I have found that using a quality rice cooker not only simplifies the process, it makes fantastic rice. I also measure and cook enough rice for the week’s lunches in one large batch. Throw them in the cooker together, set the timer, and let it cook. Literally, this is a two-ingredient recipe-the chicken and the sauce. I prefer cooking several lean chicken breasts in the slow cooker or pressure cooker with a jar of salsa or a uniquely flavored sauce from the grocery store (hunt down the lowest in sugar). Preparing my lunches for the week in one day is fairly easy. Each meal has a lean protein source (usually chicken breasts), a carbohydrate source (usually white rice), and a healthy serving of vegetables. My work lunches have a simple, balanced focus. Focus on meal planning your work lunches to start. The best suggestion I can give on meal planning is to start simple. In those 15 years, our version of meal planning has changed and evolved many times. Our family has been doing some form of meal planning for the last 15 years. We all look at food differently, and what works for one person may not work for someone else. The first thing to keep in mind about meal planning is that it is personal. If you invested $1,715.50 a year in a mutual fund, at the end of a 25-year career, you could have around $168,000 (assuming an average annual compounded 10 percent rate of return) (). The one-year difference in cost between eating out and bringing something prepared from home is $1,715.50. A Visa Survey found that the average lunch out costs $11, while a prepared meal from home costs on average $6.30 (Huang, 2015). Not only is bringing food from home typically healthier and less calorie dense, it’s cheaper. There’s nothing wrong with planning and budgeting for a meal out now and then, but when that’s our everyday lunch while on shift, both the calories and expenses quickly add up. From what I have seen and tried over the years, meal planning is one of the easiest and most effective forms of calorie management. The message is that a successful weight-management or weight-loss program is highly dependent on calorie intake. The message here is not that calories are bad or that you need to burn off every calorie you consume through exercise. To burn off that meal in the weight room, you’re looking at about a 5½-hour lifting session (Langton, Livestrong). You’re not going to burn that off any faster lifting weights, either. That means if I am going to burn off those 1,450 calories, I will have to RUN more than 10 miles just to break even. “Not to worry,” you think, “I work out regularly, so I’ll burn those calories off with exercise.” A 190-pound person burns 142.5 calories for each mile he or she runs (McDougall, Livestrong). If you order a bacon cheeseburger (around 920 calories) and fries (around 530 calories), you are consuming around 1,450 calories. Let’s look at one of my favorite meals for an example. It’s much easier to cut calories than to burn them off.” (Wexler, 2017). On average, people who dieted without exercising for 15 weeks lost 23 pounds the exercisers lost only six over about 21 weeks.
As Shawn Talbot, the former director of the University of Utah Nutrition Clinic, reported, “An analysis of more than 700 weight loss studies found that people see the biggest short-term results when they eat smart. Generally, a healthy diet makes up a large percent of the successful weight-loss equation. While exercise is a critically important part of that equation, it is shockingly ineffective when it comes to losing weight. Most of us who are interested in meal planning want to live healthier lives, gain muscle, and lose fat. First, however, I believe we should start with some of the benefits. We will look at the basics only (since that’s all you need to get started), specifically, meal planning for lunches at work. This blog will address something that arguably, we all know is good for us, but that we dread starting or just never get around to: the frightfully simple practice of meal planning.