9 tips for cooking with ME/CFS

When struggling with chronic fatigue cooking can become an overwhelming task. The effort of cooking a decent meal may be beyond the energy you have to spare - especially if it’s not the only thing you need to do.

I always did love to eat and cook back in my healthy days and still do but experienced it to be increasingly difficult after getting ME/CFS. Pots and pans are too heavy, standing makes you dizzy and hurting joints don’t go well with cutting food.

There are, however, simple changes that can be done to make your kitchen life easier!
Take whatever benefits you from my 9 tips to make cooking with ME/CFS more energy-efficient and manageable =)

1. Simplify your meals

   Long lists of ingredients? Hour-long preparing time? Those thoughts alone can drain you of all your precious energy before you’ve even entered your kitchen. The solution is: Simplify! My way of simplifying meals is by seeing my food as carbohydrates, proteins and fats and everything else in a second step.

   You’ll benefit from this by

   • reducing the time you have to combine different ingredients,

   • don’t get overwhelmed by all the pantries in your cupboard and

   • have an easier time managing food sensitivities (because how will you know which ingredient to blame for your symptoms if you’ve used so many you can’t remember?)

2. Frozen food was made for you!

   I know, there is this choir of cooking FRESH, because only FRESH is healthy and those lazy pre-chopped frozen veggies lack nutrients etc. but there really is no shame in resorting to frozen food. Especially quickly frozen vegetables don’t lack nutrients and even if - better to have a package of frozen vegetables in the freezer to warm up than not eating any veggies at all.

3. Organize your kitchen in an easily accessible way

   Don’t put the heaviest pans and cooking pots in the highest or lowest cupboard. Put them where it is easiest for you to lift them. Your kitchen pantries are best organized in the way you use them - what you use most often hast to be closest to your kitchen stove, oil or salt for example. What isn’t used on a daily base can be put farther away.

4. Sit down while cooking

   Everything that was done standing can be done sitting as well. So if you can fit a stool in your kitchen that allows you to sit while stirring the pots, you’ll save on energy that can be put to better use elsewhere =) If you don’t wanna sit the whole time but take breaks by sitting on the kitchen floor while your pasta is cooking, go for it!

5. Invest in a slow cooker

   I’m not going to advertise huge expensive kitchen machines to you, but a slow cooker might be indeed valuable for you. You can cook different foods on different levels at the same time and don’t need to watch them after you’ve thrown them in. Let the food prepare itself while you rest on the couch. Awesome!

6. Let someone else do the cutting

   Cutting is probably to most strenuous activity in cooking and not exactly fun to do with aching joints and trouble focusing. Ask for help with cutting next time someone offers help and enjoy cooking as a social activity.

7. You don’t need to do everything at once

   Even the simplest recipe can always be split up in even smaller parts. Do the preparing of ingredients one day and the actual cooking the day after and post-pone doing the dishes another day. If you always cook a bit more, you always have left-overs to transfer to the next day and just be adding one or two ingredients, you have a new meal without starting from scratch!

8. Meal prepping saves time and energy

   Every time you manage to cook, cook some more than you will eat! Left-overs can be stored in the fridge for usually up to 3 days or even longer when frozen. Future you will not only thank you for the pre-cooked food but also for not having to clean any cooking utensils!"

9. Have some emergency foods

   It is good to have thought of emergency foods for all the days when even preparing the quickest meal is too much to ask for. My emergency food is buckwheat flakes that I just need to pour hot water over. Not exactly the most delicious meal but it gets done the job of feeding me. And it’s glutenfree.