With more than half of Americans working from home, it's important to remember to set healthy habits for a good work-life balance. Mealtimes are a great place to start. Here are our tips for regularly preparing and enjoying easy healthy lunches while working from home.
More than 50% of Americans are working from home, which is even more than during the summer of 2020. And while this arrangement has advantages: zero commute, more time with family and roommates (pets included), and a relaxed dress code — it also comes with the challenge of maintaining healthy eating habits.
With the line between work and life so blurry, it’s easy to let self-care take a back seat, even though we need it all the more in order to stay healthy. Looking for a self-care kickstart? Let's focus on easy healthy lunches.
Picture this: No more eating at the sink or hunched over your laptop. No more pricey but forgotten takeout languishing in your fridge. No more cereal or chips for lunch. Here’s how to regularly enjoy easy healthy lunches while working from home.
What to Eat While Working From Home: Easy Healthy Lunches
While many of the suggestions in Pack Your Lunch just as readily apply to easy healthy lunches when working from home, there are a few things about lunchtime at home that are unique and extra enjoyable. Let’s talk about it.
Take Advantage of Your Stovetop
At most workplaces, you’re lucky to have a decent-sized fridge and microwave - options are limited. Now that you’re working from home, homemade lunch ideas can involve so much more than cold salads and reheated leftovers. When you step away from your laptop to begin your lunch break, put your stove to work.
Consider all the foods that taste best fresh out of the skillet and eaten right away: warmed tortillas, fried eggs, and a toasted sandwich are just a few. Make these “best served immediately” foods a regular part of your work from home lunch rotation. Tacos with all your favorite fillings and fixings, a freshly fried egg atop a salad, huevos rancheros, and a deluxe grown-up grilled cheese sandwich await you.
Embrace Aroma
What’s the best way to get the side-eye at the office? Reheat fish in the microwave. Now that you’re working from home, there’s no need to avoid fish. Or kimchi. Or Brussels sprouts. Or any heavily spiced dish. All aromas are welcome at your work from home lunchtime oasis.
Because protein-rich and omega 3-abundant fish cooks quickly and is super simple to prepare, it makes a great entree for easy healthy lunches while working from home. Salmon is perfect over a bed of quick-cooking quinoa or millet, served alongside your favorite green veggie.
Try Thistle’s Recipes
Thistle’s recipe collection is a great source for easy healthy lunches. We aim to share nutritious recipes that even novice cooks can prepare with confidence at home.
Give the Everything Goes Burrito Bowl and Nicoise Salad a try. For a super light lunch or if you want a healthy beverage to accompany your meal, try making green juice. And if you want a midday dessert, here are some healthy options that are free of refined sugar: Okinawan Sweet Potato Bars and Lemon-Pistachio Cake.
Get Thistle Meals Delivered
For those days and weeks with lots of deadlines, or if you simply need a break from kitchen duty, give Thistle a try. We deliver ready-to-eat meals right to your door. It’s easy to customize and you can pause at any time.
For lunch, we always serve hearty greens that include a plant-based protein, or you can select a meat protein. Thistle also offers add-ons and snacks such as hard-boiled eggs, avocado, cold-pressed juices, soups, and salads.
If you want to mix things up, our meal hack post explains ways you can modify Thistle meals. Transform a veggie bowl into a soup, burrito, or taco. Turn a salad into a pasta dish, even a decadent baked pasta dish.
Besides the perks of eating lunch in the comfort of your own home, there are three other big perks of eating lunch at home:
1. Avoid Eating All Day While Working From Home
Taking a lunch break to prepare and eat a home cooked meal is a great self-care measure with a positive ripple effect: it should keep you from eating all day while working from home. When mealtime is scheduled and distinct from the day’s other tasks, you’re less likely to aimlessly open the fridge or rummage through the snack cabinet multiple times per day. Sound familiar? Make lunchtime an important part of your day, and the line between work time and eating time will be less blurry.
If you need a little more support resisting the temptation to eat all day, consider pre-portioning some easy healthy lunches and snacks. Order meals and snacks from Thistle. If you want to prepare your own food, carve out time on Sunday to create mason jar salads and pre-set portions of hummus and veggies for each day’s afternoon snack. Be sure to include a small daily treat such as an individual square of dark chocolate. Want more help with pre-portioning your food? Check out some helpful Meal Planning and Meal Prep tips.
2. Connect With Others or Yourself
Taking the time to sit down and eat your lunch can be even more enjoyable if you share that time with friends, family members, or even coworkers. If you live with people, it's easy to have a designated lunch time when everyone can sit down and enjoy lunch together. Or, invite some neighbors over for an outdoor bring-your-own-lunch picnic. A designated lunchtime is a good time to schedule a Zoom lunch with friends you want to catch up with, or even coworkers you haven't seen in a while. And sometimes you might just want to enjoy your food and your own company.
3. Share Food With Others
If you want to get even more out of mealtimes while working from home, share your food with others. With zero commute, you have time — even just an hour a few days per week should be enough — to cook a little extra food and make a delivery to an elderly neighbor, the nurse down the street, an unemployed friend, or the essential worker around the corner. If you don't have time, or don't know exactly what type of food your neighbor would like, give them a Thistle gift card. It’s a practical and helpful gesture, and since studies show focusing on others improves mental health and helps with emotional regulation, it’s good for you, too. Especially in these times.
