Decide before you're hungry

This is the third part. The shelf makes dinner possible and the six make it easy. This is what makes it happen, and it's the smallest part.

Sunday, five minutes. Look at the week. Which nights are you in. Which one is the takeaway night, if there is one, chosen now, on purpose. For the other nights, put one of the six against each, or don't, and just know that it'll be one of the six. That's the whole of it. You're not writing a menu. You're moving the seven o'clock question to a time when you can answer it.

The morning look. If Sunday's too far away, the morning is close enough. Before you leave the house, or while the kettle's on, ask what's for dinner and answer it. One of the six. Take the chicken out of the freezer if it's that one. That's ten seconds and it means seven o'clock arrives with the answer already in the room.

At seven, don't decide. This is the bit that makes the difference. When you get in, hungry, and the question comes, the answer is the one you gave this morning, and you don't reopen it. The app's offer is a reopening. It says, are you sure. The answer is that the deciding's done, and the pan goes on. If you find that you're standing at the fridge deciding anyway, the morning look was skipped, and that's the thing to fix tomorrow, not the dinner.

Ducrot and colleagues, as chapter 10 said, found that people who plan meals ahead, even occasionally, eat more varied and better-balanced diets. I'm not claiming the five minutes on Sunday will do that. I'm claiming it takes the seven o'clock question away, and the seven o'clock question was where the order lived. Hunger is bad at deciding. The morning is fine at it. Let the morning do it.