Why can’t I just get it together?”
Trust me, I literally have a tattoo of a pizza on my butt.
I’ve logged my reps.
Most people don’t realize how many food categories they live in.
Almost everyone’s food spending falls into these 8 buckets:
Groceries
Delivery
Takeout
Fast food (McDonalds, etc.)
Fast-casual (think Chipotle)
Casual dining (under $20 per meal)
Upscale casual dining ($20 - $50 per meal)
Fine dining ($50+ per meal)
Seeing it mapped out like this changes how you think.
Take one minute and think through:
Your typical week
Then your typical month
For example, my average week consists of:
Weekly groceries
1 planned delivery meal
1 planned takeout meal
1 casual dining on the weekend
1 upscale casual dining on the weekend
That’s 4 meals I don’t cook on purpose.
The other 17 meals come from groceries being cooked at home.
That balance works for my life. It reduces decision fatigue, keeps me on budget, and still lets me enjoy food.
Yours might look totally different. And that’s ok.
Planning delivery sounds simple because it is.
Almost every Wednesday since we’ve lived upstate New York, we order sushi and watch Survivor or some other game show vibe to decompress mid-week.
We rarely order anything else.
That sushi place must love our lifetime value.
Why we do this:
My wife loves sushi
It’s relatively healthy and protein-heavy
We never ask “what’s for dinner?” on Wednesdays
That one decision gives us something to look forward to, fuels the next day, and removes a mid-week mental load.
Planned delivery is calm.
Unplanned delivery is chaos.
Planning takeout isn’t failing your meal plan.
It’s taking control of it.
Schedule it, own it, and let if FUEL your week instead of derailing it.
Hit reply and tell me what your planned order would be this week.
—
Your Saturday system reset, same time next week.
Steven | Meal Planning OS
P.S. I’d love your feedback. Use the poll below.
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Whenever You’re Ready
Here’s how I can help:
1) YouTube Channel — Binge my best videos on reducing decision fatigue by building a repeatable meal plan.
2) Previous Newsletters — Read all of my previous meal planning system breakdowns.
3) Apply to the Meal Planning OS Founding Program — I’m opening up a small founding group to build the first version.
