Stop Defaulting To Take-Out: A Simple Meal Planning System For Busy Moms (Episode #53)

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Busy moms know home-cooked meals are healthier than take-out — the problem isn't knowledge; it's the absence of a system. In this episode, Jess walks through exactly how to build a meal planning system that actually works for a real family with a real schedule. 

In this episode, Jess addresses:

• Why the barrier to healthy family meals isn't knowledge — it's decision fatigue and the absence of a system
• How consistent take-out meals could be impacting your cortisol levels
• Why feeding your family well is an act of agency — and how that mindset shift changes everything
• Making the system a non-negotiable: how to schedule your weekly meal planning block and actually protect it
• Tools that make the transition easier
• The three types of cooks and specific strategies for each
• Quick weeknight options discussed in detail 
• The identity shift that makes this sustainable long-term

 Connect with Jess:

• Instagram: @vitalbalancewithjess 
• Website: jessicatrone.com
• Email: vitalbalancewithjess@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Vital Balance with Jess, the podcast for women who want real life strategy, no BS conversations about women's health. I'm your host, Jess. While building my career as an attorney, I struggled with hormone imbalances, anxiety, metabolic dysfunction, and a healthcare system that left me with more questions than answers. So I took matters into my own hands. And here's what I discovered. The real magic happens when you get curious, start asking questions, and listening to your body like it actually knows what it's doing. This podcast isn't about weight loss, physical appearance, or rigid wellness routines. It's about agency. I want you to know just how much control you have over your everyday well-being. And I want you to experience stable energy, predictable moods, a sharp yet calm mind, and a body you can trust. Because when women are well, our homes and communities thrive too. Let's get started. Welcome to Vital Balance. I'm Jess. I want to talk about something today that I hear from moms constantly. And that is the struggle to eat healthy when life is super busy, which, let's be honest, probably feels like a daily occurrence. You're working a demanding job, your kids are in three different after-school activities on most weekdays. So you're managing the schedule, the drop-offs and pickups, the logistics, the subsequent homework, everything. And by the time six o'clock rolls around, dinner is an afterthought. And so you order something or you go through a drive-thru. And then you might feel guilty about it. But the same thing happens nearly every night. Listen, I completely understand. Right now, I actually have a lot of flexibility because I'm self-employed, my kids are young, their activities are manageable, mostly because my oldest, who just turned eight, doesn't care very much for sports. And so most nights I can get a healthy dinner on the table. But it wasn't always that way. When my kids were younger, babies and toddlers, I was working a much more demanding job and we ate a lot more takeout than we do now. And I say that as someone who knew better. I had been on my health journey for years at that point. But knowing and doing are two completely different things. And during that season of life, for me, the doing wasn't happening. And the consequences were real. I ended up very nutrient depleted, dealing with significant stomach issues that eventually led to me getting an endoscopy and a colonoscopy shortly after I stopped breastfeeding my daughter. My anxiety was through the roof. My energy was an unpredictable roller coaster. And a lot of that traced back directly to what I was and wasn't eating during one of the most demanding periods of my life. So I get it, I am coming at this from a place of having lived what many women face on an almost daily basis. And today I want to give you some information and advice to help change the narrative you might be telling yourself about preparing healthy meals, especially for dinner. And more than that, I want to give you actionable steps, a very manageable how-to, a guide. How do I go about getting those healthy meals on the table with everything I have going on? One of my pet peeves is when I hear speeches, like good speeches, where there is a lot of really valuable information where you might be shaking your head in agreements, but then there's no real actionable takeaway. It's like, yes, I agree, but how do I go about implementing what you're telling me? So that is my goal for this episode: to give you a real system for making healthy home-cooked meals the default in your house, no matter how full your schedule is. Because it is possible. It just requires a structure that most people have never actually been given. Okay, so the barrier for cooking a healthy dinner for most moms isn't a lack of knowledge. Most women know that home-cooked meals are healthier than takeout, they know vegetables are nutritious, and they have a general sense of what healthy eating looks like. The barrier is the combination of not knowing what to cook on any given night, failing to