What's In There?!

I stroll into work everyday with this bad boy and get some serious double takes/stares with people thinking it's my purse. No people, it's my lunch box.





I used to be a "take out connoisseur", especially at lunch time. With so many fast food and take out options around my workplace, I often used eating out as my lunchtime option and rarely packed my lunch from home. After a while of eating pizza, Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy's, Blimpie and pasta for lunch a couple times per week, I realized that one, I was spending a lot more money on crappy food than I thought, and two, I was starting to gain weight in places I hadn't before.

My decision to start packing my lunch for work everyday came from working hard at the gym and not seeing the results I wanted. I realized that if I wanted to start seeing my hard work pay off, I had to fuel my body with better food in order to have the energy for the gym later. I also wanted to be in control of what I was putting into my body, and not leave that important decision up to a greasy fast food chain.

So I went out to the store, bought myself a lunch box, some different sized plastic reusable containers and thought "What's a healthy, easy to make, lunch that I could pack everyday for work?"

And this is what I came up with:

Inside my lunch box everyday is my breakfast and lunch for that day. The contents include:

Breakfast:

• a yogurt, usually Activia Light or Greek Yogurt
• 1/3 to a 1/2 cup of fresh fruit, usually blueberries, strawberries or raspberries

(I'm not a big breakfast person, usually coffee is enough for me, but I force myself to eat a little something in the morning for metabolism health) 

Lunch:

• a salad with 1-2 oz. of turkey or chicken
• 2 tablespoons of salad dressing
• popcorn or Special K cracker chips
• a medium to large sized apple
• a Kashi granola bar, or another type of granola bar with at least 4-5 grams of protein and no more than 150 calories (this is usually my 2:00 p.m. snack)
• a Vitamin Water Zero

And there it is, my breakfast and lunch for the day, the way I want it. Two healthy, fresh, portioned meals that come right from my fridge at home and not from a fast food place. Don't get me wrong, it's sometimes a pain to make this lunch the night before, and it's way easier to think "Oh, I'll just buy lunch tomorrow", believe me I've been there. But packing your own lunch really pays off. By the time I head to gym after work I feel better knowing that I have ate healthy throughout the day and I noticed the difference almost immediately in how much energy I had and how much better I felt.

I still show my face at Burger King when I'm craving a cheese burger for lunch every now and then, or order-out with my coworkers when we decide to all split a large pizza, but for the most part  I try my very best to stick to this option. It's cheaper, healthier and leaves me feeling in control and energized for the rest of the day.