Moving right along, I am going to eat chicken and vegetables for lunch. Obviously I have been doing so—slow chicken and vegetables in winter, chicken stew and vegetables in spring, and probably green salad and rotisserie chicken in summer is the easiest to pick up because there's no cooking involved. You could start where I did last summer with avocado, romaine, marinated beans, chicken, and fruit—very hearty if you're worried about being hungry, and so many delicious flavors. About midsummer and out of sheer laziness, I dropped the beans so then it was just avocado, romaine, chicken, and fruit. Since then I've gotten an inch stricter about grains and legumes, beans are definitely out and I'm going to try something else instead of quinoa salads for dinner; so I'm going to import the marinated vegetable concept from quinoa salads into green salads, and maybe scale back on fruit? So this summer I am going to try avocado, romaine, marinated vegetables, and chicken, see how I like that.
Marinated vegetables, you may have noticed, have been wandered over the years from pasta salads through quinoa salads to green salads. I'm like the Moses of marinated vegetables.
The Cue
It will surprise nobody that my life is organized around my meals, right? A day in my life is basically divided into two minor beats and three major beats: water, when I contemplate why it is again that I would want to get out of bed; eggs, which is my main reason for getting out of bed and after which my best self gets to work; chicken, for a job well done, after which my best self takes a breather and my loyal but flawed second in command self has the bridge, unless I'm napping in which case nobody has the bridge; then spacefood, for fuel to practice or train; and then yogurt for recovery and winding down so I will want to go to bed.
So the cue for lunch is finishing whatever my morning project is, something clicks in my head and it's time for lunch. I go by that click, and not by the clock. Though I don't know that I haven't just swallowed the clock, and that's what's making me tick.
The Routine
Lunches, or well, all meals for me, are all about preparation. In winter and spring it couldn't be easier, I prepare my week's worth of slow chicken and vegetables or chicken stew and vegetables in jars in the fridge, just heat and serve. Summer and fall are salads, so there's hardly any preparation. All I needed was a knife and cutting board to keep in the kitchen at work, where "all I needed" of course means I procrastinated horribly. I have them now, and everybody in the office uses them. I bring my salad components separately to work, then just cut up the avocado, chop the romaine, and top with the vegetables—no dressing needed, the vegetables are marinated in vinaigrette—and the chicken.
The Reward
So a thing that happened last summer is, I dropped ten pounds without even trying. All I did was swap in vegetables for a good amount of the starch in my diet, a big part of which was green salad for sandwich, chips, and coke. Oh and, here's another thing, certain foods go with certain drinks. You kind of want a coke with a sandwich, and not water. With a green salad, you really want a refreshing drink of water. Your mileage may vary, but I had the hardest time giving up soda until I changed what I was drinking the soda with. I pretty regularly say that weight loss is not a goal for me, but I'm not gonna lie that I don't like how my abs look.
That said, really good salads are really good. They taste really good, and I feel really good eating them. I always felt a little gross after that sandwich, chips, and coke—actually physically gross, not just emotionally gross or morally gross. And salads are sooo easy, summer basically is my break from cooking. Which makes summer a pretty good gateway into getting a taste for good food, just saying.
Status: ACTIVE
