Yep, I’m back to trying meal prep for my M-F work week. I’m not dieting (though I should be). My problem is that at 7:30am it’s hard to decide what I want to eat for lunch which is four hours later. If I don’t pack a lunch, it ends up being fast food. If I do pack a lunch, it’s usually leftovers or whatever I can find that’s quick and easy, which usually ends up being stuff I don’t want to eat when it’s finally lunch time.

I finally gave up the battle and decided to do meal prep for the entire week. The picture above is of Wednesday’s lunch. Not pictured is my “cracker bag.” It’s a single portion of Toll House crackers and pita chips that I divided out into zip lock bags. Yep, I made 5 little bags of crackers for the week! Each is about 110 calories and low carb.

The servings of carrots, cauliflower, and sugar peas that you see are each about 10 to 20 calories and extremely low in carbs. My cheese serving is about 110 calories. The tuna pack is 90 calories and only about 4 carbs. The hard boiled egg is about 75 calories and almost no carbs.

The worst is the snack pack of Ranch dressing. It’s 200 calories, but I only use it for dipping the veggies and I’m not a heavy-handed dipper so I’m eating less than half of it. I also bought some guacamole snack packs to alternate which are 100 calories each.

For breakfast, I prepped a fruit cup which includes watermelon, strawberries, and grapes. I’ve also been eating Belvita Breakfast Crackers for a while now, but I just discovered how loaded they are in carbs and sugar. Each cracker equals a teaspoon of sugar and there are 4 crackers in each pack! I won’t be buying these again once they run out.

What’s funny is that I have never counted carbs and had not intended to worry too much about calories with this project. I knew if I ate better that those things would fall in line. But when I started measuring out my veggies and putting the meals together, it was neat to see just how low carb everything ended up being.

Add to this that I’m a big soda drinker. I usually drink Coke Zero at lunch, and have another in the afternoon. I love my soda but really wanted to try to cut it out of the daily work routine so I bought one of those aluminum thermos bottles. I love tea and decided to make my own tea each morning in the bottle and bring it along. I drink water in the morning and then have cold tea with lunch and in the afternoon. I do add 1 pack of artificial sweetener to the tea which I plan to eventually sub with something better.

So how’s it going? Great actually! On Day 2 I forgot my “cracker bag” but I didn’t really miss it. And on Day 3, I felt like it was too much food so I didn’t eat my tuna pack. I didn’t eat it on Day 4 or 5 either because my fruit and Belvita and my veggies and hard boiled egg were plenty. And surprisingly, I don’t miss soda!

I craved a snack in the afternoon on two days and satisfied it with those small single serve peanut butter packs. I also cheated on Valentine’s Day because someone brought cookies into the office. Other than that, I didn’t eat anything extra.

I’m going to switch up the variety next week and also cut out the Belvita. I may also sub the egg with my tuna pack on a few days just to get protein in. I think the egg and tuna both are too much.

I haven’t stepped on the scale yet to see if I lost any weight, but right now it’s too soon to tell.