Day 17 - Low Fat Dogs

Lunch for our second day of camping was even less healthy than the first. We had pancakes for breakfast and I was FAMISHED by 10:30. I then ate a ton of veggies and hummus, and then graham crackers and Nutella (yum).

Amazingly I was still hungry at lunch time and ate two 97% fat free Hebrew National hot dogs. One with a bun and one without. I did eat the dogs sitting down since my husband took over the cooking but I ate with only a paper towel. Also the second dog was eaten right out of my hand. I kept making yellow mustard faces on the dog and the biting off its head.

Not terribly satisfying or civilized.

Next week I pledge to be better!!!

Day Sixteen - Quesadilla and Bugs

We left a day late for camping because of the threat of weather. It was honestly a little nice to have a little breathing space and I didn't mind only having one night on the ground instead of two.

The lunch of day sixteen was quesadillas cooked on our camping stove. They were made with corn tortillas which I like a lot because two of the children on our trip have celiac's disease. With sharp cheddar they were quite tasty.

Not really a light and healthy choice but my excuse is that we were camping. Also, I ate my pieces while standing over the Coleman stove. Not really peaceful but crispy and buttery.

Day 15 - Subway

I had a babysitter this morning so I was able to get some work done but like always, I had too much to do in the alloted time. We are planning on going camping tonight and in addition to everything else I have to get ready for that. I picked my children up from the babysitter at 12:15PM and then we had to come up with a lunch plan quick.

We ended up at Subway where I had a turkey sandwich with double meat and no cheese or mayo. I also had a nice big diet coke which was rather refreshing.

I ate it while having a meeting so I really didn't "taste" it. Not really mindful eating but nice to not be having a salad.

Forgot to take a picture.

Day 18 - Breakfast for lunch

Quiet has descended over the kingdom. This week my children are in camp all day and I am on my own once again. I worked out and then rather than being productive I laid in bed and finished a book. By 1PM I had not had my daily coffee and I was famished.

I decided that I would catch-up on this blog and also make myself a nice bowl of oatmeal with chopped apples and cinnamon. I also made myself a iced latte. Kind of breakfast for lunch.

Quiet, calm and all about me. I do have things to accomplish before the children come home but it was so nice to give myself a few hours break.

Yea!

Day 14 - New Car

On day fourteen we bought a new car which added to the scheduling chaos. I had an appointment in the morning and then rode my bike to the swimming pool where I met my husband and kids. We all then drove to the Toyota where we picked up the car. They were supposed to have everything read but nothing was ready and we spent more than two hours there.

I was famished by the time we got home but was able to pull together a nice little salad which I ate on our screen porch with the children. The kids are THRILLED to have a new car. I am excited too but I have been so busy that it kind of feels like just one more thing.

I have to move myself out of this busy cycle.

Day Thirteen - Noodles with No Noodles

I spent the morning rushing around but the babysitter extended her time for 20 minutes which gave me a little breathing room but not much.

My daughter and I had lunch together at Noodles and Company. It is really just fast food dressed up a little bit with an international facade. Rather than having the sinful yet tasty noodles I opted for an Asian salad with no noodles, no dressing and double shrimp to give me a little protein to keep me going. It was OK but the opportunity to have lunch with my sweet daughter was great.

And we even ate sitting down.

Day Twelve - Getting Out of Hand

Since school got I have been running around like a crazy person. Don't get me wrong, it is all good and all fun but a bit too much of a good thing.

I managed to have an apple and low-fat cow cheese at 2:15PM while working on a shopping list for camping with a friend and neighbor. Not very civilized AT ALL.

I gotta do better or my head will pop off.

The good news is that I am on to phase two of the South Beach so I can now have fruit. Yipee....

Day Eleven - Rolling Salad Dressing

Today was the first Monday of summer vacation. Usually the children are in school on Mondays and I have an opportunity to recover from the weekend. Today it was "game on". I was balancing a work meeting, my husband being out of town and activities for the children scheduled at four different times during the day. Somewhere in the there I also fit it exercising and a trip to the supermarket.

