Why Your Quick, Healthy Lunch May be Making You Fat

You know the hidden health perils of eating restaurant food, particularly fast food, so you dutifully pack a quick, healthy lunch each morning before you leave for work. You feel quite virtuous as everyone else eats take out pizza with extra cheese while you’re munching on your lettuce salad without croutons. After several weeks of diligently following your quick, healthy lunch plan, you step on the scale and are shocked to find you’ve gained a half pound. What gives? Here’s why your quick, healthy lunch plan may actually be making you fat.

You’re not packing enough protein

This is a problem many people, particularly women, have when they pack a healthy lunch. They focus on choosing low fat, low calorie food choices that are low in protein. Protein is what gives a sense of satiety and helps to stabilize blood sugars so you’ll feel satisfied and less likely to splurge later in the day. If you’ve eaten a lunch devoid of protein, you’re more likely to compensate at dinner by overindulging or stopping at the closest fast food restaurant on the way home to eat something to tide you over until dinner. Try adding a low calorie source of protein to your healthy, packed lunch such as a boiled egg seasoned with herbs or a little pepper, a cup of cottage cheese, tuna fish, or a container of fat free yogurt. You’ll feel more satisfied and consume fewer calories throughout the day.

You don’t bring healthy snacks

Having several small, healthy snacks through out the day helps to keep the metabolism primed and reduces the risk of unhealthy splurging. Try packing a snack to eat mid-morning as well as one to eat several hours after lunch. A handful of nuts, cereal bar, or piece of fruit are good options. These healthy snacks will reduce the risk that you’ll be tempted by the box of Krispy Kreme donuts that everyone’s enjoying in the break room.

You’re drinking your calories

Even if you pack a healthy lunch if you wash it down with a soft drink from the vending machine, you’re adding a hundred and sixty calories to your lunch. If you drink another soft drink or two during the day, you can be up close to five hundred calories. Just three soft drinks a day can add up to three or four pounds of weight gain per month. When you pack your quick, healthy lunch, throw in a thermos of unsweetened green tea and save yourself some serious calories.

You’re overcompensating at dinner

Some people feel so virtuous when they pack a healthy lunch that they feel entitled to eat whatever they want for the rest of the day. When you pack your quick, healthy lunch, plan your meals for the entire day so you don’t run the risk of overindulging. Learn to make healthy eating a lifestyle so you don’t feel like you’re missing out when you eat your healthy packed lunch when everyone else is eating fast food.

You’re eating too fast

Eating lunch at work can be a hurried, stressful experience. If you’re trying to gulp down your lunch while doing work at your desk, you’re not going to feel satisfied. Plus, eating rapidly under stressful circumstances can increase your cortisol levels which promotes a sensation of hunger. Instead of eating your healthy packed lunch at your desk, try to escape to a quite place and eat your lunch slowly without the distraction of work.

A healthy packed lunch is an important key to successful weight control just make sure you avoid these five important pitfalls.