The Exhaustion of Deciding What to Eat Every Single Day

Every day, three times a day, my brain gets tapped on the shoulder and asked the same exhausting question: what are we eating?

Not what do you want to eat.

Not what would bring joy.

Just… what will keep you alive without draining the last bit of will you have left.

It sounds small until you live it. Until you realize that deciding what to eat isn’t one decision — it’s thousands of tiny negotiations with your energy, your budget, your time, your mood. It’s opening the fridge and closing it again like it offended you. It’s scrolling through food pictures while feeling oddly irritated by all of them. It’s knowing you’re hungry but also knowing you’re tired of solving this problem.

Some days, food feels less like nourishment and more like admin.

You eat because you have to, not because you want to. You eat the same things on rotation because creativity costs energy you don’t have. And then you feel guilty for being tired of something so basic, because people say things like “at least you have food.” As if gratitude cancels exhaustion.

The worst part isn’t even the cooking.

It’s the thinking.

Breakfast today. Lunch later. Dinner again. Tomorrow, repeat.

Some nights I'd rather lie down and get high on H2O than figure out dinner one more time!

There’s a quiet loneliness in that moment — standing in your kitchen, realizing that adulthood is a never-ending loop of needs that reset daily. You fed yourself yesterday. Congratulations. The reward is having to do it again today.

And again tomorrow.

This isn’t about being ungrateful. It’s about being human. About how even the simplest choices can become heavy when you’re carrying everything else too. Sometimes the hardest part of the day isn’t the big problems — it’s answering a question that never stops asking itself.

What are we eating today?