No plan today!

For those of you who know me personally, you know I almost NEVER go to work without bringing food for the day. I eat my breakfast and lunch at my desk, as well as bringing fruit or veggies for snacks. I like knowing what I have, fitting it into my daily food budget and then I know what I can have for dinner, plus I don’t have to waste time at lunch finding something to eat.

BUT, not today! I didn’t plan ahead; I was rushing around this morning getting my kids off to school, and as I was walking out the door, I felt kind of naked, I had no food! What am I going to eat today, I thought?

There is a 7-11 near my office, but I didn’t want to go there, because there are the HUGE muffins I love. There is a tiny market by my office, so I thought I would stop there and see what my choices were.

I ended up getting skim milk, a small individual size box of cereal and a banana. Not bad. The cereal was kind of in one of those cup things, and it as 220 calories; I had ½ the milk which was 60 calories and a banana.

Now, food is hard around my office, especially lunch. We usually have luncheon seminars where the food is brought in. Although I don’t attend all of them, there are always leftovers!

Today, it is boxed lunches from Panera Bread. I’ve had those a bunch of times. It’s usually a turkey sandwich, a bag of chips and a chocolate chip cookie. My co-worker who is also in weight loss mode and attending the seminar asked me what the best choice was.

Luckily, Panera has their nutritional information on-line and you can actually build your lunch and see how many calories it is. Imagine my reaction to find out that if you would actually eat the whole sandwich, the chips AND the cookie, it would be 1,570 calories, 85 grams of fat and 157 grams of carbs and 8 grams of fiber. What?!

The worst part of the sandwich (and since it’s already made, you can’t change it) is the mayonnaise on the sandwich. JUST FOR THE MAYONNAISE, its 320 calories and 34 grams of fat! The bread is the culprit too. The Asiago Focaccia bread ALONE is 510 calories and 16 grams of fat!!

So, my suggestion to her was to try to scrape off as much mayonnaise as possible, maybe eat half the bread, eat the chips, but pass on the cookie. And the rep only ordered water, so that’s about the only good thing!

It’s amazing to me that a company can actually make food that is so bad for you. You may as well have a BIG MAC for heavens sake! If you were to have a BIG MAC and medium fries with water, it would be 920 calories and 58 grams of fat. You would save 450 calories and 27 grams of fat. Obviously, that’s not a great choice either, but it really makes you think. We have lunches delivered every week to our office, and mostly boxed lunches, and you wouldn’t think that you were actually consuming all of your calories in one day for one stinkin’ meal! No wonder Americans have such an obesity problem. People are eating lunches like that, in ADDITION to breakfast and dinner and possibly snacks, not realizing how many calories they have consumed.

Whenever I can, I always go on line to see if the nutritional information is available, or at least the menu, so I can kind of figure out what the best option can be. I also confer with my sister, or someone else who is knowledgeable in making good food choices, so at least you have a plan.

Of course, there have been plenty of times where I have eaten something and AFTERWARDS looked up the nutritional information and kicked myself for not checking first. It pays to be proactive about what we are putting in our bodies!!

Have any of you brought your own food to a work provided lunch? I’ve considered doing that a few times, but feel self conscious about doing so, and not wanting to make a big deal about it, or draw attention to myself. But when it can save you a thousand calories, then why not?

So, my friend just offered to drive to Whole Foods for lunch, where I plan to get a healthy salad and I have my own dressing here at work, so for not planning so well, everything is going to be just fine!!