Have you been struggling with eating healthy when busy?

As a young urban woman, I spend every day trying to find some sort of balance between work, home, a social life, and making some effort to be healthy. A desk job in a high stress work environment often means I don’t get to do any of these things as well as I’d like. And food tends to be the first place I compromise. 

A few months ago I realised there had been days I’d been ordering in all three of my meals, and I was mortified.

I come from a home where mum and dadi made everything from scratch, and here I was, ordering in an omelette at work because I didn’t have the time to cook myself a simple breakfast?

I decided to limit my ordering in. My first goal was to make myself breakfast no matter what. Once I had gotten the hang of that, I tackled my next challenge – dinner. After some research, I found meal prep ideas that help me cook a healthyish dinner every night after work.

1. Prepare the base ahead

This was a tip I picked up when I was figuring out how to make myself healthy breakfasts. Sick of the tasteless instant upmas on supermarket shelves, I started making my own DIY Instant Upma base so all I have to do in the morning is boil water. Once I realized that doing some preparation made cooking much easier, this technique has changed the way I plan my meals. 

Every weekend, I cook up a batch of my onion-tomato sauce base that goes into almost every North Indian dish. And I’ve even started making the base ahead for one-pot dishes like pulav. Now, when I get home after a long day, I just need to toss in water and rice into the base. I don’t feel tempted to order in, making sure I’m eating healthy when busy.

2. Make breakfast for dinner

Let’s be honest. You can’t always plan your meals ahead every weekend. Sometimes, you’ve had a full weekend with no time to meal prep for the week. And tricky work weeks just sneak up on you. In such cases, I’ve found that making typically breakfast foods for dinner really helps me. 

Think eggs and toast, dosa, pancakes even! Akuri (Parsi style scrambled eggs) and pav is my favourite breakfast for dinner. It’s delicious, wholesome and doesn’t take too long to cook. Parathas are a great option too. If you make the dough on Sunday, just rolling out and roasting the parathas on a Monday night won’t seem so stressful.

3. Love your leftovers

I hated when I had food leftover because who wants to eat the same thing two meals in a row? No thank you! Then I started using my leftovers as a starting point and tweaking them to get whole new meals in themselves. Today, I make extras of almost everything on purpose so I can use the  leftovers. 

For instance, if I’m making dal and rice on one night, I’ll use the extra rice to add to a pulav the next night, and knead the leftover dal to make my Mum’s leftover dal parathas on the third night. It’s a lovely little strategy to get three meals out of what would have been just one. Practice this a few times and you’ll automatically start planning ahead.

We are often intimidated by meal prep. Sure, it could mean preparing all your meals ahead over the weekend, but it also includes simple strategies like these. Just sitting down with a notebook for 10 minutes and jotting what you could cook for the next few days can go a long way in saving time and effort, and ensuring you’re eating healthy when busy with work or anything else.

How do you manage to eat well during a tough work week? Let me know in the comments, and let’s see if we can make a second part  for this post.