When “What’s for Dinner?” Feels Like Too Much

On grief, losing your inspiration, survival mode, and finding your way back—one easy-peasy step at a time.

🍳 I have absolutely ZERO inspiration in the kitchen right now

And I mean ZERO.

As a health coach, I've always been fascinated by nutrition.

I love learning about how food fuels our bodies, supports our health, and helps us feel our best.

I love experimenting in the kitchen, discovering new recipes, and finding ways to make healthy eating delicious, approachable, and fun.

Or at least, I used to have the energy for those things. 🙃

Since Calliope's type 1 diabetes diagnosis, I've been looking at nutrition through an entirely new lens.

Suddenly, food, carbohydrates, blood sugar, and the relationship between what we eat and how our bodies function have taken on a whole new meaning.

The health coach in me is intrigued.

There's SO much I want to learn, understand, and explore.

But the mom in me?

The mom in me is exhausted.

I'm shell-shocked.

I'm grieving.

And I'm very much in survival mode.

We're trying to figure out what our new normal looks like, and honestly, it's daunting as hell.

I'm grieving the life I thought we were going to have.

The future I imagined for my little girl and our family.

I'm trying to wrap my head around a reality I never expected while simultaneously learning how to navigate it.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I'm supposed to figure out what the hell we're having for dinner?

Hard pass.

🫠 When even the things you LOVE feel hard to reach

Here's something I wasn't quite prepared for.

It's not just the kitchen where I've lost my inspiration.

I've been feeling pretty void of motivation, joy, and creative energy lately.

And that's been hard to reconcile with the person I know myself to be.

Normally, I have a million ideas swirling around in my head.

I love creating.

I love dreaming up new ways to help busy parents take care of themselves.

I love teaching movement, talking about nutrition, writing, connecting with our Awesome community, and building something that I genuinely believe in.

But lately, so many of the things that usually light me up in our Make Me Awesome work feel strangely far away.

I've even struggled to write this blog and the newsletter that goes with it.

The words aren't flowing.

The ideas aren't coming.

And the motivation to sit down and create something?

Pretty much nonexistent.

It's not that I don't care.

I care deeply.

I think I'm just using so much of my energy trying to process what's happened to our family and figure out how to move forward that there's very little left for anything else.

And I'm learning that when you're grieving and trying to process something this big, even the things you LOVE can feel hard to reach.

I'm trying to give myself grace with that, too.

To not force the inspiration.

To trust that the joy, creativity, and motivation will find their way back.

And to accept that I don't have to show up as the version of Wonder Nat I was before all of this.

I'm still figuring out who I am in this new chapter.

And maybe that's enough for today. ❤️

🥑 The problem isn't that I don't KNOW what to do

It's that I don't have the capacity to do it right now.

I don't have much of an appetite.

Food, which has always been such an interesting and enjoyable part of my life, currently feels like another thing on the to-do list.

But here's the thing.

I still need to eat.

I'm breastfeeding.

My family needs to eat.

And apparently, the world keeps turning even when your brain is still trying to process a life-changing diagnosis.

Rude, honestly. 😂

The thought of meal planning?

Nope.

Scrolling Pinterest for inspiration?

Absolutely not.

Trying a new recipe with 17 ingredients, three pans, and a cooking time of 45 minutes?

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

I don't want to think about dinner.

I don't want to plan dinner.

I don't want to grocery shop for dinner.

And I DEFINITELY don't want to clean up dinner.

I want someone to magically appear in my kitchen, feed my family, and leave no dishes behind.

Is that too much to ask?

❤️ Nutrition looks a little different to me now

As a health coach, I can feel my curiosity about nutrition growing in ways I never expected.

Calliope's diagnosis has opened up a whole new world of questions for me.

I'm interested in learning more about how food affects blood glucose, how we can support her health, and how nutrition fits into the bigger picture of managing type 1 diabetes.

There's so much to learn.

And I know this journey will change the way I think about food.

But I also need to remind myself of something.

I don't have to become an expert overnight.

I don't need to overhaul our entire family diet right now.

I don't need to find the perfect approach to nutrition.

And I certainly don't need to turn every meal into a research project.

We have a medical team helping us navigate Calliope's diabetes, and we'll keep learning, asking questions, and figuring things out one day at a time.

For now, feeding my family is enough.

