The choice of food in the office is often limited. If that’s why you bring your meal (s) from home every day anyway – good! If you don’t do this for various reasons, but want to eat healthily at work or on the go, this article is for you!
You can also help yourself very well with food from the supermarket across the street and yes, even in the canteen there are dishes that you can easily reach for. We’ll look at these now – along with a few tips that you should always keep in mind when eating at work, at university or at school. I think it is self-explanatory that you should avoid some foods or meals if you want to eat healthily and have the goal of maintaining or even reducing your weight.
Eating in the canteen
The currywurst with french fries for lunch is no more ideal than the piece of cake with whipped cream for the afternoon. Why? Both meals contain large amounts of carbohydrates and fats, which firstly have a lot of calories and secondly very little protein, fiber and vitamins. So you take in a lot of calories – but what the body also wants, important minerals, you withhold from it. Healthy is different.
What should you pay attention to when choosing a meal?
The motto is: fresher, more natural and unprocessed, the better! Your meals should always consist of all macronutrients, but: Fat is not just fat and there are also differences in carbohydrates and protein that you should be aware of.
Protein: saturates well and for a long time, provides many amino acids that the body needs (e.g. for skin, hair, digestion, immune system, regulation of metabolic processes, etc.).
Fat: good sources of fat like nuts, good oils, seeds, eggs but also butter are essential (for the hormone system, strong cell walls, absorption of vitamins A, D, E, K and much more).
Carbohydrates: energy suppliers ; reach for long-chain carbohydrates because they get into the blood more slowly, thus satiating longer and also do not let the blood sugar level rise as quickly (no cravings)
It is advisable to reduce carbohydrates, especially at lunchtime, in order to keep your blood sugar level less high and also increase more slowly. Who does not know it? A nice large portion of spaghetti with cream sauce or Bolognese was eaten in the canteen, still fresh and lively – about 30 minutes later, instead of continuing to work awake, you’d prefer to take a nap.
Large meals that contain a lot of carbohydrates very often make you tired and sluggish , as these amounts have to be digested first. So it takes a lot of blood for the digestive organs – the rest of the body has to wait. Just as you cannot do great athletic performance on a full stomach, you cannot do intellectual work. The body switches from the so-called sympathetic system to the parasympathetic system, the so-called “rest-and-digest mode”.
So what should you do? Eat consciously!
- Avoid large carbohydrate meals .
- Avoid heavy, high-fat dishes as well – these also do sluggish and lie in the stomach for hours.
- You better look for lighter food: Salad with light dressing and a few strips of chicken fillet or 1–2 eggs, cooked or raw fish with vegetables and a few potatoes. Every canteen usually has some good choices and a salad bar should be available almost everywhere.
Now if you say that it won’t fill you up, give it a try first. You shouldn’t just eat during your lunch break, you should also treat yourself to a snack in the morning and in the afternoon.
In the supermarket
If your canteen doesn’t provide a healthy meal, you still have the option of picking up something from the supermarket around the corner. The same applies here as before: Make sure to buy unprocessed food, eat good fats or carbohydrates and don’t forget about protein. Some practical, healthy foods for the office include: E.g .:
- Carbohydrates: rice cakes, oatmeal, pumpernickel, unsweetened muesli mix, yogurt
- Protein: curd cheese, grainy cream cheese, lean ham, boiled eggs, cheese (e.g. B. Mozzarella)
- Fats: nuts, avocado, boiled eggs, cheese, smoked salmon or other fish
And of course vegetables in all of them Colors and shapes as well as a piece of fruit here and there. 😉
These foods should be available in every supermarket. A popular “meal” are sandwiches, sausage / meat loaf / meat loaf / schnitzel rolls … you know. Why are these snacks not an ideal office lunch? They contain short-chain carbohydrates in the form of a roll (do not fill you up for long), too little protein or too much fat, depending on the topping.
Even the rolls, which pretend they are healthy because they look darker than the others, are not much better – they are usually colored with hops, but are just as exclusively made from wheat flour (and thus from short-chain carbohydrates 😉). Then prefer real whole-grain products such as pumpernickel bread and the like. Ä. grab.
Conclusion
Eating a healthy diet in the office is not as difficult as it seems at first – apart from the possible crooked looks of some colleagues. 😉 The ideal case is, of course, when you cook something healthy at home and take it with you.
Otherwise just pay attention to your meals and eat e.g. E.g. in the canteen you don’t just have something that happens to be served to you – then you better go to the supermarket yourself and stock up on healthy things that will help you mentally AND physically!