Needless to say my aim to have a civilized lunch did not hit its mark. By 1PM I was starving and settled for a supermarket salad bar salad with chicken, krab and hardboiled eggs. Before I made it to the car I dropped the small container of salad dressing in the parking lot and it rolled quite a distance before I caught up with it. Luckily the little disposable container stayed in tact. I was so hungry that I ate some of the salad with my fingers while waiting in the Starbuck's drive through line.

Not a winner of a day but it was reasonably healthy so I guess I get to count that as a victory.

Day Nine - Busy, busy, busy

Today was a busy, busy day but I did manage to sit down for a few minutes to tuna salad on a bed of arugula from our garden. It was OK but eaten on the run, in the middle of chaos and was not very satisfying.

Day Ten - Applebees

Yeeesh another busy day to end a busy weekend. We went strawberry picking this morning and then did a ton of errands. We finally had lunch at 1:40PM at Applebees. My children had yummy looking grilled cheese sandwiches, fries and apple slices but I choose the more virtuous Southwestern Chicken Salad with no dressing and no tortilla strips.

First the salad arrived dressed but WITHOUT the tortilla strips so I sent it back. Then it arrived undressed but WITH the tortilla strips. I was so hungry at this point that I could not stand the idea of sending it back again (and I was a little embarrassed). At first I worked hard to fish out the strips but they were really small and mingled with the finely grated cheese. I finally gave up. It tasted good but I would have rather splurged on something more interesting.

I have been doing South Beach and since I am in phase one I am not supposed to have fruit but my other "splurge" of the day was to have some apple slices and also strawberries. I realize this is no crime but I hope I am not sabotaging myself.

Day Eight - Last Day of School

Today is the last day of school for my children. They got out early and were home by 9:45AM. We hosted a neighborhood party to celebrate. I did a good job of only drinking diet coke and coffee and ate a handful of nut. After the party was over I sat down and had a mindful lunch.

My lunch was greens from our CSA and curried chick peas salad for the co-op. I was glad I waited and didn't eat the loads of junk that brought to the party. My husband came through half-way through my lunch and sat down with me. Even though the children were home both were occupied playing with friends. It was civilized, peace and hopefully will set the tone for the summer.

Day Seven - Social Tortilla

On day seven (which was yesterday) I had a business meeting where lunch was provided. I have been doing South Beach so I did not want to eat any carbs but the lunch that was provided was a chicken wrap and potato chips. I was not sure what to do. There were no utensils so I could not gracefully pull out the chicken. I decided to suck it up and just eat it. I tried to bite the meatiest parts and discard the tortilla. It went OK and I did not eat the chips which honestly looked great.

It did make me think about the social issues involved with eating. I was a guest and my host was a prospective client. What was I supposed to do to balance my dietary restrictions with what felt like my social obligations? I think I did OK but I continue to struggle with this.

No picture today since it seemed too weird to take a picture of my food in a business meeting.

Day Six - Micky Dees

I played tennis this morning and was famished by 11AM so I ducked into McDonalds for a Southwestern Chicken salad. I read in Comsumer Reports that this is a healthy option especially if you omit the dressing. So that's what I choose. I would have rather had a Big Mac and fries but opted instead for a large diet coke mixed with sugar free lemonade. The salad was OK but there was some kind of glistening goo on the chicken breast that I found a little scary.

I read our local liberal newspaper while I ate and learned quite a bit about unpasteurized milk in the process. Although the salad was a little skeevy overall it was an OK lunch.

I will say that I was hungry again about 90 minutes later. It seems that the quality/quantity of my breakfast seems to really affect what happens at lunch. I will try to eat more for breakfast tomorrow and we'll see what happens for lunch.

Day Five - More than one

Today was a little weird. Even though I ate breakfast I was hungry again at 10AM so I decided to try having an early lunch. I figured I could have a bigger afternoon snack. I felt so civilized. I had a lovely Greek salad and an iced tea. I ate it sitting down while having a great conversation with a friend. Goal accomplished I thought.

