My Lunch Ideas, Check it Out! :)

Thread Starter  

I had my LAP-BAND^® surgery on August 12th of this year and it has been a challenge to learn how to eat again. I especially have trouble with lunch. I work/go to class all day, so it is tempting to go out to eat daily which is expensive, wasteful, and generally unhealthy. So this is what I did; I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of individual-sized lunch “ingredients” (either a protein, veggie, fruit, or dairy; see below) and brought them home and spread them on the table. I then took cheap ziplock sandwich-sized bags and in each one I put one choice from my protein foods, one veggie, one fruit, and one dairy. I made a bunch of these little lunch bags, enough for 2 weeks and put them in a drawer in my fridge. Each morning I just grab one and run out the door so that I will have my lunch all ready and I won’t make any bad lunch choices. Wal-Mart and places like that now offer many food products in individual sized servings (even pickles, LOL) so it is easy to go buy the “ingredients” for my lunches. There are so many combinations, go see what you can find! Here are some ideas of the things that I buy to put into my lunch bags.

Protein:
beef jerky, just throw a couple pieces in the bag
mini 3 ounce cans of tuna
individual serving cups of peanut butter
soy nuts/other nuts

Veggies:
mini bags of baby carrots (4 for $1 at Wal-Mart)
cut up fresh veggies
individual size canned vegetables

Fruit:
individually wrapped prune (they look like candy J)
little box of raisins
fresh fruit cut up
fruit cups

Dairy/Other:
package instant oatmeal
string cheese
individual size cup of cottage cheese
yogurt


These are some of my lunch bags this week:

Monday
Protein: Beef Jerky
Grain: package instant oatmeal
Fruit: box of raisins (put on oatmeal, yum!)
Veggie: baby carrots


Tuesday
Protein: Mini can of Tuna
Veggie: few slices cucumber
Fruit: Diced peach cup
Dairy: individual cup cottage cheese (add the peaches on top, yum!)

Wednesday
Protein: Individual cup of peanut butter
Veggie: Celery sticks
Fruit: Raisins
add the three together and get ants-on-a-log!
Dairy: yogurt

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Thanks for the helpful hints, i also pack a hunts sugar free choc pudding foe work when i get hungry, that takes the place of my ice-cream craving. Also, try non fat vanilla yogurt with bananas cut up---yummy snack.. Good luck to you on this wonderful journey. I am 43 pounds lighter after 4 months and feeling great!!!irish

Great ideas!!!

Thank you for posting.

Good, healthy choices to keep you from making the wrong choices and you save money too.

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"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid." - John Keats
247 * 219* 140
Pre-op * Today* Goal
LAP-BAND^®: June 24, 2008

What are individual serving cups of peanut butter?? And where do you get them. Sounds like just what I need!! Becky

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Began Weight Loss Journey - August 20, 2008
Surgery date: September 19, 2008

I know Jif makes some and I find them right next to the regular pb in my store. You need to be careful though, a serving of my pb's is 2tbs and these *cups* are way more than that.

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Lacey
this life of mine, life with a lapband, my food diary

Banded - 7/25/08 - TRICARE Prime, Dr. Nye, Baptist Hospital, Pensacola, FL
LAP-BAND^® AP Standard 10cc, currently 3cc filled - 1cc fill during surgery, 2cc fill 10/01/08

Thread Starter  

I was at walmart in the paenut butter aisle and they had a package of individual sized plastic cups of peanut butter for on the go. They also sell pickles and so many other foods like that. I havent seen them at the regular grocery store but if you check out a wal mart super center they should have them. :)

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