- Plan ahead. Take 20 minutes a week to think about what you want to eat for your lunch, dinner, breakfast, and snacks. You don't have to get super specific but general ideas: Indian food, sandwiches, pancakes, and bananas. Not only will this help you create a shopping list but it will help you avoid purchasing stuff that will just sit in your pantry for months.
- Know what you like and don't feel obligated to explain yourself. If you could eat a peanut butter and fluff sandwich everyday for the rest of your life do it!
- After shopping set aside time to do prep work. Prepping things for the week goes a long way. The ability to grab and pack is invaluable when you're crunched for time.
- Farmer's Markets are great places to get little things that would make a lunch special. Spreads, jams, delicious meats, and veggies.
A shopping list for some great lunches-
- A great loaf of bread (or two, or three---buy for the appropriate amount of people obviously) multi grains, whole wheats, herbs, and cheese breads make for wonderful sandwiches.
- Vegetables: cherry/grape tomatoes, celery, carrots, cucumber, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, or anything you like that can be prepared in advance.
- Fruits: grapes, apples, bananas, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, and pears.
* Vegetables and fruits - buy what's in season, don't buy too much, and prepare everything in advance. Chop things into a eatable sizes, wash the tomatoes, slices cucumbers and peppers... store everything in containers that are easily accessed. - Buy a variety of lunch meats in smaller quantities. Turkey, roast beef, salami, and chicken go a long way.
- Dried fruits- apricots, prunes, cranberries, pineapple, or mango are delicious substitutes for cookies/brownies/prepackaged junk food.
- Nuts- pistachios, raw almonds, cashews, and peanuts in place for chips are way more satiating and good for you.
- Cheese! Fresh mozzarella, pepper jack, and extra sharp cheddar work well on sandwiches or sandwich-less lunches.
- Bottled water.
- Olives, pickled onions, pickles. Whole Foods has a wonderful olive bar that will allow you to mix the different items that will give some variety to your meals.
- Large bar of dark chocolate or bag of dark chocolate chips.
- Pretzels
Everything on the shopping list for the lunches will work for snacking between breakfast and lunch / lunch and dinner. I always try to think of foods that I can incorporate into meals throughout the week.
Monday
3 slices of turkey breast rolled
Celery and yellow pepper sticks
5 cubes of pepper jack cheese
1/4 cup of pretzels
Bottle of water
Tuesday
Roast beef sandwich (Toast bread, spicy mustard, salt and pepper to taste, tomato, cheddar, lettuce.)
1 piece of dark chocolate or 10-12 dark chocolate chips
Cucumbers and broccoli
Few pieces of dried fruit
Bottle of water
Wednesday
4-5 slices of chicken
Carrots and cherry tomatoes
Olives and pickles
Nuts
Cubes of fresh mozzarella
Bottle of water
Thursday
Salami sandwich (Thin slices of cheese bread, yellow mustard, cracked pepper, red onion, lettuce, and green pepper is a crunchy and filling sandwich.)
Banana
Grapes
Mixture of dried fruit and raw cashews
Bottle of Water
Friday
Veggie wrap (tortilla (dressing of choice if you like a little wetness)- cucumbers, carrots, red onion, yellow peppers, roast red pepper, spinach, and tomatoes. Cracked pepper and cheese if you like.
Pear
Pretzels
Bottled Water
The above menu isn't anything but a guide to learning to plan your lunches. As you get better at planning ahead you can start preparing different kinds of meals. Pastas, chicken breasts, or warm sandwiches. The objective is to get into the routine of planning ahead. What I've found with planning out meals like this is that you get better portions thus avoiding over eating. Whenever I am good about planning my meals ahead specifically (like the above) I lose weight. While that's not everyone's objective it certainly is a nice incentive. In regards to children and planning ahead- they'll eat REAL food. I just can't imagine eating a meal that was entirely prepackaged.
No comments:
Post a Comment