Lunch Meal Planning, Delicious Lunch Idea & Recipe Link

I almost always plan my dinners for the week ahead. It makes it so much easier to grocery shop, and to keep from eating out when we already know what the plan is. 

This week, I took my meal planning one step further than I usually do, and planned out my lunches for the week. Lunchtime is the most challenging meal for me. I never know what to make, and end up overeating, eating something junky, or just kind of grazing a little bit. I'm hoping this will help me feel less "lost" at lunchtime everyday. I'm trying to keep my meals pretty "clean" too, and organic when I can.

Day one of a planned lunch was great! I made a Clean Eating Quinoa Avocado Salad that was to die for. SO GOOD! I used a recipe from The Gracious Pantry (which is one of my new favorite blogs), with just a few tiny tweaks. I didn't have any limes, so I used lemon. And I inadvertently used too much garlic powder. But, it was one of the best things to hit my palate in quite a while, really. It was simply bursting with flavor.

 
 This recipe is a "clean recipe", so it's dairy free, and it also happens to be gluten free. Perfect! The whole thing took less than 20 minutes to prepare. I highly recommend it! So, go ahead and head over to The Gracious Pantry for the full recipe!

How to Cut Fast Food From Your Diet

Ok, so I'll be the first to admit that the allure of the oh-so-convenient Drive-Thru has been a contributing factor to my growing waistline and shrinking pocketbook for years now.  With a busy schedule and hungry kids, it's just too easy to swing by one of these fast "food" joints to grab a meal. Sometimes multiple times in one day if it's a hectic day. Can you relate?

Recently, I have made some dietary changes for my daughter and myself. And I don't just mean, "we're on a diet".  These changes have kept us out of virtually every drive through there is (because there's nothing on the menu that we can order at almost all of them). They don't even tempt me anymore!

Back in December, my daughter and I made a change to our diets. After considering the developmental delays of my daughter, and doing some research (GoDairyFree.Org is a great starting place and resource. , I eliminated all dairy (and casein) from our diets. I blogged about the experience here.
Dairy Free was much easier than I had anticipated it would be. For the most part, we have not had any problems with that.
After we survived December and January without dairy, the time had come to eliminate gluten from our diet. (Why? http://alignlife.com/articles/digestivehealth/compelling-reasons-to-explore-a-gluten-free-lifestyle/) Obviously, that was a slightly bigger challenge than going Dairy Free was. It was a major diet overhaul. Still a work in progress. But I am happy to say that we are doing well with it.
But I'm not just substituting all of our old favorites with junky alternatives. I am incorporating as much "whole food", "clean eating", and organic foods into our lives as I can. And those boxes of processed foods? No more! It's a work in progress, but every day it gets a bit easier.
As for those fast food joints? Now I just drive by instead of drive through.