Gentle Meal Plan: Flexible and Easy for Chronic/Mental Illness

When I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, food was one of the hardest things for me. I was sick in bed a lot of days, but my family still needed to eat. My husband was stressed out from working all day and then having to feed us. I felt guilty and I knew I needed to lighten the load. So I came up with this gentle meal plan to help both of us.

The food problem

The first step I took was scouring the internet for a solution. The problem was that I was too sick to cook most meals. My husband loves to cook, but after a long day of work struggled with deciding what to make.

I needed quick meals that wouldn’t take too much time. Our night routines were thrown because dinner took too long, and we would be putting the kids in bed up to an hour late. This late bedtime took more time away from my husband and me to relax after working all day.

We also spent a lot more money on eating out on days where my husband wouldn’t make it home in time to cook anything.

I couldn’t find what I needed to work for us specifically online, so I came up with this sort of hybrid system and it works great. The huge hack here is the staple meals and staple grocery list I implemented. If you’re struggling, this might work for you too.

Looking for a simple and delicious meal for high pain days? Check out this chickpea wrap.

Gentle meal plan in three parts

I came up with this hybrid system to help us eat more at home, save a bit of money, and save the stress of meals in general. This is specifically what we do for dinners, but it could be applied to any time of the day.

When your functioning level is different than other people, their plans and systems just don’t work for you. It can lead you to feeling like a failure because you don’t feel like you can keep up.

You’re not a failure. Your body functions different, so you need a system that works specifically for YOU. I hope that by sharing my system it will either work for you, or give you ideas to shake up the way you think about meals and get some functionality back.

1. Stock of frozen/pantry easy make meals

The first thing I did was decide we needed to keep certain foods stocked 100% of the time for days where we really just need food ASAP or as low effort as absolutely possible. These are the days where I am flaring and sick in bed, so my husband has to take over care for the kids and meals. Making the meals easy helps him to have fun with the kids, and not be as exhausted.

These frozen meals for us include nuggets and fries, pb&js without the crust, burgers and chicken patties.

I picked a few things that are super easy to keep in the pantry. These include cereal, cans of soup, pasta, etc.

I know nutritionally these meals aren’t that great, but fed is better than hungry. Sometimes we just need to eat. When you have a chronic illness basic needs become much more exhausting.

I don’t think people who don’t struggle with chronic or mental illness understand this to its fullest extent. That’s okay, but don’t read this and judge someone for doing what they have to to survive if you’ve never been there yourself.

Make a list of all things you need for these meals

Once I had a list of about 5 frozen quick meals and 5 pantry quick meals, I made a list of the groceries I needed to keep them stocked in my house 100% of the time.

That way, whenever we needed them, I wouldn’t have to worry about us being out.

2. Staple meals

This is the most important part of the hybrid plan I made, and it’s been amazing for us as far as functionality. It allows us to eat meals that are more nutritional but still are extremely fast and low ingredient.

I think my favorite thing about these staple meals is the reduction from decision fatigue. This is when you’re so mentally exhausted that it’s hard to make decisions. You just don’t have enough mental energy to focus on food.

Keep in mind that this did take a few hours to work on and put together. I think that the effort is so worth the reward here though. A few hours of putting together this part of the gentle meal plan reduced so much stress for my family.

Deciding on staple ingredients

The key to staple meals starts with deciding on some staple ingredients you know you can always keep stocked in your house. I jotted down a variety of things from each kind of food group that is easy to find and most importantly cheap.

This plan is completely doable on any budget, you just have to decide what works best for you when you’re putting this together.

Making sure you have a variety of each food type will help to keep your meals nutritious and various enough with minimal effort, which is some of the magic of this gentle meal plan. This is low effort, yet not the absolute worst eating you can come across.

I tried to keep this to less than 10 of each food group on the list.

Make a staple meal Pinterest board

The next thing you’ll want to do is find some meals that are made up of these staple ingredients you’ve listed out. I find it easiest to make a board on Pinterest because it’s such a useful tool.

Search for key phrases like “quick low ingredient dinner” or “easy dinner (insert 2-3 staple ingredients)” to start your search.

You’re looking for meals that are extremely low effort and can be made only out of the staple ingredients in your list. Make sure the meals are 15 minutes or less, less than 10 ingredients, and also don’t have very many steps to complete.

You don’t have to find the perfect recipes for this. It’s okay to find a recipe that looks simple and good and tweak it a little to meet what you need. Sometimes you can find a meal and just remove ingredients from the list to keep it all in the staples category.

Here is a ramen recipe I have pinned. To keep it a pantry staple, I have omitted all the veggies and I’ll just use a frozen veggie mix. I also just don’t add the vegetable stock if I don’t have it on hand. The ginger is just a spice substitute since I usually don’t have fresh on hand either.

Don’t overwhelm yourself. I’d start with 5-7 meals pinned because you want a little variety, but you don’t want to feel overwhelmed by finding a lot of meals that will work.

You can go back later as often as you’d like to add a meal or two to your board and give it a little more variety. You’ll be surprised by how much variety you can get from just a few ingredients.

Here is what my gentle meal plan staple recipes Pinterest board looks like right now

Make your staple meal grocery list

You’re soooo close to being finished setting this up! Hang in there!

