Fast food is my downfall. If I didn’t have the money, I couldn’t cave in to an urge!

Didn’t read all of the comments, so forgive me if this is a repeat, but get yourself a Klean Kanteen for bringing water from home – it’s stainless steel, easy to wash, recycleable, and you can get a 40-oz one that will take care of most of your water needs. I’ve had a few of them for years, and while they get dented, they’ve yet to break, and I tend to drop them from high places!

Get an air popcorn popper ($20 at Walmart) and use that to replace the chip munching.

Is this the only book you’re ever going to write? Would it not be more sensible to set healthy standards now so that when you work on whatever your next project is, your health won’t suffer?

Nuts are awesome for a quick snack and there are so many different types that you can switch it up without getting bored. I have to echo the comment about Clif bars as well though, not only are they not made for meal replacement or non-workout snacks, their main ingredient is soy protein isolate which at the very least is questionable (talk about processed!).

Love the Brita idea and I wholly encourage you to set a timer to take 20 minutes for a walk outside, it’ll seriously help avoid burnout.

I’ve taken to batch making my lunch time meals which end up costing me the most without me realizing it if I don’t make them. Sunday I make a big meal, I make a few big meals and store them away for lunches all week long. I make sure they are varied and I’ll enjoy them…that way I have something to stick to during the week…works like a charm, saves me time, saves me money…now only if I could kill my diet soda addiction…

But don’t freak about it – There are numerous goals that you are striving for and you can’t make progress on all of them at the same time. As long as you keep working on them, you’ll eventually get where you want to be.

Bring a Brita filter and put it in the shared kitchen. It’ll allow you to socialize a bit more with your building mates and get you out of your chair for refills. You can always take a large glass to your desk. Or bring a large Nalgene with you to work for some weight training exercise.

As an aside, when I get really busy and stressed, I tend to eat less. I have to set an appointment and remind myself I have time to eat, socialize, and go for a walk. Otherwise I’ll find myself eating a stale bagel around 3pm for my lunch…

Since there’s a shared kitchen in the office space, I would just suggest, label your snacks and put them in there. It will make you leave your office if you get hungry, but in a way that is more likely to result in interacting with another human! Keeping them in the office won’t serve that need and you might end up eating *more* out of boredom.

McDonald’s Caesar salad (the one made with “Renee’s Mighty Caesar” dressing) has the same amount of fat as a Big Mac burger. They both contain 29 grams of fat. Look it up.

Those who indulge in the junk guilt-free, you should know the full extent of what you’re eating. If you get an Angus Burger with Bacon and Cheddar, with a large fries and large Coke, you’re consuming (wait for it) an incredible 1,620 calories, and 72 grams of fat (23 of which are the artery-clogging kind: saturated and trans).

See for yourself:

http://www.mcdonalds.ca/pdfs/NutritionFactsEN.pdf

As for JD, I’ve found that making big batches of healthy food (rice, chili, pasta, etc.) and freezing them in individual ZipLoc containers has completely cured me of being caught without lunch. With a deep freeze full of 40 ZipLoc containers full of tasty, healthy, homemade meals, there’s no excuse for being too lazy to bring luch to work. I just grab a container, fill a bottle with some juice or milk, and go to work. But you really need a fridge at work, and a microwave.

-High Fructose Corn Syrup. Your body cannot respond to HFCS so it cannot break it down and stores it as fat. In fact, it does nothing to suppress your appetite and makes you EAT or DRINK MORE (hence the invention of a 32-Ouncer at 7/11).
- Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil. It’s basically margarine or veggie oil in solid form. This is also Trans Fat. So bad the food companies have been after the FDA to drop it on labels but lost the battle in 2003 (must be on all labels). 7 grams is like an order of fries; daily intake of 7-10 grams increase your chances for heart disease by 50 percent.
-Saturated fats. Animal fats (ie. fatty meats and whole milk). The HARDEST fat to get ride of and goes right to the gut.

If the first items on the package have sugar, PHVO, or HFCS, throw it away! That leaves actually A LOT of really great stuff you could eat, but you have to make time to prepare it. Fail to plan and you plan to fail.

1) it’s generally less expensive than the alternatives
2) it’s almost always faster to obtain and eat
3) there’s usually less clean up, if there’s any at all, and
4) while it’s politically correct to be concerned about the virtues of healthy choices, most of it tastes pretty stinking good!

If none of the above were true, none of us would struggle with junk food at all, but clearly it has some “virtues”, even if we’re uncomfortable admitting as much in public.

We’ll struggle with junk food as long as it exists.

Forces me to eat what I have, which I know is better for me than anything else I’d get anyway. And on days when I plan to eat out, I savor every minute.

No coffee for me, it was messing with my sleep.

Yeah, I have my dumb junk food moments. I am a sucker for the McD Mushroom and Swiss Angus burger. On my crave days, I find reasons to go out, like get groceries or go to the library or anything that will get me into McD’s vicinity so I can get my hands on value meal no#14.

Not too worried about gaining weight though because I have a crawlspace project right now that involves digging dirt and hauling 50lb bags of rocks while on my knees due to the 3 to 4 ft clearance.

Okay, gotta get my angus burger. Good luck on the book!

Maybe for human interaction you should plan a regular call with Kris or maybe colleagues/mentors — have a list and just go down the list so you don’t have to think about it — or you can ring up willing blog readers!

They would both recommend that you go back to your leisurely walks through the neighborhood or go back home for lunch if you want to keep your productivity up through the book-writing experience without burning out. Not only is it better for waist-line and sanity, but it’s also better for writing.