When Food Feels Hard: Neurodivergence, Burnout, and Remembering That Food Is More Than Fuel

If you’re anything like me, you get home at the end of the day and you are done.
No spoons left. No creative energy. No patience for the eternal adult question:

“What are we going to eat for dinner… again?”

Honestly, I think one of the hardest parts of adulthood is figuring out what to eat every single night for the rest of your life.

Now add in:

• Neurodivergence

• Executive dysfunction

• Food allergies or intolerances

• Kids (especially kids with special needs)

• Chronic illness, burnout, or sensory overwhelm

And suddenly food isn’t just hard — it’s exhausting.

If that’s you, I want you to know something right away:

You are not failing. And food does not have to be perfect to be nourishing.

Food Is Not Just Fuel (And It Never Has Been)

I tell my clients all the time:
There are two things humans celebrate with across cultures, across time, across the world:

Food and flowers.

Food has always been more than fuel. It’s connection. Memory. Culture. Regulation. Safety. Celebration. Comfort.

Some of my most vivid memories involve food made slowly, imperfectly, and lovingly:

• A burger my mom and I made together with herbs picked fresh from the garden with a mushroom herb butter sauce spooned over venison

That meal wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t optimized.
But it felt like me.

When You’re Neurospicy and Food Burnout Hits Hard

Here’s the reality I see every day in my work — and live myself:

When you’re neurodivergent, food burnout is not a personal failure.
It’s a systems problem.

By the time evening rolls around:

• Decision fatigue is real

• Sensory tolerance is low

• Hunger can make everything feel urgent and impossible

So you fall back on the same meals.
Frozen pizza. Chicken and rice. Pasta. Nachos. Tacos. Again.
Not because you’re lazy — but because your nervous system is trying to survive.

And sometimes? You end up eating out, grabbing fast food, or relying on frozen meals.

That is okay.

My number one priority for you is not “perfect nutrition.”
It’s that you eat. And that your body gets some nutrients in whatever way works right now.

We Were Never Meant to Do Dinner Alone

There’s another piece of this conversation that doesn’t get talked about enough.

Humans were never meant to do food this way.

For most of human history, meals were communal. We ate:

• Around fires

• In community

• At inns, taverns, and shared tables

• With food prepared collectively, not by one exhausted person every night

Dinner was not a private, daily logistical puzzle that one individual had to solve after working all day.

Even more recently, within the structure of the nuclear family, food labor was typically assigned to one person — usually a woman — whose entire role was centered around managing the home, meals, and care work.

That system had plenty of problems, but here’s what changed without us really acknowledging it:

Now many of us are expected to:

• Work full-time (or more)

• Manage emotional labor

• Support children and/or partners

• Navigate chronic stress and burnout

• And still somehow show up every night with a balanced, nourishing, home-cooked meal

All by ourselves.

It’s not just neurodivergent people who struggle with this.
This setup is hard for humans, period.

So when you’re exhausted at the end of the day and can’t figure out what to eat, that’s not a personal flaw — that’s a mismatch between modern expectations and human capacity.

Why This Hits Neurodivergent Folks Even Harder

For neurodivergent people, this mismatch is amplified.

Decision fatigue, sensory overwhelm, executive dysfunction, and nervous system burnout mean that the nightly expectation to:

• Plan a meal

• Shop for it

• Prep it

• Cook it

• Clean it

Can feel impossible — even when you care deeply about nourishment.

And when you add food allergies, limited safe foods, or kids with additional needs, the cognitive and emotional load multiplies fast.

You are not failing at adulthood.
You are living inside a system that assumes unlimited energy, consistent executive function, and invisible labor.

This Is Why Support and Tools Matter

This is also why I talk so openly about using tools — including AI — to help with food planning.

Not because we’re outsourcing something we “should” be able to do, but because we were never meant to do it alone in the first place.

Community used to share this burden.
Now we recreate support however we can:

• Through shared responsibility

• Through simplified meals

• Through frozen foods and repeats

• Through tools that reduce cognitive load

That’s not weakness.
That’s adaptation.

Let’s Talk About Shame (Because It Has No Place Here)

I need to say this clearly:

Do not fall for:

• Instagram wellness perfection

• Influencers who make cooking look effortless and aesthetic

• Messaging that says if you don’t eat “clean” 100% of the time you’re harming your body

That narrative is not only unrealistic — it’s actively harmful, especially for neurodivergent folks.

I’ve been in conversations recently with naturopathic doctors who are either neurodivergent themselves or who work closely with neurodivergent clients, and we all agree:

One of the biggest gaps in our education was learning how to support real-world eating for neurodivergent people.

Mindful eating scripts, rigid meal plans, and idealized recommendations often just… don’t work.

Sometimes nourishment looks like:

• Unflavored nutrient powders added to tolerated foods

• Protein shakes because textures are off

• Repeating the same meal for weeks

• Eating “unbalanced” meals because that’s what you can handle

That is still care.

Using Tools (Including AI) Is Not Cheating

This is where I want to normalize something:

Using tools to help you eat is smart, not lazy.

I personally use AI tools like ChatGPT to:

• Brainstorm meal ideas

• Break decision paralysis

• Create simple meal plans when my brain is fried

Another great tool is Goblin Tools, which can help break recipes and meals into manageable steps.

And yes — I do this for a living.
I make meal plans for my clients all the time.

And still, at the end of my own workday?
I often don’t have the energy to do it for myself.

So I reuse old plans.
Or wait for a day when I have spoons.
Or lean on convenience foods.

That’s not hypocrisy — that’s being human.

Sometimes the Meal Falls Apart Over One Extra Step

Here’s a very real example from my own life.

I was all set to make a venison sweet potato hash.
I felt good about it. It’s not a hard meal. One pan. Simple steps. Totally doable.

And then I got home.

And suddenly the problem wasn’t the cooking — it was that the sweet potatoes were in the basement.

I hate our basement stairs. They’re steep. They’re dark. They make my nervous system spike. And that one extra step — going downstairs, grabbing the potatoes, carrying them back up — suddenly made the entire meal feel impossible.

So instead… we had pasta.

Not because I didn’t want the hash.
Not because I failed.
But because one additional barrier tipped the scale.

That’s how executive dysfunction works.

This is also why “prep when you have spoons” matters — not in a Pinterest-perfect way, but in a very practical one. Sometimes prep just means bringing the ingredients upstairs. Putting them where you can see them. Reducing the number of transitions your brain has to make before food becomes possible.

Out of sight really does become out of mind.
And sometimes dinner is decided by whether something is on the counter or down a flight of scary stairs.

Food Can Be Simple and Still Meaningful

Food does not need to be:

• Fancy

• Complicated

• Instagram-worthy

• Made from scratch every time

It can be:

• A one-pan skillet

• A bowl assembled from freezer staples

• Breakfast for dinner

• The same meal you ate last week

And it can still be grounding, regulating, and nourishing.

You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

If food feels hard right now — you’re not broken.
You’re responding to a world that wasn’t designed for your nervous system.

If you want support:

• I’m happy to help you build a realistic, neurodivergent-friendly meal plan

• We can work with your allergies, preferences, energy levels, and sensory needs

• We can design something that works with your life, not against it

You can schedule a consultation with me, and we’ll figure out what nourishment looks like for you — not the internet.

Because food isn’t just fuel.
It’s care.
And you deserve that, exactly as you are.