Another important piece of this gentle meal plan is making a grocery list of only your staples and quick meals and keeping it somewhere you can refer back to often.

Then before you make a grocery run, you refer to the staples list to make sure you’re filling in all of the ingredients you used. The idea is to make sure you never run out of these staple ingredients so your staple and quick meals always function.

My Free Resource Library has a free PDF of a Grocery Staples list and a Gentle Meal Planning page as well!

Add all the things from your frozen/quick meals

Make sure you go back to the list of foods you made for the frozen and pantry quick meals back in step one and include them in your staple grocery list.

Now your list is finished and ready to go. Keep it somewhere you can reference every time you plan to grocery shop so you don’t run out of ingredients you need to make the system work.

3. Incorporating more traditional meal planning

Chronic and mental illness means you have hard days and low energy days. That doesn’t mean you don’t have days where you are capable and motivated to do more. These days mean you can make more complicated meals or have more ingredients (and fresh ones at that).

I keep a section of my board for different energy levels, more complicated recipes, and recipes that don’t fit into the staple recipes for days when I have more energy.

These are the meals I can refer to when I feel we will have the energy or time that week to make.

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How to use the gentle meal plan

Believe it or not, you are completely set up and ready to go with the gentle meal plan! We’re finished setting up every piece of the hybrid system and now it’s just about understanding how to use the plan best for your functioning levels.

Do any gentle meal planning for the week

I plan our meals once a week because it’s hard to plan longer when you’re chronically ill. You honestly never know when you’ll flare up and be sick. Even planning for the week can be hard because things change so fast.

I just do the best I can and give myself grace. Over much trial and error, I’ve realized that traditional meal planning for every day just does not work for us. We simply won’t cook a new dinner every day, and a lot of food will go to waste if I plan and buy groceries that way.

What does work is choosing a certain number of meals a week made with fresh ingredients that we will likely be able to handle. For my family, we can usually choose 3 meals a week that are a little more complicated with fresh ingredients. This is where I like to have fun and sometimes find a new recipe to try for the week as well.

I’ll open my Pinterest board and select 3 meals from my higher energy meals section. That’s all the planning I do. Then throughout the week, we assess each day if we have enough time/energy to make one of those 3 meals. If we do, great. If not, we choose a staple meal, frozen, or pantry meal. We also plan to eat out at least once a week, because that’s just the reality of where we are right now.

I used to feel guilty for eating out so much, but once I realized that my family deserves to eat and not be so stressed out, I was able to give myself more grace.

Make your grocery list

Now that you have your minimal meal plan chosen, make sure to include all the ingredients you need for grocery shopping. Don’t forget to check the grocery staple list to see if you’re running low on any staple ingredients. I usually make sure to have 2-3 meals worth of ingredients for my staple meals just in case.

It helps to order groceries online for pick up, or get them delivered to the door. Choosing what you spend your energy on is a constant reality. Take it easy where you can and save some energy for other things.

Stock your house with the staples

It’s okay if you can’t afford enough groceries in one go to make your pantry and freezer stocked with staples. You can build it up a few meals over time to start small.

Check in with yourself every day to know what kind of meal will work best

Now that your planning, prepping, and grocery shopping are done, you are fully prepared for the week no matter the energy and pain levels you experience.

All of this work being done in advanced makes it easy to check in with yourself daily and decide what level of the hybrid gentle meal plan will work for you that day.

Once you make the decision, you already did the work to have everything you need and you just have to feed your family. It’s pretty simple and straight forward once everything is all set up and running seamlessly.

Decision making day to day in action

Here is how I check in with myself every day and decide what dinner is going to look like:

Sickest/lowest energy days – let yourself eat out

Inevitably you will have those awful pain days, or flare ups. You might have a horrid mental health day. That’s okay. Don’t feel guilty because you can’t make dinner. Go ahead and order out.

Sicker/lower energy days – choose a frozen/pantry quick meal

These are the days when I feel a flare coming on. I know it’s best to rest up and try to best the flare before it beats me. That means every cylinder is firing on minimal effort. Cue the frozen/pantry quick meal.

Okay days – choose a staple meal

I might not be feeling fantastic these days, but I am fine with putting a little more effort in. Time to make something from the staple meal Pinterest board!

Good/higher energy days – traditional meal plan/meal prepping

These are the days where I know I have extra energy, and I want to use one of the 3 meals I bought groceries for this week. It might look like chopping veggies and prepping them before my husband gets home to make it easier for him. It might also look like being able to just throw the entire meal together myself.

To be honest the days where I alone cook dinner are pretty few and far between currently. However, this hybrid planning system really seems to help my family function, and it sure makes meal times less stressful for everyone in the house.

A few hours of gentle meal planning away from less stress around mealtimes

The whole point of this gentle meal plan is to make sure that it functions for you and your family in the best way possible. If something doesn’t work for you specifically make sure to switch it up.

This is the way I have found works to feed my family the best. It keeps in mind the amount of energy I have available and I adjust each meal’s nutrition accordingly. Not every meal is perfectly healthy and balanced, but my kids are fed and happy. I’m doing the best I can to protect my health as well, so I think it’s a win for everyone.