BREAKFAST, lunch, AND DINNER

on skipping meals and what I’ve been eating for lunch

I’ve been a chronic meal-skipper since puberty. Even in the best of circumstances and the most food-positive of mindsets, oftentimes a meal will slip through the cracks of my day. As a teen, it was breakfast. Sleep felt infinitely more important (my fatigue coming from both under-eating and undiscovered anemia) and skipping breakfast felt chic in some way, an adjective that felt entirely unattainable to me as I imagined thin, beautiful, and smart girls on TV skipping gorgeous breakfast spreads to rush off to school to solve some mystery or deal with some deeply concerning social affair (Pretty Little Liars completely shaped my image of what I expected my teen years to look like, Aria and Spencer, this is all your fault!). Through my long years of eating disorder recovery, breakfast was first up on the stand for cross-examination. I joined a breakfast meal group and had the group’s guidelines burned into my brain for years; to this day, I still build my meals around the number of food groups and quantities required to participate in meal group, even though I haven’t been in a meal group session for four years. My fraught relationship with food sometimes feels like a recurring nightmare, or a persistent ex-hook-up, a late-night you up? text derailing all the hard work I’ve managed to achieve. Though I consider myself recovered, I find myself having to stay vigilant from slipping back into these habits, and while eating breakfast has become as second nature as brushing my teeth in the morning, a new meal has fallen by the wayside- lunch.

I’m going to take a brief moment to state the (what I hope is) obvious- skipping meals is not chic as the brainwashed teenage Charley so naively thought, it’s dangerous and under-acknowledged form of self-harm. Even if by accident and without premeditation, a skipped meal can send me on a downward spiral of restriction that can take weeks to dig myself out of. I don’t prescribe to the plain idea of “food is fuel” because I believe it is so so much more than that (community, culture, relationship, nostalgia, comfort, joy, etc), but in it’s most basic sense, food does keep me going, and I need more than a nourishing breakfast to get me to dinner (a meal which, has never been a struggle, skipping dinner has honestly never even crossed my mind).

As life changes, daily schedules shift, and I am in a current season of life, given my odd schedule at the library and previous strange hours at the bookstore, where lunch has become an afterthought. Most weeks, my only lunch break at a normal lunching hour is on Saturdays, my other work days are a hodgepodge of strange and inconsistent hours with my longest break often falling in the late afternoon, sometimes at the god awful time of 5pm, at which I feel I should not be a conscious human being (you know how some buildings don’t have a 13th floor for superstition? I think all clocks in my radius should have 5pm removed. An evil time. I digress). If I start work at a normal lunch hour, I find myself skipping it altogether, or worse, replacing it with caffeine and a stick of gum to get me to my late afternoon break. And while it seemed in fashion for teenagers to skip breakfast, it seems even more so for adults to skip lunch. In the workplace at every job I’ve had in my adulthood, I watch my coworkers skip lunch for walks or for coffee or a cigarette break. How is one to eat in these conditions? Just as bad, on my days off, I am bereft of structure and often alone, sometimes getting so lost in a project or book that I look up to realize my fiancé is home and another afternoon has passed me by (damn you, 5pm).

My reintroduction to breakfast was from necessity, with little want. It was a chore to do meal group twice a week, and though therapeutic in some way, it was a relief when I graduated onto eating breakfast on my own. But now? With lunch? I both need and want that midday revival. In an effort to reignite a love affair with lunch, I’m compiling a list of lunch contenders for myself, in hopes that others who have lost a connection to lunch can find inspiration, too.

No. 1: Just have breakfast again.

So often lately, I lack inspiration when it comes to what to eat. Not only that, but fears of eating “the right” thing for lunch can cause further anxiety and pull that lovely all-or-nothing trait out, kicking and screaming, causing me to skip lunch altogether. And so, I return to breakfast.

Much like a Hobbit, I eat second breakfast but as my midday meal. Eggs and toast, breakfast sandwich, egg and cheese bagel, yogurt and granola- like I said, over the last few years, I have become well acquainted and very comfortable with breakfast foods. In some strange psychological way, eating breakfast foods as my midday meal almost lets me feel like I have a new start to the day, even if I’ve spent my morning doing a whole lot of nothing.