prioritize and or plan ahead, and then being completely depleted by the time that decision on dinner needs to be made. And then, like with most things, the path of least resistance typically wins, which makes complete sense. And you're not failing, you're just operating without a system. And in the absence of a system, takeout food fills the gap or meets that need. Not because anyone decided it would, but because nobody decided that it wouldn't. I am not anti-takeout. Occasional takeout is fine. We all do it. And because the stress of cooking every single night might be worse for your health than the occasional takeout meal. Let's let's be honest here. But when takeout becomes the default most nights of the week, the cumulative health impact can be pretty substantial. The refined oils, the excess sodium, the blood sugar roller coasters from meals that are typically high in refined carbs and low in protein and fiber, that adds up over time. It shows up in your energy, your hormones, your gut, your mood. And the solution is not pure willpower or perfect self-discipline. The solution is having a system and perhaps a mindset shift, which I will get more into in a few moments. So now I want to go into the why. So beyond the purely nutritional piece, which matters enormously and which we've covered extensively on this show, I want to address a couple other reasons that prioritizing healthy home-cooked meals is worth the effort. Why developing a system that will accomplish this for you and your family matters. The first is the impact it will have on your kids. What we feed our kids, how we prioritize the types of food we eat and how we go about obtaining that food, the effort we put into preparing our food, they notice all of that and they absorb it. I mean, this goes without saying, but our kids watch what we do. So our relationship with food is likely going to shape their relationship with food and whether they prioritize healthy eating. If they think giddy takeout every night is the norm, that will likely be what they end up doing when they're responsible for their own food choices. Again, I am not, I'm not trying to shame takeout, but when I talk to moms, I'm really surprised by how many of them speak about nutrition and their diet only as it relates to them personally. Like they'll tell me, I'm having all these symptoms, I'm gaining weight, my energy isn't what it should be, and you know, I know I need to eat better. And when they will talk about a dietary strategy for themselves, it doesn't include their kids. Most women, and men too, think kids can eat whatever they want because they're resilient and they won't gain weight and they burn so many calories, they're always running around, they're metabolically healthy. And while those things might be true, although sadly I've seen a lot of overweight kids lately, so I'm not sure that really is true, but nevertheless, that that mindset is discounting two very important factors. Number one is that nutrients absolutely matter for kids. Just because kids might not gain weight as fast as adults or might seemingly have boundless energy no matter what they eat, they need proper nutrients to function well at a cellular level, just like adults do. They need a nutritious diet for a strong immune system to grow properly, to think clearly, for their brains to function optimally. Food very much will have an impact on a child's mood. What we eat is so much more than maintaining a certain body composition. And number two is that every meal you put on the table is shaping your kids' relationship with food, what they think of as normal when it comes to food, what their baseline looks like, the habits they take into adulthood, how they value and perceive food. And then the second impact for why building a system that promotes healthy home cooked meals matters is the cortisol connection. So if you're too busy to make home-cooked meals, there is a higher likelihood that you're dealing with more stress on a day-to-day basis, which means a higher likelihood that you could have cortisol dysregulation. And eating meals that are much more likely to feed blood sugar dysregulation, which is what happens when meals are consistently high in refined carbs and low in protein and eaten at irregular times, that all drives cortisol elevation even more. Feeding yourself well is not a luxury. It is part of how you stay functional and regulated in a life that demands a lot from you. Okay, so now let's move into the practical piece. How are you going to accomplish this for you and your family? Before I start, I want to say something about mindset first because none of the mechanics matter if this piece isn't in place. This has to be a decision, not a goal, not something you're gonna try, not something you'll get to when life calms down, because it won't. It needs to be a decision that your family's health is worth building a system for, that eating well most of the time is non-negotiable, not aspirational. This is an act of agency. The last episode, episode 52, was all about agency. I discussed it at length, and I encourage you to go back and listen to it. But the short version is this you have far more control over this than the chaos of your life might make it feel like you