|  |     First of all, I know you've probably heard this but DON'T
    skip those earlier meals.  You burn off calories more
    efficiently when you're awake and moving around than when
    you're vegging around or asleep.  Plus your body needs the
    energy to keep you doing whatever exercise you have chosen
    to do, so that your weightloss will be fat and not muscle
    mass.  You lose that muscle mass and you're up a creek
    without a paddle - it's very tough to gain back.  You lose
    the actual fibers and you WON'T gain them back.
    
    Enough.
    
    Now, cool recipes - well, sandwiches made with LESS(tm) bread
    are great for lunch.  At 40 cal/slice you can eat two and it
    only counts as one bread/grain.  To put on it, you can make
    low-cal tuna-salad.  No real recipe, just use LOTS of veggies
    diced up small and use, per can of tuna, about 3 Tbsp of non-fat
    yogurt and, if you want, one or two teaspoons of mayo or miracle
    whip for taste.  Use herbs and garlic (if you like garlic) to
    spice it up.  You can make about 3 sandwiches worth out of one
    can of tuna.  Tip:  buy the good (white) tuna.  Since you're
    not masking the flavor as much with mayo, the quality of the tuna
    is more apparant.
    
    If you have a microwave, fish cooks quickly and very nicely in
    a microwave.  I dice up a little onion, put the fish in a microwave
    dish, put the onion on top, pour on a little milk or V8 to keep
    the fish moist, and zap it until done.  I check fish after 4 min
    and then every min.  Look in your microwave book for specifics
    on time for your microwave.
    
    Make a huge salad one or two times a week and keep it in your
    fridge in a big bowl.  Then you can grab some for lunch, along
    with a slice of cheese (mozzerella is 80 cal/oz) or some cooked
    turkey or chicken.  You can cook the poultry some cool night,
    slice it down, and store it in your freezer in ziplocked individual
    portions.  This makes a good brown-bag lunch too - just grab a
    handful of salad, stuff it into a plastic container, grab a ziplock,
    and perhaps a diet soda, put it all in a bag and you're done.
    
    Louise
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|  |     I don't put mushrooms in either.  They tend to go bad faster if
    there's other stuff in with them.
    
    If you want, you can put all the "dry" stuff in one bowl - lettuce,
    other greens, peppers, carrots, radishes, sprouts etc - and all
    the "wet" stuff in another - cukes and tomatoes especially.  Then
    put your mushrooms in a third and perhaps the onion/scallions in
    a fourth (though I've not had problems with them).  If you have
    tupperware or other plastic sealed containers, they're good for
    the smaller amounts of stuff, and you can put the dry stuff in
    a big bowl.  And, of course, don't dress the salad until you're
    ready to eat it, or you'll have wilted greens!
    
    --Louise
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