The first week of any new daily occupation, I am too tired to make food.

[cimorene]

It's only taken me to age 30 to realize that the first week (or week and a half, or two) of any new daily occupation - class, job, work practice, as long as it's the main deal for the day; it doesn't have to actually last eight hours - I will be completely exhausted.

Even though I'll be hungry, I'll be too tired to prepare any food at all in the afternoon and evening, sometimes too tired even to like, put bread on butter. Milk and cereal and like, frozen pizza is about as far as it goes. (More realistically, milk and cereal and packets of cookies.) Sometimes I will also be too tired to stay awake until 8 pm and will nap or like, go to bed at six.

So the first couple of times I sort of noticed this - and probably the only reason I did was because I was seeing my therapist weekly at the time - I just thought 'oh, anxiety must be making me tired, and I happen to be this anxious right now, it must be because it's a new place', but with no awareness that it was an absolute that that type of new daily schedule would inevitably make that happen. But it's happened regularly enough now that I'm pretty confident. It probably is an old thing, but I just didn't notice the pattern before.

I even have had a vague awareness that I should buy enough prepackaged food to feed myself for the week with zero food preparation, but this awareness always arrived either a) at dinnertime, when I was hungry and not eating properly, or b) at the store, when I was then too tired to follow through by figuring how much prepackaged food I would need and deciding to buy it and buying it. Both times that this has happened, I have thought 'Oh, I should buy like 5 frozen pizzas', then 'Except not five of the same thing, I don't want to do that, so different things', then 'I'm too tired to think of different things', then 'I'm too tired to fry eggs or assemble sandwiches microwave spaghetti sauce', then 'I guess I'll buy milk and cookies and like, cereal. And maybe bread.'

Wax does not factor into this because she has been too depressed to be relied on for unsupervised food purchase or preparation for more than a year now, which is longer than I've been aware of the pattern. I buy yogurt and bread and stuff that she asks for, she eats food when I have the energy to make it.

This is why I hate being an adult. Or living far away from my parents at least. Parents always help get food for you if you whine, no matter how large you are and how tired they are. At least, in my experience. Maybe my parents are really soft touches.

So like: does this happen to other people? Or something like this? What do you DO? Even sort of lying here on the sofa, after resting for 4 hours, I am intimidatingly exhausted by the thought of the amount of brainpower that would be required to assemble a shopping list, but 'pre-planned shopping list' is the only potential solution I've thought of besides 'continue buying milk and bread and cereal and cookies and bananas on the way home'.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Instead of pizza there are single serving microwave meals that are pretty healthy. I don't know what brands you have access to, though.

Fruit that doesn't spoil quickly, like apples, is good.

I shop on Sunday morning or some other time when I'm not tired. I can't shop in the evenings after work. Never could.

If you're roughly buying for a week that makes it easier.... five to seven of whatever you are buying.

Hang in there.

[brownbetty]

If you can eat peanuts, and don't find it gross, a big jar of peanut butter can really get you through a lot of "oh god, bodies, why?"

I mean, I don't advocate eating nothing but peanut butter, but sometimes sticking a tablespoon in your mouth will give you enough energy to do something more ambitious in an hour.

Things you can buy here which I find to be useful when I'm too tired to brain: frozen burritos, frozen pierogies (or whatever the dough-wrapped-around-cheese is called where you are), instant noodle soup (ramen) with whatever frozen or fresh veg I have, and frozen shrimp to make it hit a couple more bases, cheese on toast with raisins under the cheese (needs a grill or toaster oven to melt nicely over the raisins, done in under two minutes), fruit salad in a big batch with white rice and some nuts thrown in (you can eat this for nearly five days if you make enough), and my favourite, tuna casserole with cream of mushroom soup and if you're ambitious, some yoghurt.

That said, I am pretty sure your shopping situation is very different. But if you can summon the energy to do it once, you can live off it for a while, especially if you have a decent sized freezer.

If you feel like even boiling water is too much work, maybe try and see if you could keep some dried fruits or nuts on hand?

[brownbetty]

Also, maybe I have missed the entire point of your post, because I think I have just given you a pre-planned shopping list.

But also, I was thirty before I realized there were people who went shopping without a list, and spent several months of terrified bafflement dealing with this blow to my world-view.

[vass]

The Clash wrote a song about the state of mind induced by shopping without a list. It's called 'Lost in the Supermarket'. I'm told that in fact that song is about soulless commercialism, but I'm pretty sure it's really about wandering around the supermarket trying to remember what on earth it is that you want.

[dorothean]

I just saw this on my network page and unfortunately don't have a solution to offer, but wanted to thank you for posting about this because this is exactly what happens to me and I never thought of it as a pattern before, and now I can and that will help (if I remember before the new thing begins, of course).

Maybe I would have figured this out at age 30 too, but even so you have saved me two years of confusion!

(I also scrolled down and saw your post about being a cold prickly, which I found very relatable. I am going to add you!)

[vass]

Yes, I get this too. The "I want a banana smoothie but it has too many steps" stage of mental exhaustion.

Supermarkets here have these sachets of pre-cooked rice. They require no preparation beyond microwaving, and come in a range of different flavours.

Also, potatoes and sweet potatoes can be microwaved. You stab them a few times with a knife so they won't explode, then nuke for five minutes on high. If they aren't soft when the microwave stops, nuke them longer.

[cimorene]

You know, I've totally eaten those rice things before and they were totally cromulent food! Alas, they are not available at anywhere easy, so the extra hassle of making a trip to a bigger supermarket would cancel out the utility.

[devon]

When I'm like that (or getting there), I make my grocery list in stages, because I know I can't remember the good things at once. So I'd put like, cereal and pizza on the list, and then go nap or whatever, and come back to write down something else I thought of. Then the next day you should have something like a usable list, even though your brain is tired.

Good luck with it all! I know it sometimes seems neverending. I sort of stop eating when I run out of easy-to-make food, so I have a printed grocery list where I check the things I want to buy before I go, and there are lots of easy foods on there to remind me.

[cimorene]

I suspect this will be a genuinely useful suggestion! I will be giving it a try.

[syderia]

Something like this does happen to me, not so much when I start a new activity, as when I get depressed or when I get home at 9pm from work, the latter being a fairly frequent occurrence these days.
I do a meal plan. It's a google worksheet (which works because I'm on a computer all day at work), and I'll fill it out whenever I have time during the week. Every Friday, I go and buy the groceries-part of the shopping list, and every Saturday I have a farmer's market for vegetables and fruit. It gets me to identify days where food preparation will need to be kept at a minimum, and to be sure to have easy options on hand.
I also always make sure that I have some easy food in stock, in case of unplanned occurrences. I have some soups, some dehydrated noodles preparation, and then rice and pasta, which I don't mind eating with soy sauce and pre-grated cheese respectively.

[cimorene]

I just want to applaud your level of systematization. It sounds like something I'd read about a heroine doing in a genre novel and be like 'MY HERO'.

[trille]

THIS HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME.

Except, when I go shopping I'm full of energy and buy ingredients with which to cook. Like a fool. And then at home I'm hungry and tired and I let the fresh vegetables get less-fresh and just chain eat all the bread instead.

[msilverstar]

Happens to us too, all the time. Which is particularly bad because we have a kid to feed :-(