I’m looking for easy and cheap options for lunches on weekdays. I mostly eat deli sandwiches and hot dogs right now and I always feel like shit after eating them. I think I need something healthier but I don’t have time over my lunch hour to cook anything too fancy. What do you all do for reliable healthy easy lunches?
On Sundays I do lunch prep for the days in office. A few slices of deli meat and block cheese for a nice flavor. Then a pile of raw veggies and a small container of dipping sauce. I prefer sliced bell pepper and green onion with ranch dressing, but you can do whatever veggies you prefer (for example spinach, sugar snap peas, carrots). I always feel great after that lunch; grains like bread or chips always made me feel lethargic.
I take it into the office in a plastic bento box to keep everything from jostling around, and the sauce goes in a smaller reusable container separately.
Salad wraps are daily lunch for me. Goes a bit like this, but it’s really a loose recipe with whatever I have in the fridge.
- I’ll slice up some:
Salad/cucumber Tomatoes Bell pepper
- Fry some falafel/halloumi/chicken in a small pan
- Heat up a tortilla in another pan until it has some color, but not too much or the tortilla will break when rolled
- Flip tortilla and add whatever cheese I have
- Put on a plate and garnish with everything
- Liberal amount of seasoning and hot sauce.
- Roll up tortilla
I started doing this when I couldn’t taste anything with COVID and needed something with texture. Never stopped.
Try avocado and hummus sandwiches, nutritious and tasty.
I’ve been into making adult lunchables. I’ll have some deli meat with crackers and cheese slices, mixed nuts, fruit and hummus. It’s easy to prep, cheap and fun.
One time I made a big batch of gas station style frozen burritos. Just cheese, refried beans, diced tomatoes, and some seasoning and hot sauce. Those were pretty bomb.
My favorite thing to do is mix diced veggies (green onion, sweet pickles, green pepper, arugula) with hard boiled eggs or flaked tuna, then add diced cheese (mozzarella, cheddar or feta). You can also add grapes, raisins or nuts or sunflower seeds, whatever you like.
When you’re ready to eat, mix all of it with a spoon of cream cheese, and put all of the mixture inside a pita bread. It’s pretty awesome and satisfying.
When I still worked my favourite lunch was ramen. I had square plastic clip-top boxes, perfect shape for ramen blocks. Pop in the ramen, sprinkle with the seasoning packet (or seasonings of your choice) and top with whatever veg you have to hand. Sugarsnap peas, baby corn, spring onion (scallions), zucchini, greens, shredded carrot, bell pepper. If you have cooked chicken, add a slice of that. Clip the lid back on.
At lunchtime, open the box, add boiling water to cover the ramen, close the box again and wait for three minutes or so for the ramen to cook. I guess access to boiling water might be tricky in the US - in the UK our staff canteen had a boiling water dispenser for tea-making.
I have a sandwich on whole wheat bread with some cheese, one pickle and a conservative amount of mayonnaise spread on the side that touches the pickle. Its been the same on average 3 times a week for 2 years.
If I’m at home, udon noodle soup: just vegetable stock cube in a pot of water, boil it, chuck the noodles in, chuck in whatever you want to put in the soup (I just chop up tofu and one vegetable of my choice), boil for a few mins, and it’s done. Put Laoganma on to serve. Obviously use whatever other noodles you prefer if you have a preference other than udon. Takes like 15 mins total and it’s so simple for something that’s an actual full meal. I don’t take it with me when I’m on the go though, as it’s hard to carry a bowl of noodle soup with you.
For something you can take with you on the go, I’ve been making this vegan smoked tofu carbonara recipe lately. You’ll still need a microwave to heat it up once it’s lunchtime, unless you want to eat cold spaghetti for lunch, but it’s really tasty, especially the tofu.
Udon broth is also available premade and is very quick and easy to make from scratch.
My dirty dirty secret: I get lunch at a McDonald’s near the office where I work once or twice a week. Double quarter pounder with cheese.
I love that and I’m not ashamed to say that. 😅
I have lunch at Burger King almost every Wednesday, also because it’s next to work. Double whopper for me.
