Lunch Ideas (trying to stay away from sandwich meat)

Slow cook a roast beef (with an onion and mushrooms). I've been eating slices of roast beef for lunch with a vegetable - cole slaw or salad but it works well with peas and lots of others. I melt a slice of cheese on it. Satisfies me for hours and is less than 400 calories.

Hummus and veggies and a couple hard boiled eggs.

I'm following this because I'm always looking for more lunch recipes!

I typically bring a cabbage stew with ground beef (I posted the recipe a while back, but you could search for it or I can send it to you). It's pretty much cabbage cooked up with some other veggies and lean ground beef. There is tomato purée which has some sodium, but you can always tweak it with alternatives! You can eat a lot of it because the veggies comprise most of it. My servings vary depending on the ingredients I put in (I weigh it and tweak the recipe each time). It's been 285 calories before and it was 249 when I made it last week (I had slightly less veggies and a half pound less meat which I assume is why it was lower)

I have also made beef stew without the potatoes to cut down on calories and carbs.

Tomorrow, I'm bringing some shredded taco chicken and I'm going to top it with some cheese. I like doing shredded beef sometimes too. You can always eat the tortilla or shell, but I would rather save the calories for more meat or more of something else!

I used to make a really good white beans and sausage in the crock pot with tomato sauce, but it's got a lot of sodium and a lot of calories ! Super good though to reheat for lunch.

Lasagna also reheats very well - you can use zucchini noodles to cut down on calories so you can have a bigger portion and be generous with the meat content.

Those are my go to lunch/meal prep foods. If more come to me, I'll come back!

Good luck!

I also cook extra food at dinner so I can meal prep for a few days. Baked chicken breast (skinless/boneless) is easy to make (35 min at 375F) and you can mix up the flavors with the seasonings--so many options! Any Mrs. Dash is good (and salt-free). But my go-to is either sprinkling with Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme) or covering in salsa and throwing in the oven. I actually prefer to eat chicken cold the next day. I'll put it on a bed of spinach (the Italian seasoning tastes great with some feta cheese added too). And then whatever fruit, veggie, and/or grain I have available to hit my calorie goal. It's easy to bake some sweet potatoes with the chicken.

Stir-fry makes great leftovers too. Nothin' better than meat, veggies, and brown rice. You can make it low-sodium by using liquid aminos instead of soy sauce.

When in a pinch, I'll bring cottage cheese for lunch as my protein (24g per cup!), but I don't know if the low-sodium version is low enough for you. You would also need some calorie-heavy carbs (bread/grains, most likely) to reach your 500-600 calorie target. My lunch target is lower, so I'll just eat an apple or banana with my cup of cottage cheese.

I know this is an old thread, but I'm really, really struggling with high-protein lunches for my desk job. I have essentially no free time. My work hours are well over 40 per week, commute is about 3 hours per day. I also have chronic pain issues, so intensive cooking like weekend meal prep is out (too painful).

It seems like all these options are extremely time-consuming, flavorless (looking at you, white meat chicken that is doubtless laden with antibiotics!), or both. I'm not a vegetarian (vegetarian food takes ESPECIALLY long to cook), but I don't eat meat raised with antibiotics because I'm severely allergic to penicillin so I don't dare expose myself to antibiotics and risk getting drug-resistant infections at some point.

Does anyone have ideas that are FAST, rich in protein, good for thyroid disease (so no goitrogens like raw crucifers or raw spinach), and have lots of flavor? It's maddening that eating tuna at work is grounds for summary execution. Want to eat more fresh fruits/vegetables too, but the logistics can be so hard.

Signed,
Hungry road warrior with Hashimoto's