- Eating lunch speeds up your metabolism
- Lose weight by eating brie, bacon and peanut butter
- Take the 7 day eating lunch challenge
My last few posts were about bread and they got me thinking about high school and how I used to bring a salad for lunch. The ingredients? Vegetables. Plus a low-fat, store-bought dressing that I’d pour into a (clean!) Kodak film case.
Then I’d run between 10 and 17 kilometers after school with my cross country team.
One day I blacked out during my run.
Over all the years I ate salad for lunch I was overweight.
Why?
Because after days of feeling hungry and depriving my body of it’s basic needs I’d end up over-eating.
I didn’t realize at the time, but I was caught in a vicious cycle of starving, binging and often purging, through exercise and other means.
My experience may be EXTREME but it highlights a common mistake people make when trying to lose weight. Whether you:
- eat small meals and then end up snacking
- eat a salad instead of a meal and then end up snacking
- skip meals because you over-ate and then end up snacking…
The result is the same.
You confuse your body.
How?
Under-eating followed by over-eating slows down your metabolism. Then you gain weight.
But don’t worry! You can break this self-defeating pattern by getting your body into a healthy eating routine.
Eating lunch helps you get into a routine
Once I started eating 3 balanced meals and balanced snacks when I was hungry between meals I lost weight.
Meeting your body’s needs regularly speeds up your metabolism and helps you reach and maintain a healthy weight naturally.
Eating lunch challenge
Now that you understand why eating a balanced lunch regularly helps you lose weight, you’re ready to take the eating lunch challenge.
While your goal is to eat a balanced breakfast, lunch and dinner, it’s important to make small changes. So let’s start with lunch!
Over the next 7 days get your body into a healthy lunch routine.
For some people this might mean adding an apple or a dairy product (full fat is the healthiest) to your lunch. For others it could mean including a sandwich.
To help you get started here are the 7 sandwiches I ate over the last 7 days—they’re basically what I’ve been eating for lunch over the last 23+ years that I’ve been a healthy weight.
Eating lunch helps you lose weight Day 1:
Peanut butter and banana
Eating lunch helps you lose weight Day 2:
Tuna, mayonnaise, a squeeze of Sriracha sauce to give it a kick, onion and celery with tomato & basil
Eating lunch helps you lose weight Day 3:
Cheese, cucumber, tomato, mayonnaise & basil
Eating lunch helps you lose weight Day 4:
Avocado, brie, tomato & basil
Eating lunch helps you lose weight Day 5:
Egg, mayonnaise, Sriracha sauce, onion and celery with tomato & basil
Eating lunch helps you lose weight Day 6:
Classic bacon, lettuce and tomato with mayo & basil
Eating lunch helps you lose weight Day 7:
Smoked salmon and full-fat cream cheese with capers
When I was overweight I would NOT have eaten even half of one of these sandwiches for fear of gaining weight. During the 10 years I struggled, I thought I had to eat less than everyone else. I was sure I was born with a slow metabolism.
At the time I had no idea that all my food restrictions and being on and off diets was confusing my body.
Ready to STOP dieting & change my life for good
After 10 years of eating in a disordered way I was completely frustrated. I decided it was more important to be healthy than to be thin.
So I brought some order to my eating by getting into a healthy routine via a balanced breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And I was shocked that this healthy pattern:
- stopped me from being preoccupied by hunger
- allowed me to focus on my interests
- resulted in me losing weight.
Along with each of the 7 previous sandwiches I either had a latte or milky coffee made with 3.25% milk and a piece of fruit or sliced vegetables (like tomatoes, cucumbers and/or carrots) to make the meal more balanced. See the top photo in this post for an example!
Eating lunch challenge: Troubleshooting
Sandwich:
These sandwiches are just ideas. Often I’ll eat a cheese, tomato and mayo sandwich a few days in a row because it’s fast to make and I always have cheese in the fridge.
Bread:
All these sandwiches were made on the bagels I made from the easy bagel recipe I posted here. However the same sandwiches would be just as good on white bread, a wrap or any other bread you fancy.
Filling:
Include a higher-fat filling on your sandwich when you’re eating lunch. Remember, fat from a natural source is part of a balanced meal, which helps you lose weight naturally. Eating fat also helps you stay full so you can concentrate on your real goals. Staying focused on what you care about helps you lose weight. And that’s not all! Eating fat prevents cravings. And cravings often lead to overeating.
