Workday Lunches?

Broth type vegetable soups are good. Chop all your veg, pop it in a bowl type container, take along your miso / Tom yam paste and make up with boiling water at work. The veg cook in the broth as you eat and you can mix up the veg, tofu, prawns etc as you feel like it. Also add fresh noodles or zoodles for something more substantial.

I usually cook 3-4 different meals on Sunday and then portion them out for the week to take to work.

nordlead2005 wrote: »

There's nothing wrong with high sodium for most people, and most of them have varied foods and they only make up ~1/3 or less of your daily intake. So, I wouldn't ax them just because they aren't the ideal healthy food. I don't care for how most of them taste though, so I don't tend to buy them.

My lunch is typically left over pizza that I make on the weekend, but I also do left over dinner from the night before, a sandwich, or I'll get something from the cafeteria. Since you have a fridge & microwave, salads, sandwiches, and left overs are easy things to bring to work for lunch.

LoL, I'm jealous that, that works for you sir!

OP- I do 3-4 days worth of salads for breakfast, lunch and bring them all to work, I boil 3 dozen eggs every Sunday, shell and remove most of the yolks for my breakfast (7 per day) (I limit myself to 1-3 yolks per day depending on current goal). With lunch salad I have tuna because it's cheap and I can buy it in bulk and keep it in my office. Also saves time

It sounds like you're either lazy or that you just don't know how to cook, if that is the case there are meal prep services that bodybuilders use that you can also use. You don't have to be a bodybuilder to eat like a bodybuilder.

If you are able to and have the time - spending a couple of hours on the weekends prepping veggies, fruits, salad fixins and just lunch meal planning is such a life saver! I'm in the office by 6:30 - 6:45 every morning and I have chores before that -- grabbing already to go things is the best! Leftovers are fantastic also. Doubling whatever it is you are already making is so easy to grab in the morning. My go to: hardboiled eggs, celery & carrots with peanut butter or hummus, spicy cabbage soup, chicken tortilla soup, lettuce wraps of turkey/cheese, roasted veggies, quinoa buffalo chicken, well, anything leftover from night before. Then adding a fresh salad from the stuff I've prepped takes maybe 2 minutes. Good to go!

Today for lunch I'm having a big helping of "coleslaw" (super easy - prepackaged shredded cabbage + poppyseed dressing), some turkey meat, wheat thins, and Greek yogurt.

First let me wish you luck in your search for healthy lunches. I have a desk job. Not much activity during the day. Started work 4-10's a few months ago. My metabolism is slower the older I get. A couple years ago I decided I eat too much at lunch, so I switched to eating nuts, fresh fruit, maybe a bit of cheese for protein and I started walking at lunch. Occasionally I go have lunch with friends but most the time I try to talk them into going for a short walk. I've kind of maintained. I could have gained, so this strategy may have saved me, who knows? I generally over eat so being aware of what I eat and how much I eat, for every meal is definitely helpful. I use MyFitnessPal to occasionally count calories and see if I'm missing something. I recently discovered that my snacking throughout the day adds more calories than I was aware of, more than lunch, actually nearly double lunch calories. So I have to reconsider my snacking habits. I don't like to freak out and eat only celery or totally exclude things like sugar, but I definitely need to use healthy choices and limit unhealthy choices. It always takes me effort to find a balance. I signed up to do another Ironman so I'm exercising a lot more before and after work. I'm finally starting to see changes after several months of more intense exercise. I've not mastered my eating habits so I've use exercise to make up for it.

I hate frozen dinners. These are my "emergency rations" staples:

Bag of prepared salad with can of tuna or 1/4lb turkey or 2 boiled eggs (use half the dressing but eat all the veggies)
Ramen with added veg (whatever's in the fridge) plus an egg dropped in it
Leftovers, of course
Avocado on toast
Frozen salmon burger thawed at desk then cooked in toaster oven
Oatmeal with nuts and fruit

Usually, it's just leftovers of whatever was for supper, though.

Honestly, just leftovers from dinner the night before is easiest... Make extra if you don't already, and invest in some nice tupperware.

When I worked in an office, I batch cooked on Sundays to have lunch and dinner for Monday - Thursday. Now that I work from home I usually have sandwiches for lunch, but these could easily be made in the AM or the night before. Or you could bring in leftovers from the night before.

I subscribe to the MFP blog and it is always emailing me suggestions for lunches like the first two search results http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/?s=lunches+for+work

You can, on the weekend, take a bag of chicken breasts and cut them into 3oz portions and cook them. I like to do that. Then if I don't have any leftovers from dinner I can grab a 3oz chicken breast to make a chicken salad sandwich paired with an apple of course, or chicken wrap. I also like to make a little extra rice on the weekend or keep some smaller gold or red potatoes. Pop those in the micro quick and you have chicken and potatoes. I like to do one veggie and fruit at lunch and dinner too. But apples are always quick(I am NOT a fruit person) and I like broccoli or cooked up veggies. All in all I shoot for about 500-600 cals for lunch. Otherwise I will be starving later and will snack. Snacks are ok..if you have self control. Some days I just don't and I have to hide everything, including my money so I don't hit the vending machine. But my go-to's are the chicken, rice, potatoes, and one fruit and one veggie. you can always by bags of frozen veggies, I do that and pop some into a container, add a tiny bit of water and put it in the micro..

I generally have an apple and a 3-4oz pork chop that I make while making dinner. But meal prep might be your best friend. Also, there's nothing wrong with frozen lunches. As far as the sodium, just make sure you're drinking enough water to help your kidneys filter that sodium out.

Today was an apple with peanut butter, some triscuits and a banana.

I'm cheap so I don't want to go spend money on my lunch break, and I've been in a cooking funk recently, so lately I've been just grabbing a can of soup and a bowl before I leave home, and leave it in a drawer at my desk until lunch time.

I always make enough dinner to have a meal or two for work lunches. If I get take out I put aside a portion of the meal for lunch the next day. When I get a Pizza I get a large and put lunch sized portions into freezer bags right away and freeze them. If I am not batch cooking a large recipe I save the dinner meal by date so I can pull it to my lunch section of the diary.

I batch cook all kinds of soups. Have some for dinner and portion the rest out for lunches. I get dissolvable food labels from Amazon and I label each container with the recipe/meal name, portion size, date it was prepared and calorie count. I also have a large collection of the Ziploc twist n seal containers. They lids screw on and they do a great job of not leaking all over my backpack on the way to work.

The evening before I usually pull out my lunch portion and put in the fridge to start to thaw. Pre log what I plan to have that day. Usually I add some fruit and a sweet. All I have to do in the morning is toss whatever I pre-logged the night before into my bag and go in the morning and go.