Magrat, I'm beginning to think that your feelings of weakness/dizziness (and need to comfort with food) are as much about the misery of your work situation as they are about a biological need.

That being said, if you pack your snacks carefully, you should be able to do it. For example, a low-fat string cheese is 60 calories, a ziplocked bag of baby carrots (1 oz) is 20 calories, and a whole-wheat cracker thin is 30 calories. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes (max) to eat that food. Snack #2 could be 1/2 oz peanut butter with 2 sticks of celery. Snack #3 could be a large apple and 6 almonds, or an unsweetened greek yoghurt sprinkled with Splenda. You get the idea- all of these are prepped at home, take just a few minutes to consume, and are filling and fiber-rich. Pack each snack individually, and if you must, put each in a separate lunch bag (complete with plastic spoon for the yogurt, or plastic knife for the peanut butter) labelled #1, #2 and #3.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by neurodoc:
Magrat, I'm beginning to think that your feelings of weakness/dizziness (and need to comfort with food) are as much about the misery of your work situation as they are about a biological need.

That being said, if you pack your snacks carefully, you should be able to do it. For example, a low-fat string cheese is 60 calories, a ziplocked bag of baby carrots (1 oz) is 20 calories, and a whole-wheat cracker thin is 30 calories. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes (max) to eat that food. Snack #2 could be 1/2 oz peanut butter with 2 sticks of celery. Snack #3 could be a large apple and 6 almonds, or an unsweetened greek yoghurt sprinkled with Splenda. You get the idea- all of these are prepped at home, take just a few minutes to consume, and are filling and fiber-rich. Pack each snack individually, and if you must, put each in a separate lunch bag (complete with plastic spoon for the yogurt, or plastic knife for the peanut butter) labelled #1, #2 and #3.

Good luck.

Thanks for the snack advice. I do want to emphatically emphasis however that I am not comforting myself with food because I don't like my job. I'm not comforting myself with food at all. My workday calories are higher than I would like them to be for the simple reason that I am doing hard physical labor for eight hours a day and I am experiencing honest to God gotta fuel the body or I won't be able to keep going hunger.

What I really need to do is figure out a way to lower my breakfast and lunch calories while still making the meals sustaining enough to get me through the workday.

Originally Posted by Magrat:
Thanks for the snack advice. I do want to emphatically emphasis however that I am not comforting myself with food because I don't like my job. I'm not comforting myself with food at all.

It's not that straightforward. I don't mean that you are drowning your sorrows in a pint of Haagen Dazs; I mean it's possible that the lightheaded/dizzy feeling you get if you don't eat x calories at lunch may be a psychological reaction to the stressors rather than a strictly biological reaction. Many people respond to stress and unpleasant situations with physical symptoms- frequent migraines, or chronic low back pain, or frequent bouts of abdominal cramps. These physical ailments often improve or disappear if the person's stressors are relieved.

The more important point is not what the feelings are from (psychological, hypoglycemia, inadequate calories) but what you can do about them. From everything I've read, frequent small meals ("snacks") are the most productive strategy; more effective than trying to fuel yourself for 4+ hours with a single ultra-filling but low calorie meal. If you're determined to try the latter anyway, obviously the more fiber and water you consume the more full you will feel, so a big bowl of diet fiber-1 cereal at breakfast, and a giant salad and bowl of vegetable soup at lunch would be very filling without adding significant calories.

Originally Posted by neurodoc:
It's not that straightforward. I don't mean that you are drowning your sorrows in a pint of Haagen Dazs; I mean it's possible that the lightheaded/dizzy feeling you get if you don't eat x calories at lunch may be a psychological reaction to the stressors rather than a strictly biological reaction. Many people respond to stress and unpleasant situations with physical symptoms- frequent migraines, or chronic low back pain, or frequent bouts of abdominal cramps. These physical ailments often improve or disappear if the person's stressors are relieved.

The more important point is not what the feelings are from (psychological, hypoglycemia, inadequate calories) but what you can do about them. From everything I've read, frequent small meals ("snacks") are the most productive strategy; more effective than trying to fuel yourself for 4+ hours with a single ultra-filling but low calorie meal. If you're determined to try the latter anyway, obviously the more fiber and water you consume the more full you will feel, so a big bowl of diet fiber-1 cereal at breakfast, and a giant salad and bowl of vegetable soup at lunch would be very filling without adding significant calories.

Neurodoc please please try to understand that I am not limiting myself to three meals a day on workdays by choice. I know that for weight loss purposes eating more frequently in the way to go. But that's simply not an option for me on workdays, much as I wish it was. As I've mentioned before I don't really have time to eat anything more than a quick bite during my breaks. And while I am actually working I am using strong chemicals, running equipment that requires two hands to operate and taking out laboratory trash which might contain toxic waste. I wear rubber gloves unless I am running a piece of equipment and then I wear work gloves.

As far as my meals go I'm not looking for fullness so much as satiety and staying power. Actually I hate the feeling of being overly full. The cereal does sound like a good alternative to oatmeal ( one of my go to breakfasts by the way) but salad and soup together is just too much volume for me.