Note: This post is the second of a four-part series, and it includes Amazon links to different foods and food-related products that have helped me lose weight. Ordering from these links helps to support this page.

Lunch

For most of my adult life, I made horrible choices at lunch time. My focus was always on speed, quantity, and taste. Lunch for me used to be an exercise in poor planning and a display of nonexistent impulse control, two of the personality traits that lead me to weighing 410 pounds and a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes.

It was not uncommon for me to order two large value meals at a drive-in window, and then eat both in their entirety. Lunch used to be deep-fried and rich in saturated fats.

In the middle of the day, with four hours of work still ahead of me, it was easy to justify my poor choices, and I used to offer myself some great justifications.

“I don’t have time to eat anything healthy.”

“I am having a bad day, I need to eat something delicious to make me feel better.”

“I need to do some heavy lifting this afternoon. I had better carb-up.”

“I had a light breakfast. I deserve this.” (This one is funny because a “light breakfast” used to mean one chicken biscuit instead of two, or a chocolate milk instead of a soft drink.)

The truth was, I used to routinely fall asleep in my car after eating lunch. I regularly over-ate myself to unconsciousness in the middle of the day. And then I felt pretty miserable for the rest of the afternoon.

Bloated. Tired. Disoriented. And in a terrible mood.

And what’s crazy is that eating out every day for lunch was not only bad for my health, but, far from being the convenience that I thought it was, it actually used up a significant amount of time and money.

Brown-Bagging It

When I was diagnosed with diabetes, one of the first things I started doing–at the behest of, and with the help of my beautiful wife–was taking my lunch to work every day. In addition to losing weight and feeling better, I instantly noticed two things.

1. The amount of money I was spending every day went down.
2. The amount of time I had on my lunch break for things other than eating went up.

Carrying my lunch has helped me save both time and money, two things that I always seem to be short of. Instead of driving to a restaurant, waiting in line to order, paying, and then eating, suddenly I was done eating lunch within five minutes of leaving work.

Now if I have somewhere to be during lunch, I can eat on the way instead of detouring to the drive-thru.

So What’s For Lunch?

My standard lunch is a baked salmon sandwich on whole-wheat bread with a hint of mayonnaise. With it I have a serving of sweet potato chips and a bottle of water.

The salmon is usually an entire side of salmon (preferably wild, but that is easier to find in the summer than in the winter) purchased fresh from the meat section of our local grocery store, baked at 350° for 20 minutes. My wife usually adds a little lemon pepper seasoning, a tablespoon of olive oil, a dash of salt and pepper, and cooks it on Sunday afternoon. She then divides it into five sandwich-sized portions.

To mix it up, I will occasionally have a grilled chicken or steak sandwich. However, the default is salmon. Salmon was a strategic choice. It is a super meat; lean, delicious, and full of vitamin D, I have eaten schools of it in the past year, and it has fueled my weight loss.

Putting this lunch together at night usually takes about 5-10 minutes, depending on how distracted I am and how easily I can find my lunch box. That sure beats the half-hour I was spending each day getting and eating lunch from various windows.

What About the Window?

Life happens. I do occasionally still have to eat at a drive-thru window. But now I am much smarter about it.

The keys to eating healthy at the drive-thru are planning and frequency. As much as possible, I try to know the menu ahead of time, and I definitely do not eat out for every meal. In fact, I try not to eat out more than once a week, if that much.

When I do go to the window, I try to steer clear of fried foods and stick to grilled or baked. In my hometown, when I go to a window, I generally go to Rick’s, a local barbecue place that I know uses real meat, because I know the owners. Their processing is done locally, and their food is truly delicious.

When I go to Rick’s, I usually get a smoked-ham and cheese sandwich with green beans. In terms of fast food, it is probably one of the healthiest options in town.

Lunch doesn’t have to be complicated to be healthy, and it definitely doesn’t have to be time-consuming.

Next time, I’ll explain how my snacking habits have gone from destructive grazing to simply amazing using an unlikely secret weapon.