Overcoming Holiday Overwhelm: Editing the Holiday Meals

Here we are back for day three of my edit your holidays series, where we’ll discuss editing your holiday meals.

In our home the holidays have always been about food. Up until a few years ago, it was typical for our small gathering of 8-10 people to sit down to a meal that would have easily fed 20. Our collective girths were proof that food was an important component of the holidays. A couple of years ago though when creating the menu and trying to decide which new side dish to add to the menu, I asked myself, “instead of adding one more thing to this year’s menu, what is one less thing I can prepare?”

This “one less” question is a question my ADHD coach introduced me to years ago in response to my tendencies towards ADHD Math, which is the tendency of an individual with ADHD to continually add things to one’s life without ever subtracting anything, which as you can imagine leads to all kinds of overwhelm. Thinking in terms of one less results in greater simplicity and ease, especially when it comes to cooking a holiday meal.

Responding to the “one less” question resulted in a number of things being edited from the menu and it turned out that no one really missed them. It also resulted in fewer leftovers and less food wasted. This year, it even resulted in a turkey being edited from the Thanksgiving menu in favor of a main course that everyone at the table is much fonder of at this point in time.

What if you asked yourself the “one less” question this holiday season? How might your meal experiences change?