Think again, I was STARVING by noon!! I think that since I didn't eat lunch yesterday my body was not going to let me off the hook for a mid-day meal today. I answered back with lunch number two of the day. My second lunch was turkey chili with tomatoes, scallions and cheese on top. It was yummy but I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture.

Here is a picture of lunch #1.

Day Four - A Disaster

Today sucked. I ended up being busier than I had anticipated, wasted time, didn't get much done and hardly ate. By 7PM I had eaten mixed nuts, cashews and sugar snap peas and chased it all down with coffee and diet Coke.

Since I ate the peas closest to lunch time that is what I have to call lunch. I ate them standing at the counter from the bag from the farmer's market. I put the stems in a bowl that was still dirty from last night. Yuck!!

A big failure on the lunch front. As predicted the inability to have lunch flowed from and into all of the other parts of my day.

I was busy with my kid's swim practices until 7PM and since no fairy made dinner I finally ate the eggs and spinach that I had been trying to eat for lunch since day one. I guess that is an accomplishment.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Day Three - Even More Salad

All I could muster today was left over greens from yesterday's pizza extravaganza and some egg salad piled on top. I think the tomatoes were kind of off and the sliced baby carrots rolled pathetically around the plate as I ate it while walking around the kitchen. I finally realized what I was doing and sat down for about two minutes between feeding my children and packing-up for an afternoon of bike riding.

The lunch was so lame that about 90 minutes later I was starving and had to have lunch part two which was a hot dog from stand on the side of the road during our bike ride. Since I am doing South Beach I ate the hot dog without a bun which was OK. At least I was sitting down at a picnic table and could dip it in mustard.

The lunch experience of today is not what I am aiming for. Tomorrow the children will be at school and I aspire to finally have my eggs with spinach and chives (see day one).

Day Two - More Salad

Today we hosted my son's end of year soccer party. By 11:30AM we had about 35 people at our house including 10 nine-year-old boys. We served chips and salsa, pizza, salad, lemonade and cupcakes for dessert.

In addition to launching a new blog this week I am also attempting to do two weeks of the South Beach Diet. That means essentially no carbs so I needed to figure out a lunch that would be low carb i.e. no pizza and also not draw attention to the fact that I was a "on a diet".

My husband ordered some kind chef's salad along with the pizza and salad order from our local pizzeria. It wasn't great but it fit the bill. I was even able to sit down for a few minutes in between stopping wet boys from traipsing through my kitchen.

Today was my first lunch.

I had a grand plan of making eggs with chives and spinach and then reading the new People magazine while enjoying my lunch. Unfortunately I was not able to execute. I ran around doing a ton of errands and then had 10 minutes left for lunch when my door bell rang.

It was my friend who was 10 minutes early for our walk. I thought about grabbing a Balance Bar and eating it on the walk but that seemed like it would be a disastrous way to start off my 365 days.

Instead I threw together a salad of green from our CSA and topped it with roast-beef and feta. I asked her to sit down with me which she did and we had a nice time chatting. We left for our walk a couple of minutes late but she didn't seem to mind. I did drink half of my diet root beer on our walk but at least I had eaten the majority of lunch at a table like a civilized person.

Not a terrible way to start although clearly there is room for improvement. I think I will save my People magazine for when I do a better job of making more time.

Day One - Before lunch

I have been thinking about blogging. I started a blog last year but I tried to make every entry poignant and then I lacked inspiration and couldn't keep it up. Not keeping up with the blog was an indicator of the lack of balance in my life. Taking on too much, rushing around, not being reflective, blah, blah, blah.

Another test of the balance in my life is my ability to eat a decent lunch. If I am able to eat lunch (preferably sitting down at a table and not standing over the kitchen sink) it usually means that my day will be calm and my afternoon and evening will go well.

So, I decided to set a personal goal of eating lunch every day. I then decided to blog about it in hopes of keeping myself honest.

Today will be my first day and I have planned to have scrambled eggs with chives and spinach. If am lucky I will figure out how to post a picture before lunch and then include one in my next post.

Good luck to me.