Shift work, no kitchen, fatigue, the flat-share, and when it's more than dinner

Shift work. If you get in at eleven at night or eat your main meal at three in the afternoon, the seven o'clock question is the eleven o'clock question or the three o'clock one, and the rule is the same. The shelf and the six don't care what time it is. What changes is the morning look, which becomes the look before the shift, and the takeaway night, which might be the one after a run of nights. The habit of deciding before you're hungry matters more on shifts, not less, because the hunger arrives at stranger times and the app is open all night.

No kitchen, or half of one. If you've got a kettle, a microwave and a fridge and nothing else, the six are different but they exist. A jacket potato is a microwave meal. Couscous is a kettle meal. Eggs can be done in a microwave if you look up how once. Tinned beans heat in a mug. The shape still holds, a starch, a protein, a vegetable, a flavour, and the shelf is smaller. The point is the same. Decide before you're hungry, and have the makings in.

Fatigue and disability. If a condition means that fifteen minutes standing at a hob is fifteen minutes you can't always give, the method bends. A stool at the hob. The six chosen so that three of them are sit-down meals, the jacket potato, the eggs, the couscous. The ready meal kept as the honest fallback, as chapter 12 said, and used without guilt on the days the body says so. The rule is still about the default, and the default on a bad day can be the tray. What matters is that it's the default on the bad days and not on all of them.

The flat-share. If the kitchen's shared and the shelf gets eaten, the shelf gets a name on it, and the six are chosen to fit one cupboard. If it's the sight of other people's washing up that keeps you out of the kitchen, the pan and the foot of counter in chapter 9 are all you need, and the earlier book on dishes covers the rest.

Low mood. If you've stopped cooking because you've stopped doing most things, and this has gone on for two weeks or more, the NHS lists losing interest in things you used to enjoy and lacking energy among the symptoms of depression, and says to see a GP. This book's method is small, but it's still a method, and a person who can't get up isn't going to be helped by a list on the fridge. Get the help, and the app can carry dinner while you do.

When food itself is the problem. If you're eating very little, or eating and then trying to undo it, or the takeaway is part of a pattern of eating a lot very fast and feeling out of control, the NHS says to see a GP as soon as you can, because those are signs of an eating disorder and there's treatment for it. The charity Beat has a helpline and its details are on the NHS eating disorders page. This book is about a default and not about a disorder, and I'd rather you closed it than used it in place of help. An earlier book in this series, Eat when you're hungry, is about eating for reasons other than hunger, and is the right neighbour for readers whose evenings are about feelings rather than dinner.