I’ve been trying to eat on a rotational diet where I only have problematic foods every 4-7 days. This means I’ve had to get better at menu planning, which in turn means that I’ve had to get myself organized! The worst sabotage for a restricted diet is a poorly stocked cupboard and a time crunch.
I decided after a few weeks that, even if I could tolerate foods after 4 or 5 days, I didn’t have the discipline or planning savvy to stick to a 4-day rotation, although some people have great success with those. I’ll try to put an example of a short rotation diet up soon. For me, though, I find it much easier to eat the same, pretty restricted diet on weekdays and then Saturday and Sunday I can add other foods moderately. Something about having certain days of the week to count on works in my brain.
Regardless of which rotation diet works for you, there are a few tricks to make life much easier! Here are a few I’ve found:
- Organize your recipes by category of food allergens. I have the following categories: Completely clear, Corn-containing, Gluten-containing, and Some sugar. I put the names of recipes and their respective books on a bunch of note cards (e.g. Completely Clear Card —- Chili . . . Dad’s Cookbook, pg. 63). Just think of elementary school when you organized your sources into topics on 3×5 cards.
- Remember to include online recipes you love (I abbreviate the names – AR for allrecipes.com, etc.). That will spare you from getting caught on the web for hours.
- Once a week, sit down with your cards and plan the menu. As you approach each day, pull out the card that applies (e.g. if Tuesday is your gluten-allowing day, pull out your Gluten card) and choose your menu from the choices listed.
- As you write your weekly menu, have another note pad to write out your grocery list simultaneously.
- Add new recipes to your card system as you try them.
- If you’re beyond the paper age, make an electronic version – whichever way will encourage you to use it!
This system can work just as easily for families without food restrictions in order to bring variety to meals. Just make cards with chicken, beef, fish, and bean recipes, and aim for at least one of the latter two every week. The cards eliminate the hours of poring through recipe books and online databases orchestrating next week’s menu (except for those meals when you want something new!).
Setting it up for the first time will take the better part of an afternoon, but it’s well worth it. Now I can plan each week in about 15 minutes, and it’s just nice to have all my frequently used recipes organized in one place!
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