A Whole New Lunch Look Without Meat

Standing on the plateau of my same weight for the last several months has not made me a happy camper. But who knew that picking up a new popular diet book would not only make me change my eating style, it would cure the plateau blues, and give me more energy than I've had in all those months.

I know that not everyone looks at their lunch in terms of their diet, or latest diet as the case may be, like I do: day in and day out for...oh...the last twenty-five years but then again, there are some of you out there just like me. It seems like every time I get on a diet bandwagon, i.e., Atkins, South Beach, Sonoma, etc., it always works for a little while, a little while until I get tired of eating meat,w hich for me doesn't take but a few bites.

In a way, I've started yet another so-called diet, but in another way I've allowed myself to be free. Free from meat. I did read a new diet book called "Skinny Bitch" by Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman that advocates a vegan diet lifestyle although I don't remember them actually yelling the word vegan over and over. What they did was talk very confrontationally, quite frankly, about how if you put crap into your body you will look like crap. Simplistic but true in a simplistic way. Maybe that's why it motivated me. Maybe I need to face the fact that at heart I'm simple. Okay, I admit, I also responded to the cursing and other colorful language. Maybe that was it. It spoke my language.

Whatever the mechanism, I have found myself mostly free of meat for the last several weeks and I'm liking it. I enjoy my meals more, I'm not constantly feeling guilty for not getting enough protein which seems to be the ultimate sin these days, and I feel better, not worse! I love vegetables. I love fruit. I love pasta and rice and quinoa and whole wheat bread. I love oatmeal and granola. I'm in a little corner of heaven these days.

Let's talk about lunch. For me, working nightshift, my so called lunch hour is at 2:00am. That's a time when I need to eat something to get me through the second half of a twelve hour shift but it's the middle of the night, folks. I don't want to eat something heavy and then go home and try to sleep during the day. It's hard enough to sleep when I'm not bogged down, gassy, and heartburnish!

Lacto-not-so-ovo-vegetarian has been working really well for me. This is one of my favorite lunches so far: cucumber sandwiches on white whole wheat bread, a few cashews and almonds, snappy sugar peas, a kiddie carton of soy milk, and two over-stuffed Oreos so I don't forget the white bread middle of America girl that I am at heart.

To make the cucumber sandwiches, I spread one piece of bread with light cream cheese and spinkle on my favorite all purpose seasoning called Cavenders, specifically a Greek seasoning. I spread Plugra European-style butter on the other slice of bread and then stack slices and slices of cucumber cut as paper thin as I can get them. Quick and easy to put together and well-appreciated in the middle of the night when my co-workers are foundering on fried this and baked-to-death that from the crapateria.

And yes, I do notice the dichotomy of the light cream cheese on the same sandwich with the high fat butter. It's....just one of those things. Don't think about it. Just eat it and enjoy.

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This Post was written by Glenna from A Fridge Full of Food...and nothing to eat.