This is also an excellent time to remind you (and myself) that foods do not have assigned times of day. As much as my categorical brain would like them to, they do not, and you can eat any foods at any time of day with no moral repercussions. Salad and pizza for breakfast is fine. Yogurt, granola and fruit for lunch is fine. I know we are all familiar with the kitschy concept of breakfast for dinner but so too does that idea apply to the other meals. The world is your oyster. Or lunch is your oyster, if you so please.

No. 2: No energy? No problem. Leftovers.

Leftovers save the day. While I’m not a big fan of meal prep (I don’t enjoy eating the same thing for lunch each day of the week), having leftovers from the night before for only one more meal is far more appealing. Since we are only cooking for two people, we will often make enough for four servings in order for each of us to have leftovers for lunch the next day. Perhaps a boring solution to the lack of lunch problem, but it’s a lot easier to eat lunch when I don’t have the excuse of not having time to cook.

No. 3: The Humble Sandwich

How I forget about sandwiches (a quintessential lunch food) escapes me.

This line item is so simple and self-explanatory, I cannot add more if I wanted to. Please, just make yourself a PBJ.

No. 4: Pretend I’m a Cool Girl_tm with a snack plate (aka an adult lunchable)

The most elite of solutions, however, is the snack plate, a personal charcuterie board or adult lunchable, whatever you call it, it solves all problems. Not enough leftovers to constitute a meal? Add those roasted veggies to a plate with a hard-boiled egg, a piece of toast, and some sliced apple. Meal complete!

My general rule of thumb when creating a meal is to have 3-5 food groups (that old meal group philosophy is rooted in me strong) and enough quantity of each of those food groups where it could stand on it’s own (ie ketchup to dip my potatoes in does not count as a food group, but if I have a hefty portion of tomato sauce on some pasta, then that can count for fruit/veggies, you get the idea. Don’t cheat the system. You want to eat. The goal is to eat.)

Also, snack plates are gorgeous, especially when they reflect the seasons, and can so easily be packed up in a cute container to take to work. I thrifted this metal container for $4, and it’s the perfect size for a variety of foods.

Lastly, the snack plate is cheap. I can clear out leftovers and random ingredients from the cupboard and fridge so easily because nothing has to go together. Nothing has to match, it can be the strangest combination and it doesn’t matter, pressure is off to have a perfect meal, and if one portion of the meal isn’t exactly what I’m craving, another portion may be, and then the meal will feel less disappointing overall. It’s also far less daunting to eat a snack plate than a meal of one type of food, flavor, or texture. The variety makes it much more appealing and interesting to eat when I’m feeling apathetic toward food.

No. 5: Mac and Cheese

I’ve talked at length about mac and cheese here (I have an entire post in my drafts titled an ode to mac and cheese that will likely never see the light of day), and it never fails to assist in my days’ sorrows. Goodles is a favorite brand of mac and cheese (adding peas to the box mix gets me to 3 food groups! Veggie chicken nuggets on the side is also an excellent addition), but Trader Joes has some excellent frozen options, including the seasonal Butternut Squash mac and cheese which is as amazing as everyone says it is, sorry to contribute to the hype. Please, for the love of mac and cheese, do not get the Reduced Guilt box. It is actually just a smaller portion size with less sauce, trust me, I’ve tried, just get the regular.

Conclusions on things that feel like a work in progress feel so unsatisfying. I wish I could tell you how amazing my life is now that I’ve been eating lunch more regularly, but the truth is, I need to be better at taking my own advice. As a creature of habit and one who thrives off routine, it’s incredibly difficult to change habits once they’ve become such, and although I have started eating more regularly midday, it’s not nearly enough as it needs to be. Tomorrow I’ll be packing leftover lasagna and zucchini for lunch, with grapes and a cheese stick on the side. I’ll keep a protein bar in my purse as a backup plan, just in case it all falls through.

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