Power Lunch

Make Lunch Your Main (Protein) Meal of The Day

Like all the strategies we share, you don't HAVE to do this, but it has been proven to be an effective weight loss/weight control strategy for many people.

The idea is simple: you want to not only make lunch the main meal, but ensure it contains high protein — the most protein of any meal of the day. In fact you can DOUBLE (or more) the protein you'd normally consider for a meal. And you can even "force" yourself to eat more.

This strategy fills you up for a long time which helps prevent late afternoon cravings for snacks.

It also helps you make more healthy dinner choices. And, by eating less at dinner, your body can be burning more fat while you sleep.

Tip: To boost the effect (avoiding afternoon snacks, and eating a lighter, healthier dinner), you may want to try eating a late lunch.

Plan Ahead

If you aren't a morning person, or you are often rushed in the morning (most of us are), you are likely to leave without a lunch ... and end up buying an unhealthy vending machine lunch or spending too much money eating out.

Here are some ideas to avoid that:

• Pack your lunch at night -- either as part of dinner or when you are cleaning up.
• If you can't pre-assemble it all, put all the parts of lunch in the same spot in the fridge so it is easy to assemble.
• When making dinner, for only a little more time and energy, you can double the recipe or make extra -- and have enough leftovers for lunch the next day (and maybe the next).
• Use refreezable ice packs

Bottom line ... Aim to "grab and go"!

You will be in control of how much you eat (portions) and the nutrition content. Much less stressful, too.

One Step Further

You can also pack and prep for the week on a weekend evening.

Pre-portion out food like fruit, yogurt, cottage cheese, vegetables, dips, etc, into plastic containers or baggies.

Try to cook main dishes -- or parts of it -- as well. For example, you can thaw and cook a bunch of fish filets all at once.