Nutrition at work
Is it possible to maintain proper eating habits in our workplace? How can we achieve this? Is it easy? These are some of the questions we will analyze as the stress of everyday life and demanding work hours are often enemies of proper nutrition, posing obstacles to adhering to a good nutritional plan, often pushing us into unhealthy eating behaviors.
The lack of time makes it even more difficult to organize meals, as a result of which the lunch of the day at work is characterized mainly by the consumption of fast-food, which makes it difficult for us to maintain a balanced nutritional plan. If we want to take care of ourselves, good nutrition is the most important thing we need, both when we are at home and at work. That is why it is worth dedicating some time to properly organizing our meals for the entire day.
Breakfast for energy
So let’s start our day with a nutritious breakfast. Breakfast will activate our metabolism and give us the appropriate energy we need for our day. It is a common mistake to skip breakfast and this is because at the times when our body, our body and our brain, require energy to cope with its tasks, we deprive it of it.
One or two toasts with tahini and honey or a bowl of whole grains is a quick solution. If you get up ten minutes earlier for work, everything is possible. If you want to take your breakfast with you, you can prepare it the night before.
This way you will avoid the oven or the pantry. For example, you can prepare:
- Yogurt with nuts and fruit
- Overnight oats with milk and chia seeds in a jar
- Toast with cheese and vegetables
- Arabic pie with cheese, egg and vegetables
- Boiled eggs (boiled the day before) with wholemeal toast
- Bread with peanut butter and banana
Essential snacks
Considering that we have had a good breakfast, we can eat seasonal fruits such as apples, bananas, pears, grapes, cherries and other fruits depending on the season at our workplace as a snack. We can also choose sesame pasteli, nuts, Thessaloniki buns, multi-grain breadsticks, dried fruits, etc.
Another solution is to make a large quantity of homemade cereal bars, so that you can put one in your bag every morning before leaving for work. Also prepare multi-purpose bags with a mix of dried fruits and unsalted nuts. You can also put cucumber-carrot sticks with hummus or cream cheese.
The homemade “tupperware”
Preparing lunch from home is an important factor for proper nutrition at work. Take care of the week’s shopping from the supermarket one day during the week. Dedicate a few hours to organize and purchase the week’s food. This outline will help you a lot.
As for the main meals, make a weekly meal plan, which you will follow as a rule. An example is the following.
Monday: Oily
Tuesday: Pasta
Wednesday: Legumes
Thursday: Chicken or Beef
Friday: Leftovers from the week or omelet with vegetables
Saturday: Fish or Seafood
Sunday: Free
Our main meal, to be considered complete, must consist of carbohydrates, protein, and fat. For protein, we choose chicken, fish, egg, cheese or if you are vegan, soy products, tofu, etc. As a source of carbohydrates, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and as a source of fat, olive oil, olives, avocados, etc.
Frequent consumption of water during the day is also very important for adequate hydration of the body and its best performance. Therefore, we try to accompany all our meals with water, avoiding soft drinks and packaged commercial juices that only provide us with unnecessary calories.
Some ideas for easy and complete meals:
- Salad with lentils or chickpeas, tuna, olives
- Whole-wheat pasta with pesto sauce, grated cheese and vegetables
- 2 eggs with cherry tomatoes, 2 whole-wheat toast & olive oil
- Tamboulie-style salad with bulgur or quinoa, chicken and avocado
What should I eat “outside”?
If we don’t have time to prepare our meal at home, we pay special attention to what we order. Nowadays, there are many different restaurants that we can choose to order our meal from. If it is breakfast, we can choose a whole-wheat Thessaloniki bagel, a tortilla with cheese and vegetables or a sweet version of it, with tahini, honey and banana.
We prefer our main meal to be low-fat and rich in vitamins such as a salad. If we choose to order from a kitchen, we have many options to replace a homemade meal, such as a legume or oil dish, which are typical dishes of the Mediterranean Diet.
If we order pasta, let’s prefer dishes with red sauce and not baked pasta, which often contain a large amount of cheese, or with white sauce that contains cream. Finally, the souvlaki is a constant value, and if we indeed choose 2 chicken souvlaki with salad we have a complete and healthy meal.
The secret lies in organization
As can be seen above, preparing meals and snacks does not take as much time as we think, but it mainly requires good planning.
In this way, we manage to have a healthy diet with more nutrients, which provide more energy and efficiency in our daily lives.
Therefore, it is important to better organize our diet at work by making some small but smart adjustments and the result will certainly reward us.