Meal Prep:
Your goal is to eat a roughly balanced lunch made mostly of whole foods. Don’t count calories or weigh your portions. Stop getting lost in the details! Just assemble a sandwich.
What to expect after a eating a balanced lunch:
You should feel full! It’s good to feel full after lunch. Then you’ll know you’ve met your body’s needs, which keeps your body happy and thus, your metabolism ticking! It might take some time to get used to the feeling. Don’t overthink it. Just eat a balanced lunch and get busy with the work or fun you have planned for the afternoon. If you’re hungry again before dinner eat a balanced snack.
What if you’re hungry right after lunch?:
Get busy. Sometimes it can take 10 minutes or so to feel satiated after a balanced lunch. If you’re still hungry, eat an apple or a balanced snack. Try one of these examples. Then try eating slightly larger portions the next day when you prepare your balanced lunch.
Are you up for the 7 day eating lunch challenge?
Stop eating low-fat salads for lunch made with processed dressings. Processed dressings are full of artificial ingredients that confuse your body and make you feel hungry.
Eating lunch helps you lose weight
Take the 7-day eating lunch challenge. It will remind you what a healthy meal looks like and how good it feels to give your body what it needs.
Make Today Count
Get into a healthy lunch routine. Make today count! Eat a balanced lunch today.
Build healthy eating and exercise habits. A healthy weight will follow.
Next Steps:
Take the 7 day lunch challenge. Start eating lunch! Ask a friend or family member to join you. Then consider how you can make your breakfast and dinner more balanced. Whether you’re eating very little most of the time or too much, you can turn your present choices into healthy habits with baby steps. Sign up (below) and you’ll receive my ONE DAY Mea Plan. It took years for me to figure out what to eat to unlock my H 🙂 PPY weight… but you’ll get it instantly!
Stop “breaking all the laws of science” and start working with your body.
Meet your body’s needs regularly.
Eat a balanced lunch made of real food.
What does eating lunch usually look like for you? What’s your favorite sandwich?
These kinds of meals and snacks unlocked my HAPPY weight 21+ years ago (I lost 30 pounds without dieting!)
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These kinds of meals and snacks unlocked my HAPPY weight 21+ years ago (I lost 30 pounds without dieting!)
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Sharing what I learned makes the 10 years I STRUGGLED worth it
Eating lunch helps you normalize your relationship with food and lose weight.
This post makes me brim with joy! This post just smashes out of ball-park the dieting mentality. When I used to be on a diet, I was scared to eat a sandwich, let alone put other things in them such as a full-fat cream cheese, smoked salmon, bacon, peanut butter and everything that you named. I thought that feeling full was not a feeling you should feel if you wanted to reach a healthy weight (and STAY there). But the proof is in the pudding. I now eat a sandwich very frequently, along with two other roughly balanced meals a day and I am losing weight slowly but surely. Thank you so much Kelly. Those bagels look awesome, by the way.
The more I read your posts, the more I realise how you focus on helping us normalise our eating. Your advice almost mirrors the way a child would eat if they had little knowledge on nutrition and experience with dieting. They would know that vegetables, fruit have important vitamins and minerals and that meat, dairy and eggs help you grow strong and that bread and other refined carbohydrates give you energy and are necessary for our function and are to be mostly eaten as part of a (roughly) balanced meal. And children are often lean and healthy. It seems that the more we overthink things and buy into the dieting culture and industry, we end up getting caught in self-defeating cycles which can and will ruin our mental and physical well-being. It wasn’t until I started dieting that I forgot “how to eat normally” and ended up gaining more weight in the process.
It takes some of us a while to realise that dieting just does not work. Period. Unfortunately, some of us may have to hit rock-bottom before realising this fact. My experience, like yours, was extreme as it culminated in a full-blown eating disorder (from severe restriction to severe binging). But, through going back to the basics and adhering to some principles such as breaking bad habits and creating healthier ones, I feel that I, too, am getting my life back. You’ve certainly helped this individual here, if not for many others who are also reading and following your wonderfully curated blog 🙂
Thanks so much Catherine!
I really love your statement:
“It seems that the more we overthink things and buy into the dieting culture and industry, the more we end up getting caught in self-defeating cycles which can and will ruin our mental and physical well-being.”