do. The system I'm gonna walk you through is proof of that. It works, but it only works if you decide first that it's going to. Which brings me to step number one. Number one, make it a non-negotiable and put it on your calendar. The first step is a decision, right? Which is what I just said. It's not a goal, not an intention, but a decision. So that decision might be this. We eat home cooked meals most nights. Takeout is never more than twice per week. That's the decision. And then everything else is about building the system that makes that decision achievable without it costing you your sanity. The system starts with one dedicated block of time per week for meal planning. For many women, that's Sunday, but for some it might only be in the evenings or maybe it's during the day on one of your work breaks. The specific day and time doesn't matter. What matters is that you put it on your calendar so you don't schedule anything else during that window. And then you set an alarm. You set two alarms if you're worried about not remembering to do it. And then during that block of time, you are doing three things. Number one, deciding what your family is eating that week. So making a menu, essentially. Number two is making a grocery list based on that menu. And then number three is shopping for those groceries. Now, if you want to have separate time blocks for meal planning and actual shopping, that's totally fine. But if you are blocking off the one free chunk of time you have all week, then you're gonna need to do all three of those tasks during that block of time. And remember, you don't actually have to shop for groceries anymore, right? We can order them online and go pick them up or even have them delivered to our house. So when you're first getting into this rhythm, it's gonna take a little longer. That's true of anything new. But once you have the hang of it, the planning and ordering groceries can be done in well under an hour. And that one hour buys you a week of not having to think about what's for dinner. Some women find that when they're first starting out, the meal planning piece is overwhelming because they don't know where to start. There are too many options and they get decision fatigue. But I am going to help you with this. And this leads me to step number two. Number two is know what type of cook you are. Knowing what type of cook you are is gonna dictate how you plan what you're gonna cook, when you're going to cook, and how you're going to cook. Okay, so what do I mean by this? Well, I have found that some women prefer different strategies when it comes to cooking, and I have broken this down into three different types of cooks. Number one is the bulk cooker. The bulk cooker dedicates one chunk of time, usually a few hours, sometime during the weekend, to cooking everything for the week at once. So a couple of different proteins, a variety of vegetables, maybe one or two whole grains. And then throughout the week, you're not really cooking. You're just taking what you have out of the fridge and assembling it into different meals and reheating it. So you pull from what's already made and combine things differently each night. So maybe on Monday it's grilled chicken with roasted sweet potatoes and a salad. Tuesday, it's that same chicken sliced over rice, which was precooked with everything else. And maybe you've added leftover vegetables on top of that chicken and rice. Wednesday, you might do chicken and vegetable soup. So you dump the chicken and the veggies into a pot with a box of broth and some seasonings. One cooking session, but you're getting numerous meals out of that one session. Now, this probably sounds really great, and for the bulk cooker, it is great. But the upfront investment is pretty significant. It requires several hours in the kitchen. Plus, and this is where it gets me and why I'm not typically a bulk cooker, is the cleanup afterward. After I've spent a significant amount of time cooking all those items, I'm looking at a mound of dishes to clean, and that kind of puts me over the edge. But on the upside, the weeknights, you can produce very fast meals under 10 minutes typically to get food on the table because everything's already done. Some women absolutely love this approach because once that bulk cooking is done, dinner is handled for the entire week and you don't have to think about it again. I go through periods where I'm a bulk cooker because the weekday freedom is so appealing. But after a few Sundays of not enjoying most of my afternoon, I typically revert back to what I really am, which is the next type of cook. Number two is the every few nights cook, which is me. The every few nights cook makes enough food to last at least two or three nights. I almost never cook a meal that only feeds us once. I always double or triple whatever recipe I'm using. Or if I'm not using a recipe, which is more often than not, I know I need at least three pounds of meat, a hefty amount of veggies, etc. If I'm making a soup, I'm using the biggest pot we have. If I'm roasting a sheet pan of vegetables, then I'm doing two pan two sheet pans. The logic is simple. The additional time it takes to double or triple a recipe is pretty minimal, but you get two or three