I’ll be the first to admit it – I’m a lunchbox wanker.

In our five floor, 60+ person office, we have two microwaves, which means there is always an impressive (but infuriating) queue to heat up food at lunchtime. This inevitably turns into a mass gathering of amateur food critics, all bustling to find out who’s eating what, and how long it took to make (and whether or not it’s straight from a packet..).

I’m a sunday-afternoon-meal-prepper, which means I’m eating the same thing Monday to Friday, every week of the year. This not only means that I can grab and go every morning without having to worry about getting up early to put together something for lunch, but it also means that I only have to count, weigh, log and process one set of meal stats for the week, and then it’s done.

Yes, I weigh every single thing I eat, and count every single gram and calorie. Yes, I’m an idiot, and yes, it’s exhausting.

So whilst we’re all chatting about what leftovers everyone has in their tupperware box, there’s me, desperately trying to downplay what I’ve packed into mine.

“Oh this, er, it’s just a bit of pasta and some sauce I found in the cupboard..” or “yeah, um, just some curry I chucked together at the weekend, nothing special.” WRONG. It’s very special. I spent hours making it, and now I’m knackered. What I pass off as pasta and ‘bits and bobs’ is actually low-carb, high-protein pasta (at £4 a bag!), carefully measured, alongside enough chickpeas, veg and nuts to give me the fat and carbs I need, but not too much, and some quorn chicken to give me an extra protein boost (bcos I worry less about leaving fake meat in the fridge for five days than real chicken.)

This week my lunches were: butternut squash wedges (113g), chicken breast (133g), sugar snap peas (30g), baby corn (30g) and a baked egg (x1) which I painstakingly cooked and measured on Sunday, and then passed off each day as “some left over Roast stuff.” What a (lunchbox) wanker.