Hacking a Faster & Healthier Lunchtime Meal
Structure not only saves time, but it’s soothing to stress and can impact results. Follow these tips to build a faster, more effective, and healthier lunchtime meal whether you are working from home or back at the office.
These outlined recommendations can make all of the difference for a faster, yet healthier lunchtime meal:
- Take stock & shop
Plan what healthy meal you want to enjoy for the week. Organize your pantry, fridge, and freezer, sorting them out by food groups such as grains, fruits, vegetables, protein, healthy fat, and so on. Organizing makes it easier to identify what is in there and write up a grocery list. Shopping with a grocery list helps you with healthy meal planning as well as it saves you from having impulse buys.
- Start small and keep it simple
Don’t feel like you need to meal-prep for the entire week. Start small by prepping a few meals for the week. Choose recipes that do not overwhelm you. What is important is that you keep this habit of healthy meal prepping for a long time. Keep it simple by choosing recipes that require fewer and easier steps
- Batch cook
If you know you use a lot of ingredients or you like a typical recipe, try cooking double (or even triple) the amount you cook at once. This could be applied to food items that take longer to cook such as pre-made protein (hard-boiled eggs, chicken thighs, steak strips, shrimp, etc) or complex carbs like lentils, and legume-based pastas, rice, quinoa, and overnight oats. Batch cooking can save you tons of time you spent in the kitchen and you end up with more ready-to-eat healthy food!
- Pre-portion
Eating healthy includes eating healthy foods and knowing the perfect portion for you. Try pre-preparing food like Mason jars for sliced veg and dips! Pre-portioning meals are convenient. It reduces your time since the only thing you need to take out is the pre-portioned meal. The best benefit is that it helps you to portion control. When you are hungry, you will likely get more food than you need. Pre-portioning meals in advance prevent you from overindulging.
Ready-to-eat healthy foods and snacks to create an “Adult Lunchable” when in need.
You may also like this post: https://www.kellyschmidtwellness.com/kels-adult-lunchables/