nights of dinner out of one cooking session. This approach keeps individual cooking sessions shorter while still producing mostly home cooked meals throughout the week without the several consecutive hours of bulk cooking. And since you're just cooking that one meal, the dishes are more minimal too. So this is kind of the middle ground, and for me personally, it's the most sustainable. And with this approach, I plan to cook on the evenings we don't have as much going on, and then we eat the leftovers on our busier nights. Okay, number three is the every night cook. This is the woman who doesn't love bulk cooking and doesn't love leftovers. The downside here is that on busy nights, which for many women is most nights, you have to be well prepared, and that preparation has to include a meal that takes only the amount of time you have, which for many women may only be 15 to 20 minutes. So this approach is more challenging, but it's doable. If you are an every night cook, the crock pot and instant pot are your best friends. Dump meals where you literally dump everything into that one vessel, the crock pot or instant pot, and then you set it and walk away. That that is genuinely one of the most underrated approaches to weeknight cooking. Now, some women heavily rely on those appliances, but I I don't think most women do. If you want to do it in the morning before the day starts, use the crock pot. Spend 10 minutes putting everything in the crock pot before school drop-off, set it on low with a timer that shifts into the keep warm mode when the meal is done cooking. And then when you get home, it's ready to go. And usually your house smells incredible. If you are starting in the afternoon, you know, like you're like, I'm not a morning person, I cannot get up and think about preparing a meal before I get my kids out the door. That's fine. So if you're starting in the afternoon or evening and you need something faster, the instant pot cuts cooking time significantly. Something that would take an hour on the stove or in the oven can typically be done in the instant pot in less than half that time normally. There are endless dump meal recipes available online. Stir fries are another quick option that I think are underestimated for how fast they actually are. So typically, I will take some type of ground meat because it cooks quickly, evenly, it's inexpensive. I'll use ground turkey, beef, or bison. And the key here is something else that isn't used enough, in my opinion, and that is frozen vegetables. Frozen vegetables are already washed, already chopped, they're ready to go. You literally just cut open the bag and dump them straight into the pan. There is no prep. The nutritional content is preserved through the freezing process, so you're not sacrificing anything on that front, and you just add them to the same pan you're cooking the meat in. And then for a sauce and flavoring, and this is where you can get creative without it being complicated. And there are many options at every price point. So if you're looking for a pre-made sauce that you can just pour onto the meat and veggies without having to think about it, I recommend the brand Primal Kitchen. They use avocado oil in their sauces, so no industrial seed oils, uh, no preservatives. Most of the sauces have no sugar. They taste really good and they're a pretty clean option. But that being said, they are more expensive than most other conventional sauces that you just pick up off a shelf. So they're not maybe not in everyone's budget. But making your own is genuinely simple and does not take long. So for instance, if you wanted to do a traditional Asian stir fry, use coconut aminos or soy sauce as your base, add a little sesame oil with some garlic and ginger powder, maybe some red pepper flakes if you like heat, and then you mix it together in a small bowl while your meat and veggies are cooking and just pour it over the meat and veggies near the end of the cooking time. But honestly, most of the time, I just pour these items straight into the pan individually and then sort of incorporate them in the pan while the meat and veggies are cooking. It just really doesn't have to be overcomplicated or fancy. In a stir fry from start to finish, the protein, vegetables, and sauce can be done in 20 minutes or less. And if you're an every night cook, that is realistically the minimum amount of time that you would need to allocate each night. And if you don't have that much time, like I said, it's back to the crock pot morning prep. Like that's really the best option if you're not if you don't have that 20 minutes later in the day. Okay, step number three use the tools that exist. Our society has very much adapted to the reality of busy lives, and regardless of which type Of cook, you are, there are resources available right now that make the planning piece dramatically easier than it used to be. So don't sit down each week and meal plan with a blank sheet of paper in front of you with no help or guidance. That's where this whole system is gonna get overwhelming. Don't let it. AI is probably the most obvious tool. Just open whatever AI assistant you use. So a lot of people use Chat GPT, which works great. Tell it exactly what you need, right? Tell it