Saturday, September 5, 2015

Kind Eating At Work: Week 1

This week was my first week back in the classroom, and unlike other semesters when I make a super long list of impossible and sometimes contradictory goals, this time I decided to be realistic and loving.  Here are my goals for this semester.

  1. Eat breakfast every day.
  2. Take my vitamins after breakfast.
  3. Bring lunch to work.

When I get stressed at work, the first habit I stop is eating regularly.  I get so caught up with preparing for class that it's nothing for me to skip breakfast and lunch.  When I do this, I'm more susceptible to headaches, fatigue, and overall grouchiness, and for me this leads to choosing take out over cooking at home.  Now I don't feel that homemade food is necessarily better than fast food, but in my case, I wind up spending a lot of energy deciding what to have and procuring the food.  This time adds more pressure to an already packed schedule, especially when I go out for lunch, and having decreased energy makes my work take longer.  I don't like feeling this way.

It's also a concern because while my eating can be sporadic, I never stop working out.  When I exercise without eating regularly, I don't do my best.  Who needs all that? Not me!  I want more balance in this area, so here's what I tried this week.

I decided to experiment with having breakfast and lunch look like one another.  

Tuesday's breakfast was steak and onions on a tortilla.  Lunch was canned tortilla soup.  I brought some crushed tortilla chips and shredded cheese in a bag to throw on top.  I forgot to take pictures, but they were gorgeous.  Trust me!

Wednesday's lunch was a piece of leftover banana bread from Tuesday.  Boy was it tasty, but it wasn't very filling.  oh well.  The good thing about kind eating is that I always get another chance at it.  No need to stress or beat myself up.  For lunch, I baked a few chicken thighs that morning and put some chopped chicken on a bagged Caesar salad.




On Thursday, I had a repeat of Wednesday's chicken.  For breakfast, I browned an onion and heated up some chopped chicken thighs with it.  I threw it on a tortilla with spinach. Lunch was the same chicken and onion mixture on spinach.  This time I put some berries with it, and that made it taste like a fancy handheld salad. 

Surprisingly good!




.
Pineapples, mango, 
blackberries, and blueberries.


Looks like a teeny taco!
A handful of lunch!



This week's lessons!



  • Everyone knows I adore spinach, but even I was surprised at how often I eat it.  It's so great!
  • I found it easy to bake chicken in the morning while doing other things.  I used to think that meal prep had to happen at night or on the weekends.  
  • I don't like leftovers, but warming up leftover meat in browned onions made them taste special.  I'll keep that up!
  • Remixing a few staples was a better fit for my schedule than imagining new dishes every day, but having a bit of variety kept me from feeling bored.
  • Iced tea is a delicious and inexpensive lunch drink.  
  • I really like having colorful lunches!
  • I love eating with my hands.
On to Week 2!!

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