Next up in the meal plan is lunch as you may have guessed. I would say lunch is the hardest meal to work around when trying to eat healthy, at least for me. There is a lot of temptation all around us during the day that can lead to some not so great food choices. A great example is joining work friends ordering take out or asking if you want to join them at a restaurant. I personally work around a lot of different places that I could leave and go to grab something for lunch. Some of these choices are good, and some are bad. There also is a food truck in our parking lot at least once a week. While I am sure some of the trucks that come have some decent options, those are not always going to offer the best choices either. 

In my meal plan that I follow now, lunches should be the second biggest meal of the day. I personally try to keep my lunch in the 400-500 calorie range. You want something healthy but big enough to help you get through the rest of your day (and workout if you go after work like I do). I try to keep my lunches exciting and satisfying as well.

My first word of advice is to plan things out. Typically I am deciding what I want to make for my lunches the next week on Thursday. From there I write out a shopping list of all the ingredients to make sure I get everything over the weekend. Pick one day of the weekend to do your prep as well (otherwise known as meal prep of course). I personally do all of my cooking on Sundays. I know in the past I never used to plan things ahead like this and that always lead to me scrambling in the morning before work, or I just decided to buy something for lunch which as I mentioned earlier doesn't always lead to the best choices. If you have a nice plan and do all the prep at once, then it is one less thing you have to think about during your busy week.

This week I made Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese from the Cooking Light: The New Way to Cook Light cook book.