Eating something when I don't feel particularly hungry is enough.

Getting through the day is enough.

And if dinner comes from the freezer, a can, a bag, or a recipe that takes ten minutes and requires approximately three functioning brain cells?

THAT'S A WIN, BABY. 🙌

📱 A little thank-you to my past self

There's a reason we created the recipes in the Make Me Awesome app.

It wasn't to give already-overwhelmed moms another place to find elaborate meals to add to their Pinterest boards.

It wasn't to create another set of expectations about what healthy living should look like.

We created them for REAL people living REAL lives.

For the mom who's been up all night with a baby.

For the parent who's juggling work, childcare, appointments, and a never-ending mental load.

For the woman who's trying to take care of herself while taking care of everyone else.

And for the mom who has absolutely NOTHING left to give at the end of the day and cannot possibly answer the question:

“What's for dinner?”

ONE. MORE. TIME.

Because sometimes, the hardest part of feeding yourself isn't cooking.

It's deciding what to make in the first place.

It's figuring out what everyone will eat, whether you have the ingredients, how much time you have, and whether you can manage the cleanup afterward.

Sometimes you don't need a culinary adventure.

You need someone to take a decision off your plate.

Pun very much intended. 😉

I'll be the first to admit that we still have plenty of work to do on the app.

There are so many things I want to add, improve, and create to make it an even better resource for busy parents.

But right now?

I'm incredibly grateful to my past self for putting those recipes in there.

Because when present-day Nat has absolutely NOTHING left to give, past Nat has already done some of the work for me.

I can open the app, find an easy-peasy recipe, and make getting dinner on the table just a little less daunting.

And honestly?

That feels like a gift.

A little reminder that the things we do for our future selves matter, even when we have no idea how much we'll need them.

It's also a pretty humbling reminder that sometimes the things we create to help other people are exactly what we end up needing ourselves.

🦸‍♀️ To the mama who's worn down to the quick...

Who's so overwhelmed she doesn't even know where to START taking care of herself again.

I see you.

I'm right there with you.

And I want to remind you that we created Make Me Awesome for exactly these moments.

Not just for the mom who's feeling motivated, energized, and ready to crush her goals.

But for the mom who's barely holding it together.

The one who knows she needs to take care of herself but can't even begin to figure out what that looks like.

Whether it's an easy-peasy recipe, a five-minute movement snack, or a little moment of mindfulness, there's something in the app to help you start where you are, with whatever you've got.

No big overhaul.

No figuring it all out.

No need to find motivation you simply don't have right now.

Just one small, doable thing to help you feel a little more like YOU.

Because sometimes taking care of yourself doesn't mean adding another thing to your to-do list.

It means making the things already on that list a little easier.

Find Your Starting Point in the Make Me Awesome App

💛 Your permission slip to lower the damn bar

If you're in a season where even the simplest things feel impossible, I want you to hear this.

You do NOT need to be inspired in the kitchen to nourish yourself.

You do NOT need to love meal prep to feed your family well.

You do NOT need to make everything from scratch to be a good mom.

And you absolutely do NOT need to add guilt to an already overflowing plate because your dinners aren't looking the way you think they should.

Buy the pre-cut vegetables.

Keep the frozen meals.

Make breakfast for dinner.

Eat the same three meals on repeat.

Ask someone to bring you food.

Use the shortcuts.

Let some things be EASY.

And if you're going through something heavy, whether it's a diagnosis, a loss, a major life transition, or just one of those seasons when EVERYTHING feels like too much, please remember that your capacity will change.

You won't always feel this way.

You don't have to solve everything today.

You don't have to force yourself to find joy or inspiration when you're still trying to find your footing.

I'm reminding myself of that as much as I'm reminding you.

Right now, my energy is going toward my family, learning how to navigate this new chapter, caring for my girls, and figuring out how to show up for the people I love when my own tank feels pretty damn empty.

I don't have all the answers.

I don't have a shiny new nutrition plan to share.

And I certainly don't have a recipe I'm dying for you to try.

But I do have this reminder:

You don't have to do it all.

You just have to do what you can with what you've got today.

And sometimes, what you've got is a ten-minute recipe, a freezer full of backup options, and absolutely NO desire to chop an onion.

That's AWESOME enough. ❤️

With love (and a very low-effort dinner),

Wonder Nat