Overcome Your Gut + Digestive Issues With Ancestral Nutrition
8 Easy Healthy Togo Lunches For School, Work, or a Hike
School/work lunches can be a challenge. Preparing them can be tedious. Buying them can be expensive and lead you to make unhealthy choices. It can also be hard to find meals that stay good on the go.
I’ve been there. And I’ve gone through some trial and error over the past 8 years to come up with some great school/work lunches. These lunches (or dinners) are my favorite meals to take to school or work. They’re healthy, don’t take too long to make, and keep well on the go. Some of them are keto and some of them have healthy carbs in them.
Whether you make these meals or different ones, I strongly encourage you to prepare your own meals for work or school. This sets you up for success in accomplishing your health goals. Whether that’s losing weight, gaining muscle, or improving health in general, being prepared and having a plan is key to success.
Below are 8 of my favorite school/work lunches. Links to recipes are included as well as tips for meal prepping.
One more note: I advise using stainless steel or glass tuperwares to avoid xenoestogens (harmful hormone imitating substances in plastic, more about them in this post). I only found out about this in the last year and many of these pictures are from before them. So please excuse the plastic tuperwares in some of these pictures. If you’re looking for a good stainless steel tuperware, I recommend the one pictured below:
1) My Go To 5 Minute Keto Lunch (Salami, Cheese, Olives, Fresh and Fermented Veggies, and Bone Broth)
This has been my favorite lunch for the past year and a half. I switch up exactly what I have in it but it’s usually cured meats, cheese, and olives. Sometimes I’ll add fermented veggies, liver pate, caviar, bone broth (in a thermos), or beef jerky. This meal takes no more than 5 minutes to make 1 serving and has lots of room for customization. You could easily meal prep several of these meals ahead of time or make them one at a time. I advise separating anything with juices like olives and fermented veggies in a smaller tuperware to avoid making the other ingredients soggy.
2) Cobb Salad
About 2 years ago I went through a huge salad phase, practically every lunch was a salad. I love all my salad recipes, but this Cobb Salad is my favorite. I typically make 3 salads at once for the following 3 days and that takes me about 40 minutes. I only make 3 because I’m not sure how well it would last past that. I wait to cut the avocado till right before I leave the house. I cut 1/3 of an avocado and put some salt on it to keep it from turning brown and funky. I leave the pit with the extra avocado at home unless this is the last piece. In that case I would leave the pit in to preserve it. I also keep the dressing in a separate container. Right before I eat the salad, I cut the avocado into cubes and pour the dressing on.
3) Baked Salmon Salad
This salmon salad is packed with nutrients and it’s super delicious. I prep these just like the Cobb Salads. I make 3 at a time, but these only take me 30 minutes (salmon cooks faster than chicken). I also wait to cut up the avocado and pour on the dressing till right before serving.
4) Shredded Chicken Mexican Salad with Creamy Cilantro Dressing
Again, I prep these 3 at a time. For this salad that takes me 45 minutes. I also wait to pour the dressing on till right before I eat it. Feel free to add some corn tortilla chips to this salad if you want.
5) Mediterranean Chicken Quinoa Salad
This recipe is based off a chicken quinoa salad I had from my favorite local grocery store, Lazy Acres, in Santa Barbara (where I used to live). This recipe is loaded with protein. Each 517.8 Calorie serving contains 50.6g of protein. This makes these salads especially great for athletes and weight lifters. However anyone can enjoy them. I would recommend making about 4 of these salads at a time. It takes about 50 minutes to make them, however a lot of that time is inactive time when the chicken and quinoa are cooking.
6) Turkey Roll Ups
For awhile these wraps were one of my favorite dinners to bring to work. Like most meals, I would prep 3 servings at a time and this would take me about 30 minutes. For this recipe, I think the avocado would get funky if you meal prepped more than 3 days in advance. It’s also important that you wrap the wraps in a paper towel before plastic wrap to absorb moisture and prevent the wraps from getting soggy.
7) On the go Mediterranean food
This meal can take as little as 5 minutes to make and can easily be prepped for 5-7 days. It will take longer if you decide to make the hummus, tabouli, and baba ghanoush from scratch. However if you choose to buy these it takes hardly any time at all. There is also lots of variations open in this meal. You can switch the pita for crackers, switch up which hummus flavor you use, or sub the tabouli with dolmas or falafels.
8) Lox Bagel
This one might not always work, but it’s delicious and it will work sometimes so I wanted to include it. For this you really need to make it right before you leave in the morning. The good news is it only takes about 5 minutes to make. I then recommend you put it in a tight tuperware with parchment paper in between the two bagel halves both halves facing up. This should prevent it from falling apart.
About Kayley
Kayley is a certified gut health nutrition coach who helps people to overcome their chronic gut and digestive issues at the root using the principles of ancestral nutrition and holistic health. (Continue Reading Here)