Getting lost in details (as dieting teaches us to do) lead me to over-complicate weight loss. Unlearning all the diet info we’re taught to believe can be the hardest part. For example, it took me a while to get used to higher fat milk after years of drinking and believing skim was best! Once I understood the importance of simplifying my approach and eating like a kid, as you’ve said, I lost weight.
BIG CONGRATULATIONS Catherine for all the awesome progress you’re making!!! Keep up the great work and keep moving forward. Having setbacks is part of building healthy habits. Really appreciate your feedback. xoKelly
I agree with Catherine that this is a great post – and so is your entire blog/site. I’m really happy to have found a kindred spirit and so many excellent posts. After a pre-diabetic blood sugar result in November 2016, I decided to improve my life by focussing on: eating 3 delicious, nutritious, and satisfying meals per day; slowly reducing portion sizes; slowly limiting or eliminating snacks; and enjoying occasional treats (baked goods, alcohol). I wasn’t looking to lose weight per se, mostly because I thought the post-menopausal weight gain was just an unmovable fact of life. Well, at the rate of about 1-2 pounds/month, I’ve now lost 20 pounds without ever feeling hungry or deprived! Exercise? Walking daily and swimming 3 times/week plus a generally active life.
I found your blog about a month ago and really appreciate how well you’ve articulated how to go about leading a healthy and happy life. You’ve set out a blueprint for those who want to make positive changes. And although I’ve successfully been on much the same path, your posts have helped me go further. For example, I’ve been adding full fat dairy back in to my diet but was finding it surprisingly hard to go against so many years of low(er) fat programming. Your posts have been helpful!
It’s frustrating to see friends continue to punish their bodies and themselves with rigid dieting and/or unhappiness about their weight. It seems everyone has to discover their own path but if there’s an opening, I hope to gently steer some towards your site.
Thanks for your message Louise! I love that you’ve made change gradually and not deprived yourself. Those approaches are key (and took me 10 years to figure out!!) Your exercise routine is also great. I was a total over-exerciser and now do just 3 (25 min.) workouts a week. I also LOVE walking. My dog makes that choice easy! Your feedback means a lot to me and I’m excited you want to share this blog with your friends. xoKelly
Thanks, Kelly, this is really helpful! I’ve never made bagels and look forward to trying your recipe!
I’m so happy this post resonated with you Kathy. I try to write about things that I struggled to figure out. If you have any specific questions, etc. let me know and I’d love to do a blog post on them! If I don’t know the answer I can do my best to find out. Thanks again Kathy, xoKelly
I was interested to read Louise’s comment as I also was diagnosed as pre-diabetic and have since been following the dietary and lifestyle guidelines from the 10 Principles. I have always tried to eat healthily and thought I was on the right track but the diagnosis pulled me up short! I have been eating regular 3 meals per day, using natural foods, avoiding processed food and using full fats (cold pressed rapeseed oil or olive oil). I am careful which fruits I eat as many are high in sugar so in general, berries are best! I have just completed my 6 month review and have lost 2.2 kgs, 5cm from my waist and, best of all, my blood sugar reading, HbA1c is now 33, normal!! I exercise as much as I can, I am very active but try to fit in swimming twice a week and walk everywhere as much as possible. Yours is a very sensible approach Kelly and it works, I am the proof. Thank you!
This is amazing news Carole! I’m so happy for you. Avoiding processed food, as you said, is so important. We’re trained by the diet industry to think low-fat diet food is good for us! I spent years reading the back of boxes and bags (of rice cakes, diet pop, low-fat yogurts, etc.) to check calories and fat content, believing wholeheartedly that I was making the best choices for my body. Now I know factory food is stripped of the fiber and nutrients that our bodies need and often replaced with sugar, artificial ingredients, salt, etc. Fake food keeps you feeling hungry! Woohoo re: your normal blood sugar reading. It’s wonderful to control your health through eating and exercise.
I eat breakfast, I eat lunch and I eat dinner, but I still graze. I know my reason is boredom and right now we are very slow at work. I am fine on the weekends at home because typically we are busy. I think the only way I can overcome at work is to empty my desk drawer of snacks and eat a more filling lunch.