The other days I eat more healthy though… But usually indian, Thai food or sushi every week once or twice.
I cook large batches of stew every now and then, freeze in 2 or 3 portion packages. Then each sunday I prep some carbs, defrost and pasteurize stew and put it all together. Boom! Lunches ready to go into the work microwaves.
I make a week of lunches all at once. I have 12 hour shifts so it’s kinda breakfast and lunch that I snack on through the day. I get everything from Aldi so it’s pretty cheap too.
Baby carrots, honeycrisp apple, light string cheese, yogurt, and a sandwich containing lunch meat and cheese and mayo. Recently, I started fridge pickling jalapeños for my sandwiches too, and that was the right call. I have this pretty much every day. I was broke af when I was younger, so eating the same thing every day vs maybe not getting to eat… I learned to really appreciate getting consistent meals even if it’s not something different very often. It’s not for everybody and I understand if this doesn’t sound remotely appealing to you lol.
some things that worked for me and advice
If you are not very active at work, and you have the flexibility to shift your breaks, try taking a bunch of shorter breaks and start working on preparing side dishes like you are cooking for a holiday or a family gathering.
Food can last ~2 weeks in the fridge. For me, if my food variety feels repetitive, it is because my cooking needs some work. I can eat the same thing every day easily, if the food is really good.
Here’s the thing, “healthy” and how you feel is complicated and likely has to do with IBS to some degree. You likely have many very poor quality options available, but are not looking at the ingredients in detail. Like the oil used is a major factor in how you feel just under the surface of most people’s awareness. Unhydrogenated oils may make an enormous difference, as will either sticking to grass fed dairy or eliminating dairy all together.
I was 350lbs and lost all of it down to below 190lbs while riding and eventually racing bicycles. At around 3500-4000 calories per day, a lot of subtle problems become much larger and require attention. Processed industrially produced foods are universally terrible. Almost everything in the center isles of an American grocery store are garbage to avoid. Only eat things that look like how they grew.
All you need to do is shop for nice containers to use for all stages of cooking and transport. This is the “convenience” conditioning we were all trained to forget as dumb little American consumers.
The healthiest person I ever worked with in a bike shop back office was an Olympic athlete. He never ate “meals.” He came to work looking like a tupperware salesman. He ate small amounts of a bunch of different side dish like foods he made in their own small containers. His diet shifted to exactly what he was doing physically each day and he was amazing on a bike.
“Meals” are the primary problem. How much you eat at one time determines a whole lot. Your body does not keep cycling that glucose through your bloodstream. It does a few laps and turns to fat. Then you have low blood sugar until your next pie hole infusion. All your muscles can deal with that except for your brain. That one requires glucose only, and so you feel bad when it is resource poor.
The solution is to eat more often, but far less, and things that take time to break down as they will provide more glucose over longer periods of time. Processed means predigested; means the nutrition info is garbage. It will go through you quickly and that will inevitably lead to low glucose for the grey goo. I cook several large casserole dishes full of meat and veggies every 8-12 days.
How much you eat at once and how often is the most important factor. Second is the micro nutrient density. Third is isolating IBS factors.
I normally eat omelette and rice for lunch, with rice pre made from the night before but you can always quicken with packet rice if you don’t have the time to cook rice and pre mix eggs to quicken the preparation time and just add the seasonings you normally add to the omelette.
Black coffee.
Actually, that’s breakfast. I just drink water at work and eat when I get home. After the first few days, my body adjusted. I don’t get hungry at work anymore.
Coffee is a superb natural appetite suppressant. I usually have a cup of coffee, a glass of milk, and a cup of unsalted peanuts around breakfast time. Keeps me pretty full most of the day.
I just drink coffee and eat nails, it’s good for digestion
Seems to actually work yeah. My girlfriend doesn’t eat dinner, only lunch. She says her body adapted to it almost completely. Only sometimes is she extra hungry and then for a proper reason, like doing physical work for hours or something.
I think it’s very healthy to just eat less. We eat more then we need, almost all of us.
