My friends. Lets talk about how much I hate cooking and how this hate basically starved my body of nutrients.

I’ve never liked cooking. For me it’s always a huge effort. It’s not as simple as “just cook the food”, it’s “choose the ingredients, prepare the ingredients, figure out the spices and the method”. Everything is turned into steps. And for me, it’s so daunting. Because if one thing isn’t as it should be then the whole process just crumbles down and my brain says “whelp, guess I’m not cooking then”.

And ordering food isn’t an option for me.

So I lived on cereal and raw vegetables for a while (thanks depression) because I wasn’t able to care for myself and all my energy went towards my son. And then, my entire body felt like it was failing. The metformin was only a crutch that kept me from getting sucked back into the swamp of depression, we’d already figured that one out. The only question was “why isn’t it getting better”.

And that answer, for me, is diet. But when everything overwhelms you and the internet isn’t making anything easier, you… get lost and confused. You don’t know where to start, you don’t really have any guidance and everything is so complicated so you.. crash. You give up. You stick to the cereal. And things just turn into a downwards spiral.

It’s like a program unable to move on because of an error. It keeps running the program only to crash on the same thing every time.

And no, my friends, it’s not as simple as “just eat healthy”. If only it was that easy. No, no. It’s written out on a schedule. With the times stating when I can eat and with ingredients I’m allowed to eat at what time. With the reason why I need to eat them. It’s the exact same schedule every single day.

Why so boring? Because otherwise I get overwhelmed and crash and go back to starving myself. Which isn’t beneficial to my insulin resistance and the entire reason for this diet is keeping my blood sugar in balance.

And one thing I learned from being in a depression is that anything flavourful just completely sets me off and ruins any appetite I may have so my food is BLAND. I rarely even use salt. I have no energy for creativity. No energy for wasting time on anything I may or may not end up eating.

Cooking is a chore and I don’t have energy for it. And that’s why the dietician breaks it down for me so it turns into less of a chore. That’s why the ingredients are always the same so I don’t get overwhelmed.

That’s why everything is so bland and boring. Because I can’t deal with anything complex. And neither can my tastebuds.

That’s why I buy a vegetable mix already pre-cut. So I can remove the step of having to cut and clean vegetables.

That’s why I cling to my schedule. The times are written down. The vegetables are always the same. The routine is exactly the same as every other day. I don’t have to think in what to eat and when.

It’s basically a crutch to keep me from starving myself.

But aren’t I a grown-up? Yes, I am. I am very much a grown-up. I just suck at functioning properly. I’m very good at other things but I’m not very good at housework. And that’s okay.

Cooking is hard work. And sometimes we just aren’t capable of making a whole meal for everyone. Sometimes we barely manage to take care of ourselves, let alone another person.