Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Day 5, Lunch Kit

Just think in less than 1 week Christmas will be over and we will all already be well on our way to getting back to a "better normal".  We will have so many positive things in place and the only thing we'll have to do is show up to practice the new behaviors and habits that will move us in the direction of better health and fitness.  We rock!

One of the things I incorporated years ago that I still practice is taking my lunches.  I actually stopped last year for the very first time, on purpose, for a few months.  I decided that since I'm always only 15-20 minutes from home all I needed to do was simply come home to eat lunch!  But it didn't exactly workout that way. Yes, I came home and ate, but then I was too tired to go back out, or I got distracted with things I had to do at home, and then found myself putting some errands off until the next day.  When I make my lunch in the morning and take it with me it's much easier to finish all the business I need to do outside of my home, saving time and gas.





Personally I have my favorite lunch containers.  You can see many many pictures of them on my former blog: 

http://tracyrif.blogspot.com/ (search "All Day Lunch", but I've included a few photos from years ago).  

I used to post pictures of an entire day's meals because I used to work a 12 hour day, 3 days a week.  But working in a Salon I had a fridge and a microwave.  Many times these days I do clients in their homes, and I go to yoga at the end of my mornings, so I don't have access to heating foods up.  Which is not usually a big deal but I love hot food!  (a handful of time I used the micro at Whole Foods!)

My absolute favorite new lunch container is Aladdin's "heat and go".  What I love about it is that I
can heat up my soup or leftovers in the container itself, lock on the lid and it will keep for hours.  I know a lot of people these days are not comfortable with plastic of any kind, especially heating foods up in plastic, but I'm not one of those people!  I'm totally fine with it, I'm not trippin'.  And then there are some people that don't like to microwave!  In fact I know a few people that don't even own one.  But for me, I love the microwave!  Sure I could live without it, and I like food reheated the traditional ways, stovetop/oven, but I don't have to those appliances available at work or on the road, but again, it saves time (and dishes).

I'm going to be writing more about preparing home made lunches, and fingers crossed I can get a lot of people excited and proud to be daily lunch carriers!  So, if it's fancy smancy glass, tin, ceramic or plastic food containers in fancy smancy fabric, leather, or paper bags that will help make you feel even more special than you are, now's the time to treat yourself and put them in place to get ready to use.  (or maybe it's a retro copy of a school lunch box you had when you were a kid, lol!)

whoops....I forgot to post a picture of yesterday's food journal entry and I'm already in bed...I'll post two of them tomorrow, and you'll get a kick out of today's!  (let's just say there was a lot of chocolate involved)

2 comments:

Maribel said...

I need to be consistent about my lunches. I always feel so much better when I plan ahead and pack my lunch.

From this series you're doing, I started food journal again...one thing I've added is a scale of 1-5 (1=not hungry, 2=a little hungry, 3=hungry, 4=very hungry and 5=ravenous) of how hungry I am when I eat. I'm finding I'm never hungry at work, I just eat for not reason. Also, I have found that I'm fine early in the day, but around 4pm, I become a bottomless pit. Again, not hungry, just eating for no reason.

At this point, I'm "gathering data", like you said...hopefully it will help me figure out how to make adjustments.

Tracy Reifkind said...

Maribel,

Few things make me prouder than eating my own home cooked and prepared food when I'm surrounded with people that are eating purchased foods :) Having to buy lunch seems like such a waste of money to me, not that I don't do my share of wasting money! But not for lunch!

As we talked about regarding your "hunger scale"; I think it' a great idea. Food journalling is mostly important to raise awareness and take responsibility. It's not to police or judge, at least that's how I choose to look at it.

Another point one of my clients made was the idea of becoming comfortable with feeling hungry. I think this thought is especially key when we "feel" boredom hunger. As we know it's not real hunger, just a side effect of our spoiled and comfortable modern lifestyles!