Easy Take to Work Healthy Lunches: Part 1

It's hard to eat well when you're working full time. Most people go out to lunch, spending too much money and consuming too many calories and processed foods.You can easily buy food in advance, make your lunches at home, save money and feel better about yourself. Here's one of my regular lunches:

• Organic Applegate Herb Roasted Turkey Breast (or any of the other flavors they have).
• Trader Joe's Multi-grain sandwich round thins.
• Roasted Garlic Hummus (or any flavor you like).
• Raw Baby Spinach.
• French Green Lentils - pre-cooked from Trader Joe's.

Make two sandwiches with the hummus as a spread. Use one slice of turkey per sandwich and place some spinach on top to finish the sandwiches. Get a small tupperware and put about 3/4 cup of lentils in it.

A nice nutritious lunch for one! All of these items have a very good price at Trader Joe's - you'll find other chain stores will double the price of the Organic Turkey Breast.

For the rest of the day I'll take two other snacks, one mid morning and one mid afternoon. This usually consists of a raw almond and raw walnut mixture, around 3/4 cup, and a greek yogurt like Fage Total Greek Yogurt 2% or 0%.

Looking for a Lower fat/Higher protein diet?

There's a very simple replacement for your evening dinner that will instantly eliminate countless grams of fat and boost your protein intake, which will also be very tasty and filling. I came upon it after having an epiphany caused by roasted Brussels sprouts.

What is this mystery diet you say? Well, the first and most important step is to eliminate potatoes from your diet, full stop. Mashed, fried, baked, roasted, all of them. Gone. Don't even stop at the potato section of the supermarket. In my house, the only potato we will eat is roasted sweet potatoes, and that is a rare occasion. Sweet potatoes are extremely high in antioxidants, it dwarfs the nutritional value of regular potatoes. One downside to sweet potatoes: extremely high glucemic value. Diabetics: this is a big no-no for you.

Ok, so you've eliminated the potatoes. Most of you are westerners, and we all know Americans, Irish, and the rest of us LOVE our potatoes. It's a travesty to even contemplate knocking them off our plates at dinnertime. So what do we replace them with?

The answer can be found in any common grocery store: brown grains. Barley, brown rice, and quinoa are some of the best grains you will find on the face of the planet. They all have extremely low glucemic values and they are packed with protein. Avoid white grains at all costs. They are nutritional garbage, and their glucemic value is through the roof. The best grains I have located are sold at Trader Joes for 3 bucks a packet. It is a blend of barley, rice, and spelt, and when cooked with chicken stock it tastes buttery and moist. Cook one cup of the grains with 3 cups of water mixed with one or two cubes of chicken stock, based on your taste preference. This goes extremely well with the next item on the new menu.

Eliminate all red meats. I know this will be hard. I love steaks too, being from the Midwest. It has to be done though. Cooking one chicken breast for dinner in place of a roast or steak will save you at least 20 grams of fat, 300 calories, and massive amounts of cholesterol. On top of the health benefits, chicken cooks faster, marinates faster, and goes with more sauces and side dishes than beef or pork.

Last step to close out the dinner is the best part, which is too often overlooked. Roasted vegetables are incredible. I have a variety of greens that I like to roast, but the best ones are Brussels sprouts and asparagus. I know, I know, if you're like I used to be, you're probably gagging at the thought of Brussels sprouts in any form. Trust me though, all you have to do is shake them in some olive oil and salt and roast them at 350 for about 35 minutes and they will come out very sweet and crunchy. The salt mixes with the sweetness of the veggie and creates an extremely tasty side dish. It completely changed my view of vegetables.

So if you're keeping score, the final rundown of this diet is one chicken breast, cooked in any form you like (I prefer grilled), half a cup of quinoa or barley/rice, and about 4 ounces of roasted vegetables. If you eat this meal for dinner only 3 times a week you will see notable changes in your health, stamina, and strength. Good luck exploring the multiple combinations of the ingredients, and fun ways to cook the chicken or other poultry. Most importantly, enjoy!

Why proper nutrition and sleep are so important!

