Budget Busting Meals and Enormous Portions

Food at work is expensive! I guess I haven’t really paid attention before, but I just realized that I spend at least $10-12 a day on food.  Between $7-9 is for lunch and then I noticed that I want a snack AND/or a soda around 2 pm.  Not to mention that since I started this assignment, I haven’t really had energy or desire to go on my routine walk/runs that I was going on with Mr. Fantastic.  No bueno! L

Photo from gurunutrition.com

So how to fix it?  Well for starters, I decided to start taking my own lunch. Yay! Except, no yay…that just means I now definitely have to not only cook dinner, but I have to cook enough that there are sufficient left overs for lunch.  The upside is that at least, I know what I am cooking and I can pack my own portions.  Has anyone else noticed that lunch and dinner portions are humongous? Mr. Fantastic and I started sharing entrees several months ago whenever we go out to eat because it’s easy to just keep eating and not realize that you are full until it is much too late.  Plus, I like to think we are romantic and not just cheap for sharing food!

On top of my lunch, I’ve also started packing bottled water and fruit for snacks.  I take a whole apple or a peach or slice up an orange and toss it into a sandwich bag.  Grapes are also great to fit into a sandwich bag and you can’t over serve yourself if you limit yourself to one sandwich bag or just one apple, banana, etc.  I like the bottled water because I can add a crystal light tube and make it lemonade or iced tea and it doesn’t have the calories or the carbonation that soda has.  Plus it reminds me to drink more water if the bottles are at my desk instead of me having to get up to get more water.  Now if only I could find a chic and age-appropriate lunchbox.  I saw this one for sale at Zappos but even with the Ebates rebate (have you signed up yet? What are you waiting for?) this lunch bento box set is still over $40!

Lastly, I’ve tried to get back to at least every other day walk/runs with my fantastic husband.  It’s not good to gain all the weight that took forever to come off!  Some of the women at the office walk together, but I feel weird about that since I am not an employee yet and I firmly believe that the people we work with are not our friends.  I will have to wait and see how these tiny changes go and hopefully I will have some news regarding the permanent position soon.