Was your lunch healthy?

It's only just past breakfast time here...but yeah...much lunch is always healthy. 1/2 Lb garden salad with Italian dressing, 1/2 avocado, 6 ounces (cooked weight) of grilled chicken breast, Boiled egg, and an apple.

PB&J: Lunch of champions.

Yup, grilled chicken and steamed veggies.

Left over Beer Brat and baked beans and mac n cheese. No, not healthy (except the beans maybe) but leftovers are affordable:)

jplis wrote: »

Analyze and reflect on your lunch choice for today. Is it healthy? Let's discuss in a paragraph.

Be careful with that word. Healthy? Hm. You can eat 1,000 calories worth of food that is considered 'healthy' and go over your deficit and have a bad macro balance. Or you can eat a meal that some would consider 'unhealthy' that stays within your calorie goals, and maintains your calorie goals.
say you eat a whole avocado, and have several stalks of celery filled with natural peanut butter. Dip some baby carrots in hummus, drink some homemade lemonade with it. have a plate of fresh cut fruit. toss in a couple of handsful of almonds. you've got a lot of calories in this one meal, a lot of fat and sugar. but a lot of people would call this a 'healthy' meal.
Now have a small burger made with a slice of deli cheese on a bun with a small order of fries on the side. Put lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and onions on the burger, and you've got a very well-rounded meal, macro-wise. Protein, carbs, fat, and it's about 600 calories, if you kept it to a decent size.
see how it can be a misconception to call things healthy or unhealthy?

Everything I eat in a day is healthy. It's not very wise to take one meal and assess whether it is healthy or not. Sometimes I don't even eat lunch, but I still manage to get the right amount of calories and balanced macros for that day. It's just like you can't analyze how a person eats on Thanksgiving Day and say they always eat a lot. Context is important.

Why don't you join in? At 14 posts, asking other members to "analyze" and "reflect" on their choices while you don't do the same is off putting.

I didn't wake up until 2 in the afternoon today so I didn't have lunch until about 3.45. It was a grapefruit. Not feeling very hungry yet and I'm having a big dinner

mccindy72 wrote:

therein lies the problem. So many people are afraid of food groups they don't understand. Well-balanced eating is important. the second meal is much more well-balanced. the first meal is good sometimes ( and I eat meals like it sometimes, but not nearly that large, because it's far too many calories), but people need good protein and fat sources in their diets and don't understand that. many people aren't losing weight because they eat large portions of what they think of as 'healthy' foods and never learn to eat in moderation.

Right, but this question wasn't about diet in general -- it was specifically asking what each of us, individually, thinks of one particular meal in our day. Personally, I'd consider the first meal just fine on fat and protein what with the nut butter, hummus, and almonds. I'd also consider the second meal just fine, but for me it's less healthy because I aim for a lot more vegetables and fewer starchy carbs at each meal. (I also watch sodium and saturated vs monounsaturated fats, but again, that's personal preference.)

My point was that the first poster who compared those two meals called one "healthy" because it was lower in calories, with really no other analysis other than "it has all three macros." I'm suggesting that everyone evaluates the healthfulness of any given meal differently, so implying that calorie count is an indicator of health value isn't particularly helpful.

Chicken in herb cream sauce with roast vegetable tian (sliced tomato, potato, squash and zucchini topped with Italian cheese). I feel like I did pretty well there.