I haven't treated myself very well in the past. I'm one of those people who loves to work and I put in 110% effort. I'm also my own worst critic and sometimes a little bit too much of a perfectionist! Ultimately this results in letting yourself go when you're constantly thinking of others and their overall perception of you.

How can this be appetizing now?

I'm glad I took a step back a couple of years ago and realized what I had done to myself. A former track star in my teens up to college, what had I done to my fitness levels? Why was I always so tired? As soon as we started our daily walks around Mount Trashmore I instantly began to feel better. We began implementing healthier foods into our diets slowly but surely, it was actually a great experience because we're definitely both foodies!

Those steps were fantastic and had great results, but they just weren't quite enough for me. There were other areas that I could work on to boost my energy levels. In addition to improving my diet I also started taking a great multi-vitamin daily. I realized I wasn't eating enough fish, because I hate it, so... MUCH, as a result I started taking fish oil. Then there's the fact that I'm stuck inside ALL DAY and don't get to see much daylight due to work, solution? Vitamin D with Calcium to help absorb it.

Then there was there sleep issue. I was going to sleep around midnight and sometimes getting up at 6am. During the weekends I slept even less, I decided it was time to take action and although I am making progress in this department I still believe I have a long way to go here.

All of these have really helped me get back to my old self and I've also started to walk about 3 miles at lunch time. We're still working out on a regular basis and recently I've started to do a lot more weights which I really think has helped boost some of my recent weightloss.

It's certainly a journey of discovering yourself and the needs that your body has to find what the right solution is for you. It's time consuming but I know in the end it will all be worth it. I already see and feel the results!

Workplace Kitchen Frustrations

Before you leave the house this morning ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it really necessary to bring a sodium packed processed meal to work?
• Why do I need a frozen meal that's going to take 10 minutes to cook in the microwave?
• Do I really need to grab fast-food? 
• Why don't I have any healthy alternatives like leftovers or whole grain sandwiches I can bring from home?
• How can I save money?

Think about this. You work with a woman who moans daily about how EXPENSIVE everything is, yet she either brings a packaged frozen meal to work daily or goes out for fast-food.

Not only is she damaging her health , she's also failing to realize that buying everything pre-packaged isn't CHEAPER, it's just more CONVENIENT.

A nice assortment of vegetables weekly would actually save her A LOT of money on groceries. Packaging leftovers from the night before is no hard task and they take about 1:30 seconds to heat up PLUS you know exactly what went into that meal. Making a packed lunch for your children using wholegrain breads and including healthy snack alternatives isn't hard either.

To top it off you have people like this wondering why everything is so expensive, well duh I wonder why? If you're complaining about something so loudly and vocally and you're determined to do nothing to resolve it, keep your mind open to suggestions for improvement and words of common sense, you most certainly need it.

Trying Out New Things

We decided to purchase some coconut milk at the store yesterday. It tastes a bit funny but I think I'll just use it as I do with almond milk - with cereal.

The milk is very nutritious but high in fat content - good fats though. Brock also purchased some coconut water earlier today which I can't wait to try out when I get home. The water is supposed to be a good sports recovery drink and is high in potassium (I hate bananas) and magnesium.

In addition, to help battle the winter blues I've been taking a vitamin D supplement (2000) once a day. I do notice a little difference so far and may up my intake thrice (that was for you Conan!) a week.

The goal is to improve my overall health with nutrition and supplementing what I'm missing out on as much as possible.

My day in food

For Breakfast today I tried some new cereal - Kashi Go Lean Crunch with my usual Almond Milk. I also had an organic apple and a large glass of water with my multivitamin. My mid-morning snack was a handful of walnuts and 4 slices of dried unsweetened mango (Trader Joe's). For lunch we decided to go to Tropical smoothie, we both had Blimey Limey's with Splenda and whey protein, when I returned to work I ate the lunch I had brought in today, some leftover homemade stew. I didn't have anything for afternoon snack.

I was bad today and ate two Almond Hershey Kisses at work! But the good thing is I avoided those awesome Strawberry Shortcake Cookies at Tropical Smoothie!

For dinner we had some leftovers - pasta and turkey sausage. Then I had to sneak in my obligatory Nutella on bread snack for dessert!