Lunch

Part of my disordered eating has always centered around lunch. It’s a weird meal, isn’t it? Throughout schooling, it’s the main social event of each day–where kids get to compare, trade, and eventually make choices about what to eat in the cafeteria. Then, it’s a strange siesta in the middle of the work day, where people are divided into two camps, or maybe three: those who bring their lunch, those who go out each noon, and those who work straight through.

I’ve always been the last one. While I make my own schedule for teaching, I have never, ever, in the last 11 years of collegiate teaching scheduled a lunch break for myself. It seems unnecessary. I WILL eat at some point in the day, but. scheduling 30 minutes EACH day for this task had always seemed indulgent and wasteful. In reality, I can get my lunch eaten in 5 minutes, and sometimes it happens at 11 and sometimes at 2. This has never really seemed problematic to me.

In therapy, we looked at the lunchtime as something more than a functional agenda item and instead reframed it as a midday “resetting.” While I have not written “lunch” on my spring schedule, I do have an empty spot usually around 12:30 or 1 each day. I am working to take some time to listen to music, eat without checking email or doing tasks, and meditate for a couple minutes. This seems sometimes refreshing and sometimes, honestly, cumbersome. But, I’m trying. Day 32.