Packed Lunch

I usually work from home, but I do sometimes need to be out for the day, and then I take a packed lunch. It's pretty easy for me, because lunch at home is nearly always a big salad, so rather than putting it in a bowl, I just put it in a plastic box instead. I do like a crunchy salad, so I'm not keen on adding to a plastic box salad too many things that are going to make everything limp (such as lemon juice) – and of course dressing is right out!

So here is the packed lunch I made this morning...

• 360g lettuce
• 200g cucumber
• 200g celery
• 120g tomatoes
• 100g broccoli
• 80g red pepper
• 70g radishes
• 50g tuna steak
• 20g rocket

To put that lot into a lunchbox needed a big lunchbox! Mine is a giant 25cm x 22cm x 8cm, and I could only just get the lid on, but it still worked out at only 218 calories. And that was for 1,200g of food – over two and a half pounds, which took over 30 minutes to eat. My Nutracheck food diary tells me that the lunch gave me 14 portions of fruit and veg, and only 4g of fat.

I've eaten a lunchtime salad on most days for the last two years, and there is no end to the different ingredients that I can add to it, to keep lunchtime interesting. Now I'm in maintenance, I can even use it to increase calories if I need to, by adding things such as seeds, nuts or smoked salmon, but the one I prepared today is a pretty normal 'careful' one.