Lose Weight Program > Brown-bagging your lunch on a diet

What if you have to carry your own lunch? The sandwich is the mainstay of box lunches and it has been somewhat maligned. A sandwich is not necessarily an evil producer of fat. It is only the sum of its parts and can be an entirely excellent food.



Spare the butter, peanut butter, jam, and jelly, and a sandwich can do right by you. Begin with two thin slices of whole grain or enriched bread. Lay between them a slice of Swiss cheese, a fried egg (soak up surplus fat in kitchen paper towels), a slice of boiled ham with fat removed, a generous cut from a lean beef roast, slices of poultry meat. A little mustard or catsup or thin pickle slices add to moisture and palatability without seriously adding to calories. A few lettuce leaves or sliced tomatoes are excellent additions where the combinations are tasty.

An apple, banana, orange, peach, grapes, or other fruit in its original wrapping packs well and makes a good dessert. You can also slice some carrot strips or consume as many celery stalks as you feel disposed to. In fact, chopped carrots or celery can be applied usefully in sandwich fillings. If you carry your own lunch box with a thermos bottle, you' can have skim milk by pouring off the top cream. But a glass of milk is a good idea even if all you can get is whole milk with its somewhat higher calorie count. And while you are at it, don't forget the hard-boiled egg as a lunch box item. It's an excellent protective food and a little salt makes it plenty appetizing.

It is always comforting to remember that calorie intake is a matter of the whole day's food and not of a single meal. If for social, political, or personal reasons you feel that you have to eat generously of a certain meal, strike a balance by reasonable abstemiousness the rest of the day. A heavy-intake day may cause you to lose ground instead of weight, but there's another day coming and you can make up for it if some quite human indulgence does not lure you to resign from the fight permanently.

A GRAPH TO KEEP YOUR SPIRITS UP
And Your Weight Down!

You're likely to be disappointed if you weigh yourself every day to see how many ounces your diet has taken off. It's better to weigh yourself once a week, and to realize that results may not show until the end of the second week, when water retention in the tissues becomes adjusted.

This simple little chart will give you a visual picture of your reducing progress. Weigh yourself at the beginning of your diet and put a dot on the chart at the point where the vertical line for the first week intersects with your weight. After one week, weigh again (at the same time of day and under the same circumstances of clothing, etc. -- preferably when you arise in the morning, since you'll weigh less then) and put a second dot where the weight line intersects the vertical line for the second week. Keep this up week by week, connecting the dots with a straight line, and you should have a graph that tumbles downward. Do not be disappointed if the graph levels out into' a plateau for a week or two. That is perfectly normal and quite to be expected as the body adjusts itself to its new food habits. The chart is opposite this page.



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