Who decided dinner is the main event? In our house, it's lunch!

People often think that "dinner is a family event," but our home is a little different.
Lunch is the highlight of every day.

I could live without doing anything!

My husband's ideal is a "panda."
He says his dream is to "lounge around every day until the sun goes down."
People say that if you stop working, you'll eventually want to work, but
"I'm confident I could live without doing anything at all!" he says with a smug look.

My husband and I are both self-employed.
We work in design, and my husband is pretty much always at home.
Most of his meetings are online, so he's basically always here.
Or rather, he's the type who doesn't want to go out if he doesn't have to.

Me? No way.
I'm a commoner, a bit soft, and the type who immediately starts talking about "fulfillment" or "wanting to please someone."
That said, the reality of being self-employed is like being a hunter-gatherer.
If you don't work, you can't survive.

Not having a commute might be the best thing ever.

For a self-employed couple like us, "not having a commute" is definitely a huge benefit.
That's why we can eat a proper lunch, and if we say "maybe I'll take a nap" after eating, no one gets mad. It's the best!
However, of course, if you just laze around, you'll quickly gain weight.
So, in our house, we are very careful about our diet and exercise.
Our exercise is boxing. ▼Details in another article

Today, I'd like to talk a little about our "eating style."

The main event happens at lunch

Our "main meal" is lunch.
This is a habit we've kept since we first got married. (For the 10 years or so when our children were students, dinner was obviously the main event.)
The reason is simple: "If you're going to eat it anyway, eat it when you can burn it off."
If dinner is the main meal, you just eat and go to sleep, but if you eat a hearty lunch, you can move around and there's no guilt.
Yakiniku, fried foods, hot pot...
The "main events" that appear at dinner in other households are usually served at lunch in ours.

Dinner is a "to each their own" style

Dinner is light. Or rather, completely "up to each person".
For me, it looks like this:

• Oatmeal with yogurt and fruit

• Protein shake

• If I'm still hungry, I'll grill just one black bean rice cracker or a piece of mochi

That's it. Just that much.
But if my stomach isn't heavy before I go to sleep, I wake up feeling refreshed in the morning, and my weight is lower. That is quietly satisfying.
(The small pleasure of stepping on the scale becomes a strange kind of confidence when it adds up.)

Morning: Light reset → Lunch: Serious meal → Night: Light finish

This flow seems to work for our family.
Of course, everyone's eating style is different.
It depends on the family's schedule and physical condition, but "eating a proper lunch" is surprisingly well-balanced.
By the way, if you get sleepy after lunch, just take a 30-minute nap—listen to what your body wants! This is a benefit of working from home, right? It clears your head. Just make sure not to oversleep. If you can't sleep at night, your internal clock will get thrown off. No matter what, wake up early in the morning, and I think keeping naps short is best.

A recommendation for "Lunch is the main event!"

Don't you think lunch often gets neglected by homemakers?
When you're home alone, it's often just natto on rice, or maybe just toasting a slice of bread and calling it a day...
But that's exactly why I highly recommend trying to "add a little excitement to lunch."
For example:

• Save a portion of dinner for the next day's lunch (or set aside half), making the next day's lunch luxurious.

• When making a favorite dish, prepare an extra portion for lunch from the start (which means less to do at night).

• Just plating it in your favorite dish can lift your spirits.

"Treating yourself to lunch" is surprisingly effective for self-esteem.

Today's lunch is spare ribs.

By the way, today's lunch was braised spare ribs and summer vegetable salad.

While toasting bread for breakfast, I seared the surface of the spare ribs and let them simmer over low heat. I finished checking my emails while they braised, and by lunch, they were perfectly tender and meltingly soft.
For the summer vegetables, I kept it simple with vinegar, sesame oil, and mentsuyu.

I couldn't help but laugh at my husband's "Yum!" when he took his first bite in the early afternoon.
A life where the highlight of the day comes at lunch. Honestly, it's not bad at all.

Thanks for reading!
To those of you working from home like me, or couples living together after the kids have moved out, let's enjoy every day.

If you liked this, following me would be a great encouragement ☺️
I will also be updating details on other "bucket list" items as I go.
I post about tokusatsu and daily musings on X as "Yuge"!

By the way, for those interested in dieting and health management that you can continue even in your 50s, please check out my paid article, "To those in their 50s who keep failing at diets—I'll show you all the 'tricks' to keep it going."
I've summarized my real-life experience of going from gaining weight with weekly boxing to rejuvenating my internal age to 37.