THE NO-DECISION MENU
Remove food decisions from your week
These are default recipe options you can plug into your schedule.
I picked these so you don’t have to think about it.
Breakfast
Option A: Make-Ahead Breakfast Bars - You can make these in a big batch on a Sunday, freeze them for up to 3 months, and use them on your super busy mornings.
Option B: Baked Blueberry Oatmeal - These can be used as a good snack during the day also. Use any type of berries you want, or nuts to change it up.
Lunch
Option A: Ground Turkey Taco Bowls - This is a “Chipotle” style option that never gets old since you can change up the grain, protein, and type of beans. Easy to make enough for leftovers too.
Option B: Chickpea Salad - Sometimes keeping it simple with a vibrant veggie salad gets the juices flowing for lunch. You can make a big batch and put into meal prep containers super easy. Bulk it up with a protein like grilled chicken or tofu.
Dinner
Option A: One Pot Chicken Chow Mein - A crock pot meal is great if you want to set it up Sunday, or even during the middle of the day (if you work from home).
Option B: Sheet Pan Chicken and Sweet Potato - It doesn’t get much easier than this for a weeknight meal. Make extra portions to freeze for those nights you “just don’t have the time”.
When food is decided ahead of time, energy shows up where it matters.
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Planned Delivery vs Chaos Eating (Meal Planning Strategy)
Unplanned delivery food doesn’t just cost you money. It destroys the next 24 hours of your life. Learn how to control your week with a meal planning strategy instead.
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THE SYSTEM
Most people think meal planning fails because they lack discipline.
It doesn’t.
It fails because they ask their brain to make 20 tiny food decisions a week, on top of the hundred other decisions they already need to make.
A No-Decision Menu fixes that.
It’s a short list of meals you already trust.
Simple.
Repeatable.
Zero thinking required.
It’s NOT a:
“perfect” plan
trendy diet
full-on chef project
It IS a:
default
fallback
safety net
“plug-and-play” set of meals you can drop into any week
Meal Planning OS is about designing your week so you have a structure you can repeat easily.
It’s for those days you spilled coffee on your dress shirt before your commute to work, or those weeks you can’t seem to “catch up” on sleep.
The weeks I don’t use a no-decision menu?
They suck.
Because every single food decision costs mental energy.
And mental energy is limited.
More limited for some of us. Myself included.
Remove the friction of food decisions, and you get energy back.
That’s it.
A No-Decision Menu saves you:
Time (less searching, debating, and last-minute shopping)
Money (fewer “screw it, let’s order” moments)
Energy (no more decisions when you’re most tired)
Momentum (you stay consistent since the plan is easy)
These type of meals are not for your best weeks.
They’re for your worst weeks.
My go-to meals take minimal effort and zero decisions.
Overnight Oatmeal
Almost every weekday breakfast is the same in my house.
Not because it’s exciting.
Because it puts the rest of my day on auto pilot.
Why this meal works for me?
Under 5 minutes to prep the night before
Healthy enough to fuel me
Preserves mental energy early
My day starts with one less decision, which means I have more bandwidth by 9 am to focus on what actually matters in life.
Marinara Monday
I grew up in an Italian-American household, so it’s only fitting I keep “Marinara Monday” going strong.
Pasta. Sauce. Maybe bread.
Simple.
Why it works:
Mondays are already decision heavy
Ingredients are easy to stock
It keeps the week from derailing on Day 1
The point is not the pasta itself.
It’s the guarantee that Monday doesn’t get to steal more energy than it deserves.
If you can free up your mental bandwidth, you’d be surprised what opens up. (Read more)
Even when I cooked in the Coast Guard, we had No-Decision meals.
Not because we were lazy.
Because reality happens.
Drug interdictions from 2 am to 7 am on a random Wednesday
Chicken that didn’t thaw
Schedules blown apart
You don’t debate in those moments.
You execute the fallback.
A No-Decision Menu is a plan that survives chaos.
Time for you to build your own version.
Step 1) Pick 3 defaults
1 breakfast
1 lunch
1 dinner
Meals you can make half asleep. Meals that don’t require creativity.
Step 2) Store them somewhere permanent
Notes app. Notebook. Fridge. Notion.
It doesn’t matter where.
It matters that you can find it when you’re tired.
Step 3) Use it strategically
Use your No-Decision Menu on:
Busy weeks
Travel weeks
High stress weeks
Low capacity weeks
These aren’t the meals you need on a Saturday morning when you have nothing planned, other than binging a season of Survivor and eating popcorn.
This is why I curate the No-Decision Menu section each week.
So you have plug-and-play options to use when you don’t want to think.
Reply to this email with your 3 meals.
I’m curious what makes your list.
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.
Your Saturday system reset, same time next week.
— Steven