your dietary preferences, any dietary restrictions, how many people you're feeding, how much time you have to cook on a given night, and ask it for a week of dinner ideas with a grocery list. It will generate all of it in about 30 seconds. The capability is genuinely impressive and it takes almost no effort to use. Even Skylight, the digital household calendar, which I know many families have now, has a meal planning function built into it. It allows you to plan your meals directly alongside your family's calendar so you can see at a glance which nights are chaotic and really need to be pre-planned, or maybe you definitely eat leftovers on that those nights, versus other nights you actually have a little time to cook something that might take a little longer. It also has a feature where you can take a photo of what's already in your fridge and pantry and ask it to come up with recipes using whatever you have on hand, which is particularly useful at the end of the week when you're trying to use things up before they go bad and you don't want to grocery shop again. My son actually told me about that feature because you know he's on the family screen portion of it looking at his chores and other things, and he's always going through it looking at the new features they add. There are also dedicated meal planning apps if you prefer a more structured tool. A quick search will surface several good options, and many of them have free trials so you can find what fits your style and your family's needs. And lastly, don't forget Pinterest. Many of us have like dozens or more meals that we have pinned over the years. Go back and look through those to get inspiration. And lastly, step number four is the mindset piece. Become someone who just doesn't really do takeout. I want to close with this one because I think it's what determines whether any of this lasts beyond the first few weeks. And it ties into what I said at the beginning before walking you through any of these steps. Mindset matters. Agency matters. In episode 50, I talked about how the habits that stick are the ones that become part of your identity, not something you're trying to do, something you just do because that's who you are. And that shift from trying to being happens through repetition and through a conscious decision about who you are and what your family does. Right now, if takeout is the default, that's your identity around food. And I don't mean that in a judgmental way. It just is what it is because that's the current pattern, and patterns feel normal. The goal is to replace that pattern with a different one consistently enough that the new one starts to feel normal instead. And this does not require perfection, it just requires showing up to the meal planning session, placing the grocery order, and making dinner more nights than not. That's it. The consistency is what matters long term, not perfection. Over time, the Sunday planning session stops feeling like a chore and just starts feeling like part of Sunday. The grocery order becomes automatic. Your cooking rhythm becomes familiar and part of your routine. That is the identity shift. That is the point at which you stop being someone who is trying to cook at home and start being someone who just does. And once you're there, it's genuinely hard to go back. I on nights when for whatever reason we do have to get takeout or go to a restaurant, I don't like it as much. I I just I've become so used to eating at home and knowing how good I feel after eating those meals compared to how I feel after eating out, not to mention how crazy expensive it is to eat out now. But it just somewhere along the way that shift happens. It's also because you know how you feel when you're eating well consistently. You know how your energy is different, you know how your kids are different. And you will notice changes in them too, whether it's their energy, their behavior, or just even the the way they act or the things they say around food. That is what it looks like to take agency over your family's health. And over months and years, it makes an enormous difference in how everyone in your household feels, functions, and relates to food. So I encourage you to start this week. Block off that chunk of time. Figure out what kind of cook you are, plan the meals, order the groceries, just start. Take action. I promise you'll be glad that you did. If you want personalized support around nutrition, any aspect of your hormonal and metabolic health, or even something I may have covered on today's episode, I encourage you to sign up for a free hormone clarity call. The link is in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. Until next time.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave my mommy a five-star review. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Thanks so much for tuning in to Vital Balance with Jess. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world if you would leave a review, share it with a friend, or hit subscribe so you never miss a dose of real talk on women's health. Remember, you have more control over your health than you've been told, and sustainable change is possible. Keep listening to your body and showing up for yourself. I'll see you next time.