The Lunch that is Saving Me

how I'm easing decision-fatigue and the origin of my hyperfixation meal tendency (during a trip to Malta in 2011!)

For the love of kale

I am really into kale salads right now. Yes, roll your eyes at me; I am absolutely going to tell you how my love affair with kale salads has made my life easier.

Last year, with a very fresh newborn babe, the first friend to bring us dinner brought a kale quinoa salad (among other delicious things - thank you, Laura!). I devoured that salad. I was hungrier than I’d ever been in my life and was craving fresh food that I could eat in enormous quantities at all hours of the day and night without feeling like absolute garbage. It was a weird time.

Once I got back to feeding myself, I started recreating a version of that kale salad weekly. It was easy to make over a couple of hours - stopping and starting based on whatever time I had available - with any similar ingredients I had on hand, I enjoyed it, and it kept me full and feeling good.

A few weeks ago, we went on vacation and though we had a kitchen, we tried to keep the meal prep simple – avoiding complicated multi-ingredient kale salads from scratch. As a proxy, I got my favorite salad kit and had it for lunch 3 out of 4 days.

I have to go into my office three times a week and when I do, I get the exact same salad for lunch every single time. This lunch routine has quickly become the silver lining to my in-office work days. It’s a fussy salad topped with salmon and a whole mess of seeds and other extras. It’s delicious. Despite the myriad other options available to me, I have my order pre-entered online ready to submit as soon as they start accepting them. I know it will be ready around 12p, they won’t run out of salmon before they get to mine, and I don’t need to use emotional or intellectual brain power making a decison about lunch.

I am in a chaotic season; life is overwhelming! Meal planning is not my strength and it feels like a herculean feat to eat well every day. Yet, my body revolts when it has not eaten well — I feel awful and ancient.

Enter my kale salad hyperfixation. In its slightly varied forms, it is saving me! I enjoy it, my body likes it, preparation (or ordering) has become easy and mindless, and by deciding in advance, I’ve reduced my own mental load.

I used to think it was really boring to eat the same thing over and over again but now, all the time and energy I could have been spending on thinking about and preparing lunch can be allocated to other things that light me up or need to happen.

There may come a season in my future where I want to dedicate my time and energy toward interesting meals every day but this is not it so instead, I’m leaning into the season of hyperfixation meals where they can support my other priorities.

Making space

At our engagement party, David and I played the wedding shoe game where you sit back to back with each other’s shoes. Someone asks questions about you as a couple and to answer the question, you lift the shoe of the correct person.

“Who is more adventurous?” My mom was especially upset when I lifted David’s shoe in response to this question but I remember distinctly that I was thinking about food when I answered. Sure, I’m adventurous in many ways, but David has always been more adventurous about food – cooking it, eating it, restaurants in new cities, specific chefs, etc. 

While I am curious about food almost constantly, I can get stuck in very narrow lanes of cravings or ruts of contentment, eating the same thing all the time. I can get pretty exhausted with and distracted by indecision that something new it won’t be as good as I’m hoping so I lean toward allowing myself to hyperfixate. I know what I like and I eat it a lot. 

I thought this was a flaw for the longest time — especially after the engagement party — Why am I so boring? But now, I am embracing this tendency toward routine.

I have one million decisions to make every single day and this is often quite overwhelming. It is really nice when I can remove a decision from my brain or make it a quick and easy.

Yes! There is value in busting out of your comfort zone and trying new things. I know this. That is not for me with this specific element of my life in this season and that’s OK. Leaning into my current hyperfixation foods removes that many decisions from the matrix of each week freeing up that time, energy, and brain power for other things.

Origins

Looking back, I remember embracing a hyperfixation meal in two specific situations. First, the dining hall in college and later, on a trip to Malta.

I don’t think I need to outline the overwhelm of college so I’ll just tell you that I visited the stir-fry station at OHill for 75% of dinners and was never mad about it.

Later, I traveled to Malta with my good friend and roommate at the time, V. We had a jam-packed trip and ate the exact same dinner every night. Sure, travel is sometimes about exploring local cuisine and trying new food. But travel can also have completely different goals - hiking, museums, attending sporting events, relaxing at the beach - and you still need to eat. At the end of a full tourist or adventure day, sometimes you don’t want to make decisions about food.

I am not great at sticking to the same routine forever; I need some variability to keep things interesting. So while I am leaning into this practice for now as it saves me valuable brain energy, I know it is a season. It won’t last forever and when I’m ready to switch it up, I will.

What meals are saving you? What are your favorites to keep in your back pocket for weeks that are particularly full or overwhelming?

I’ll leave you now with the trip report from Malta in 2011 and one of my earliest memory of a hyperfixation meal — enjoy!

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Hi! I’m Liz. Thanks for being here and reading my journals on the journey. If you’re new, learn a bit more about me and this space here and consider subscribing to my weeklyish posts. You can choose which types of posts to receive via email and if you read in the Substack app, you can choose to get notifications in the app instead of emails with new posts.

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MALTA: "There are no strangers, only people who aren't your friends yet."

Originally posted May 10, 2011