3 Ways To Make Lunch Time Healthier And More Doable
When lunch time rolls around it can be easy to gravitate towards reaching for take out or something pre-packaged. Stopping in the middle of the day to prepare a meal can seem overwhelming. To eat a nourishing lunch that leaves you feeling light and energized, rather than bloated and fatigued, creating it must be doable. When you have a practical strategy for creating a healthy lunch, eating healthy becomes much more attainable. When healthy eating becomes more attainable, achieving your ultimate health and wellness goals becomes more attainable as well.
Below are 3 ways that you can begin to make lunch time healthier and more doable.
Cook once, eat twice
Cook once, eat twice simply means that you are cooking a big batch of one meal to last you a few days ahead. This is extremely helpful if you need to rely on ready to go options for lunches. Having leftovers ready to eat for the next day or days can help:
-reduce time in the kitchen
-minimize efforts around home cooking
-take away the guess work around healthy eating
-you extend your healthy eating past day one
-you build more consistency with healthy eating
-make your life easier
When you start utilizing this method you might find that you don’t gravitate towards pre-packaged foods or take out as often as you used to.
This fiesta grain bowl is one of my favorite meals to cook once and eat twice!
Prep a sauce and/or a dressing at the start of every week
Having a healthier sauce and dressing prepped at the start of the week will help make lunch time easier and healthier. This helps to minimize your efforts in the kitchen at lunch time. Not only that but when you have a delicious healthy dressing or sauce option ready to go in the fridge you will be more likely to put together a healthy salad or other nourishing meal. Sauces and dressings can also help to add essential vitamins and nutrients to your meals.
Batch prep a salad base at the beginning of each week
One tip I always share with my coaching clients to help them eat healthier at lunch time is to prep a salad base in a large Tupperware at the start of the week. I recommend filling the bowl with greens like spinach or kale, chickpeas, sliced red cabbage and sliced carrots. When you are ready to eat, just place a handful in a bowl to eat as a salad or place in a wrap or pita with additional protein, a healthy sauce or dressing and any other toppings you are craving. This is a great idea that will save you time in the kitchen and help you to extend your healthy eating habits all week long. I also love to prep a protein and grain to have on hand to add to salads throughout the week.