Lunch at desk ideas

What kind of sandwich are you making that eats massively into your calorie allowance? I often have a sandwich and a garden salad.

You could do a big salad with leftover cold chicken. My wife often gets a rotisserie chicken on the weekend and uses that on her salads for the week along with various toppings. She eats a lot of salads, so she always varies the other toppings and dressing.

Protein shake(regular milk w protein in a shaker cup) with a banana is quick, low calories and extremely inexpensive. If you need cheap calories to feel full, add something like gram crackers.

Could you switch out your breakfast if your usual is something you could bring for lunch?

Other lunch ideas:
Hard boiled egg
Hummous with veggie sticks
Apple and peanut butter
Cheese stick or cubes

I’ve had lots of success in the past with BENTOS, the Japanese style lunches. They are structured for variety, portion control, and nutrition. Not only that, but they’re also designed to be eaten at room temp and incorporate anti-bacterial approaches to ensure food safety. The basic premise is to choose foods from five colors: red, yellow, green, white, and black. The visual appeal alone is incredible! But don’t get intimidated by how fancy they look - they are NOT difficult to make!

Macros tend to follow a similar pattern: a portion of rice, a protein, a veggie dish, and something pickled (aids in digestion).

Another principle is that the container size correlates with the approximate caloric total. For example, I have several boxes around 500 ml capacity and the calories for that meal are around 500. Obviously, if you packed nothing but cheesecake, this wouldn’t apply. 😉

Now, do you have to fix Japanese food? No. But I personally like to add some dishes in like baked salmon, inarizushi, veggie rolls, or potato salad (their style is much different than American). I also love packing nuts, cherry tomatoes, tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelet - my grandkids’ favorite), cheese and meat skewers, and sugar snap pea pods.

I’ve also taken a cue from Those That Know and brought miso soup - either in a thermos or i mix up the miso and add-ins like green onion and tofu, and twist it up in a little plastic wrap packet and make it in a mug at work.

I haven’t worked in a few years but still find reasons to make bentos and now that I’m back on MFP, they’ll be part of my eating plan.

Sorry if this suggestion has already been made somewhere. I just haven’t found much on the topic on here.

Best to you -
🍱 April

A few ideas just off of my head

Tuna kimuchi rice bowl (less rice and more tuna to ease up on the carbs, you can add various stuff for variety, tofu, nuts, boiled vegs etc.)
Burritos with beans and ground beef
Sushi rolls - the kind without raw fish
Some kind of salad with boiled shrimp or chicken

As April said above, bento style lunches are a great thing to have if you're bored of sandwiches. I have the cookbook for JustBento but there's also a bunch of ideas available on the website if you're interested and want to try it out.