i’ve been so completely bored of food lately. it’s weird. i like food, i like eating… i love delicious, well-prepared sushi; i adore macaroni and cheese from the baked bubbling goodness in a casserole dish lightly browned on top to Kraft Dinner; say nothing and just hand over the falafel, and no one has to get hurt. an english muffin with a little butter on top is a delicious start to the morning. but lately, it’s just all sort of …meh. i don’t want to bother with cooking, and lunch is just the most tremendously uninteresting thing i usually don’t remember to eat until it’s 1:30 or 2PM when i realize i’m about to fall over from hunger.

i’m not really sure what happened here, but i am going to blame eating at work. i used to be very, very boring, and i’d just eat whatever looked good on campus — typically either (a) chicken salad on a croissant with potato salad from the 1155 cafeteria, or (b) a samosa and a thai noodle dish from the Div School, either optionally with a bottle of La Croix (cherry is my favorite, though lime is also acceptable). it was very repetitive but, you know, all mockery of the Trough aside, i really liked their chicken salad…

but then i changed jobs and although in all respects i love this job much more, the lunch thing is sort of a plague. we have a great number of restaurants around the Board of Trade. i can have just about any sort of food i want (except indian or pakistani, which kind of annoys me — i can get a curry and samosas from Burrito Buggy (!), of all places, but it’s … curry from Burrito Buggy, you know what i’m saying? it’s not exactly the house specialty. some days i would trade my left arm for some butter chicken from Rajun Cajun.). there are two sushi places within walking distance (one average but close, one actually pretty good but farther away), several middle eastern places, a really fucking good barbecue place, several delis, a place that does excellent panini, a Corner Bakery, a couple of mall-food-court-quality chinese places, a korean place, several grills, a handful of hotdog joints, a really good roasted chicken place and a really awful for you but oh so tempting chicken fingers joint, a baked potato place, the CBOT cafeteria in the basement, and there is even a McDonald’s for those desperate for homogeneity. i can hoof it to my favorite takeaway sandwich shop in printer’s row, SRO, for one of their outstanding bbq chicken sandwiches, or i could even hit up Harold’s if i feel like going for a walk (and suffering the consequences of Harold’s).

but i’m so booooooooooooooooored of all of them!

i decided some time ago that since i was so bored of all of the lunch choices i was having serious trouble deciding where to get lunch daily (which i was), i would just bring lunch — if i was going to eat boring, i might as well pay $5 less a day. so that’s worked out okay. most of the time i remember to get my lunch out of the freezer and bring it, and it’s alright. it’s not interesting, but i wasn’t really shooting for interesting… i was shooting for a less-expensive status quo (and i got it).

i think i have, however, just hit rock bottom on the bored of food scale. i just officially gave up: for the third time in my life, i am going to go do Nutrisystem. the first time was in 2000; i lost 35 pounds before i got bored and went off the plan. the second time was in 2004; i lost 20 pounds but was too broke to continue with the program (it’s not inexpensive, though it’s probably middle-range for most weight loss programs.). i managed to keep most of it off both times, except after i changed jobs and went from eating chicken salad for lunch to eating Mickey’s chicken fingers for lunch, which meant that this past year i have gone up a jeans size or two and am really sort of cranky about it although admittedly there is no one but me to blame. however, my main goal here is not necessarily weight loss. i haven’t decided yet whether or not i am going to even bother with regular weigh-ins. honestly, they sort of piss me off. all that relentless harping on some bullshit number, you can’t get away from it. people on weight-loss boards are always posting things like — a typical signature on a web bulletin board includes something like this:

200/190/175

which corresponds to “starting weight / current weight / goal weight.” and let’s not even start with the pithy supportive aphorisms. “people always compliment me on my WILLpower, but i want to focus on my WANTpower – i want to be thin!” screw that. and jesus may love me at whatever size i am, but i think lane bryant loves me more because they make lots of money selling me jeans over and over again every time i gain or lose ten pounds. (i could go on about how the weight-loss community traditions bug the hell out of me, but it’d be terribly boring and not a small amount bitter, so i won’t. anyways.)

but i was thinking for the past few weeks about whether or not i should try nutrisystem again. i do believe that it’s a good plan for weight loss; it has worked for me in the past. and i have my happy elliptical machine at home now and quite like it, so exercise isn’t a problem. and hey! i’m already completely bored of all things gustatory, so it wouldn’t even matter if i found ns foods boring, because i already find most foods boring. (given: i am still a sucker for a dragon roll. and i wouldn’t turn down a well-prepared chunk of Kobe beef.) it does mean changing my budget some, because it’s $300/mo (which was my whole food budget) just for the ns food, to which i have to add fresh produce and dairy, but my budget is already kind of screwed up because of tiger getting sick (my previous pet care budget was $75/mo, but now it’s more like $250-300/mo — insulin and blood sugar testing are expensive, and there’s no kitty Medicare). and honestly, i would really just like much less stressing out about getting home and being too bored (or tired, during the school year) to cook anything and then being frustrated because there’s no food. it’s sort of the full-blown corollary to the lunch-boredom solution: if the solution to lunch boredom is to give up and just buy frozen entrees, the solution to total meal boredom is to give up and buy a pre-planned food program. honestly, if i lose weight, that’s sort of a bonus. who knows. maybe if i do ns for several months i’ll lose a couple sizes and remember how to enjoy food again.

i placed my ns order today, so i expect to get it maybe friday or the following tuesday (labor day! huzzah!). so, i guess we’ll see how this little experiment works out for me.