Week Three--No fast foods or any foods that have been deep-fried in oil.

Now we did a little flip flop on week 3 and 4 because my kids ran out of lunch money last friday and I didn't want to give them more for just one week.  Now here are the guidelines for this weeks challenge:

For this challenge you must avoid:

• Restaurants with drive-thru windows
• Convenience stores that also typically sell gas
• Places where you watch them assemble your food through a glass wall
• Restaurants that are situated in a “food court” setting
• School lunches (most schools do not have a fully functioning kitchen and simply heat precooked meals)
• Airplane food

The places where you can eat during this challenge:

• Restaurants with waiter service (which aren’t always ideal when it comes to food quality, but we just had to draw the line somewhere)
• Grocery stores (we recommend hitting the salad bar, vegetable sides and brown rice sushi)
• Your own kitchen! 
• Friends’ house!

 Wow, this is where it starts getting rough.  I will admit we are a family that loves to go out to eat.  We eat fast food at least once or twice a week and go out to restaurants probably about twice a month.  I also have not packed lunches for my kids for school since my oldest was in 2nd grade.  Keep in mind he is almost 16.  So not only will this challenge help us to be more healthy it will probably save us money also. 

One of the hardest parts of this week is the extra amount of time.  We all know that all the places we shouldn't be eating that we go to we go there to eat because it is fast and easy.  In order to pack lunches every day I have to plan food to be in the house to pack lunches.  We also have to remember to put them together every night before we head up to bed.  Now my kids or I have activities or obligations almost every night of the week so that also is going to be a challenge.  My oldest son has also been eating breakfast at school every day.  Part of the reason for that is that I am not a morning person and my kids are always on there own for breakfast every morning.  This basically means cold cereal.  Since he does not like cold cereal he would eat at school.  So on top of lunches I also had to try to include breakfasts.  

So, here it goes, time to really start planning.  Now I am a good planner it is not something I don't know how to do or something I have not done before.  I have always been pretty good about planning dinner but to have to add breakfast and lunch now, wow.  I also want to do all this without raising my food budget.  I figured that one way to do that would be to plan a certain after school snack for everyone to have the same thing everyday.  So now I am adding in snack planning as well.  Geez, what in the world am I thinking.  

Week 3 here we go. I know it can be done as many other families do it all the time.  Hope my family still loves me and is on board at the end of this week :)