Cuckoo for Cooler bags

You can find this ADORABLE bento box here on Amazon. It's called the Laptop Bento Box. Mad props to Shelly from The World According to Egg Face for finding it. She had gastric bypass surgery and has lost a tremendous amount of weight. She also has some of the best recipes I have seen in the blogosphere. Very creative and simple as well. Check her out!

Until recently, I had enough "lunch pails" and cooler bags to make an orphanage envious, but in the big clear-out due to the kitchen remodel, I gave many of them away.  For a while back in my lean days, I even carried a diaper bag because there are so many great compartments and some of them are insulated. I always lamented that no designer ever produced a really trendy "IT" bag that is also a cooler. Back then I thought that there must be a huge demand for such an item! When I mentioned it to my 'normal' friends, I got polite acknowledgment or just blank stare. It was a sign.

That was back in the day when I was really focused on being as lean as my body could ever be, and torturing friends and family alike while ordering food in restaurants. I ate as little fat as possible and tried to fill up on lots of fibrous veggies and protein. Barely a carb passed these lips (popcorn excepted). I ate a lot of egg whites (NO YOLKS!). I drank a lot of smoothies. I was lean. I was also a grouch.

I remember a couple of years ago, we had just gone out to eat with some friends. When we returned home from the restaurant, I promptly walked over to the microwave to pop some popcorn. Our dear friend, Ron exclaimed, "What are you DOING? We just ate!! Do you have WORMS or something?!" My friend Jill came to my defense by pointing out that I had only ingested a few lettuce leaves so it was no surprise that I was obviously still hungry!

Here is a photo of us going out to eat on that day. I'm actually drinking a shake on my way into breakfast. There's the diaper bag. I did love that thing...it was indestructible:

2007, ~133 pounds and carrying 4 pounds of food and a smoothie on the way to breakfast

For the record, I still do drink a 100-300 calorie shake every morning and as a 'snack.'  Occasionally I will drink a shake if I'm starving before going to a restaurant.  It helps to take the edge off intense hunger so that I don't do a face-plant into a bowl chips and consume 500 calories before the meal ever arrives.

You know, I understand the Clean Eating & Oxygen Magazine's concept behind eating 5-6 small meals/snacks a day, but it just did not work for me. I found that I spent the whole day either eating, prepping or packing food (in one of my many coolers). If I wasn't eating, I was starving and therefore thinking about my next meal/snack.

I have found in the last few months that larger, more filling meals (with some fat) work better for my body and mind. Yes, I'm about 5-10 pounds heavier, but it's worth it to me.

November 2009. ~142 pounds.

It was when I wrote this post on trying to be "more normal" that I was finally able to loosen my death-grip on the cooler bags. I no longer feel the need to always carry huge amounts of clean eats on my person at all times like I used to do. Yes, it was smart to always have a stash of carrots, celery, a few hard boiled eggs, a shake and some Laughing Cow Light cheese. But to go to the market!? The market that is TWO minutes away?? Silliness. I learned a valuable lesson a while back: Unlike emotional hunger, REAL hunger can wait. This one a-HA moment served as a blow to the world-wide cooler-bag industry as I would no longer be single-handedly keeping them afloat.

So while I still use a cooler bag for an emergency shake and when I'm eating lunch out, I don't rely on packing all my food for the enitre day anymore. It is liberating, I won't lie. I do also keep an assortment of non-perishable emergency snacks in the purse, but far fewer than before.

Having said all that, if that super cute Bento Box at the top of the post actually had a separate compartment for a laptop, I would be defenseless against such cuteness and practicality. After all, it's called the "Laptop Bento Box!" Hello, I'm all for blogging over lunch!

For any new readers, feel free to check out this past post on chlling out when things don't go as planned (or 'your food is covered in oil and you eat it anyway.')

So I leave you with a text from Ron on Thanksgiving day 2009:

• Ron: "Have a great Thanksgiving. Don't eat too much! Well, don't let the worms eat too much"

Q: Do you have worms? I mean, do you eat little and often, or do you eat 3 squares?