Hi Lee! Thanks for writing about your experience. I think that “boredom” and “habit” are guilty as charged. That’s awesome you noticed a pattern. I used to love cracking open a can of diet pop (24 a day to be precise) and if I opened a pack of gum I had to chew every piece. Neither of these choices were out of hunger. Simply habit. Rather than feel disappointed in yourself and trying to have the WILLPOWER to stop right now (I tried that unsuccessfully for 10 years), try being kind to yourself by making small changes. Then the change you make will be lasting. This sounds so simple, and possibly frustrating if you want dramatic change. (Who doesn’t!?) BUT, I learned the hard way that gradual change is the FASTEST way to build a healthy habit. Here’s a technique that will help you STOP snacking at work: https://www.the10principles.com/lose-weight-how-to-get-started/ You can also bring an apple and/or other natural food for snacks so that if you’re hungry between meals you have healthy options. Let me know how it goes! 🙂 Kelly
Just re-visited this post and learned a lot again. I really appreciate the comments, too! Very encouraging! 🙂
Thanks Kathy! Being able to eat a sandwich for lunch shocked me after years of trying to starve myself. But eating “wakes up” your metabolism and allows you to get on with the rest of the day without thinking about food, weight and hunger. I lost 30 pounds (reached my healthy weight naturally) when I started eating 3 balanced meals made mostly of whole foods each day. Thank you again for your comment! xo
Hi Kelly, I have been adhering to your good ideas for just over a month. I look forward to lunch now! And breakfast and dinner. Mealtime is not a daunting task of calculating what I can and can not eat. Except for trying to avoid cakes and biscuits and sweets most of the week, all foods are back on the table. Legalism about food has now gone and has been replaced by three good meals, full of healthy foods that fill me up and give me the energy I need to get through busy days. Eating properly, and keeping my body moving through three good cardio sessions and walking for half an hour on the other days also gives me emotional balance to be a “better me”, and gives me time to focus on my loved ones, and on being creative and enjoying my work and hobbies. I would love to slowly lose weight, and I need to really, but at the moment my weight is happily stable and not shifting much downwards. Not upwards either though! I am keen to see what happens over time with that, but my healthy outlook, healthy habits, and happy mind are quite enough to keep me going now. Thanks Kelly for all the great encouragement and suggestions on this blog!
So happy to hear you’re full of energy and getting your body into a healthy routine, J. Depending on how long you’ve been dieting it can take some time to “wake up” your metabolism; aka get it out of survival mode. Keep focusing on eating ROUGHLY balanced meals made MOSTLY of whole foods and regular exercise. And of course loving life. Perhaps keep track of the treats you eat each week and try to cut them down gradually. Without knowing exactly what you’re eating it’s hard for me to comment. It’s also important to stop weighing yourself and TRUST THE PROCESS. Then you can listen to your body (it wants to be a healthy weight because all its jobs are easier when it’s not carrying around extra pounds.) And keep being creative. Focusing on life – as you are – rather than weight, makes the whole experience of unlocking your H 🙂 PPY weight easier. When you stop fixating and let go, your body will be under less stress. Remember, you’ve dieted for over a decade… and it’s just been around a month since you’ve stopped restricting. Keep giving your body what it needs, keep being kind to your body, and it will respond. LOVE your updates so much. xoKelly
Thanks Kelly! I know I need to get rid of the scales. I think I will feel able to soon. I am slightly concerned that I may derail and that I need to have a regular weight in to check that I am keeping on the tracks. But soon…. YES! I think maybe a few too many sweet treats might be an issue. How many would you say would be appropriate for one week? I was originally thinking just two desserts in a week, and at celebrations again maybe? I have recently been having a bit more than that though, more like maybe four in a week. Good suggestion to look at that! And also, I also need to watch the butter on my bread and not be too generous, remembering that fat is a small wedge on the eatwell guide plate!! Thanks Kelly, blessings to you over the holiday season! J xo
I used to weight myself MANY times a day! The whole time I was 30 pounds overweight.
For the last 21+ years I’ve been my H 🙂 PPY weight I’ve only set foot on a scale at the doctor’s office.
Putting your scale away allows you to listen to your ultra-smart body… instead of a scale who’s messages get in the way of the natural process.
Scales also don’t take into account:
– when you’re menstruating (you’ll weigh more)
&
– if you’re building muscle from regular exercise (muscle weighs more than fat but is more compact… so you’ll drop in dress size without your weight changing).
Cutting back on sugar is always a good thing – keeping in mind moderation is key.
Happy holidays to you too J, and all those you love.
And I hope you feel AMAZING for making 2020 the year you stopped dieting and started eating food your body loves.
xoKelly