Taking a break each day to eat a healthy lunch is an essential part of the self-care we need in order to thrive while working from home. Begin putting these tips into practice today. With a little effort, you’ll have a rejuvenating and delicious daily ritual to look forward to.
With more than half of Americans working from home, it's important to remember to set healthy habits for a good work-life balance. Mealtimes are a great place to start. Here are our tips for regularly preparing and enjoying easy healthy lunches while working from home.
More than 50% of Americans are working from home, which is even more than during the summer of 2020. And while this arrangement has advantages: zero commute, more time with family and roommates (pets included), and a relaxed dress code — it also comes with the challenge of maintaining healthy eating habits.
With the line between work and life so blurry, it’s easy to let self-care take a back seat, even though we need it all the more in order to stay healthy. Looking for a self-care kickstart? Let's focus on easy healthy lunches.
Picture this: No more eating at the sink or hunched over your laptop. No more pricey but forgotten takeout languishing in your fridge. No more cereal or chips for lunch. Here’s how to regularly enjoy easy healthy lunches while working from home.
What to Eat While Working From Home: Easy Healthy Lunches
While many of the suggestions in Pack Your Lunch just as readily apply to easy healthy lunches when working from home, there are a few things about lunchtime at home that are unique and extra enjoyable. Let’s talk about it.
Take Advantage of Your Stovetop
At most workplaces, you’re lucky to have a decent-sized fridge and microwave - options are limited. Now that you’re working from home, homemade lunch ideas can involve so much more than cold salads and reheated leftovers. When you step away from your laptop to begin your lunch break, put your stove to work.
Consider all the foods that taste best fresh out of the skillet and eaten right away: warmed tortillas, fried eggs, and a toasted sandwich are just a few. Make these “best served immediately” foods a regular part of your work from home lunch rotation. Tacos with all your favorite fillings and fixings, a freshly fried egg atop a salad, huevos rancheros, and a deluxe grown-up grilled cheese sandwich await you.
Embrace Aroma
What’s the best way to get the side-eye at the office? Reheat fish in the microwave. Now that you’re working from home, there’s no need to avoid fish. Or kimchi. Or Brussels sprouts. Or any heavily spiced dish. All aromas are welcome at your work from home lunchtime oasis.
Because protein-rich and omega 3-abundant fish cooks quickly and is super simple to prepare, it makes a great entree for easy healthy lunches while working from home. Salmon is perfect over a bed of quick-cooking quinoa or millet, served alongside your favorite green veggie.
Try Thistle’s Recipes
Thistle’s recipe collection is a great source for easy healthy lunches. We aim to share nutritious recipes that even novice cooks can prepare with confidence at home.
Give the Everything Goes Burrito Bowl and Nicoise Salad a try. For a super light lunch or if you want a healthy beverage to accompany your meal, try making green juice. And if you want a midday dessert, here are some healthy options that are free of refined sugar: Okinawan Sweet Potato Bars and Lemon-Pistachio Cake.
Get Thistle Meals Delivered
For those days and weeks with lots of deadlines, or if you simply need a break from kitchen duty, give Thistle a try. We deliver ready-to-eat meals right to your door. It’s easy to customize and you can pause at any time.
For lunch, we always serve hearty greens that include a plant-based protein, or you can select a meat protein. Thistle also offers add-ons and snacks such as hard-boiled eggs, avocado, cold-pressed juices, soups, and salads.
If you want to mix things up, our meal hack post explains ways you can modify Thistle meals. Transform a veggie bowl into a soup, burrito, or taco. Turn a salad into a pasta dish, even a decadent baked pasta dish.
Besides the perks of eating lunch in the comfort of your own home, there are three other big perks of eating lunch at home:
1. Avoid Eating All Day While Working From Home
Taking a lunch break to prepare and eat a home cooked meal is a great self-care measure with a positive ripple effect: it should keep you from eating all day while working from home. When mealtime is scheduled and distinct from the day’s other tasks, you’re less likely to aimlessly open the fridge or rummage through the snack cabinet multiple times per day. Sound familiar? Make lunchtime an important part of your day, and the line between work time and eating time will be less blurry.
If you need a little more support resisting the temptation to eat all day, consider pre-portioning some easy healthy lunches and snacks. Order meals and snacks from Thistle. If you want to prepare your own food, carve out time on Sunday to create mason jar salads and pre-set portions of hummus and veggies for each day’s afternoon snack. Be sure to include a small daily treat such as an individual square of dark chocolate. Want more help with pre-portioning your food? Check out some helpful Meal Planning and Meal Prep tips.
2. Connect With Others or Yourself
Taking the time to sit down and eat your lunch can be even more enjoyable if you share that time with friends, family members, or even coworkers. If you live with people, it's easy to have a designated lunch time when everyone can sit down and enjoy lunch together. Or, invite some neighbors over for an outdoor bring-your-own-lunch picnic. A designated lunchtime is a good time to schedule a Zoom lunch with friends you want to catch up with, or even coworkers you haven't seen in a while. And sometimes you might just want to enjoy your food and your own company.
3. Share Food With Others
If you want to get even more out of mealtimes while working from home, share your food with others. With zero commute, you have time — even just an hour a few days per week should be enough — to cook a little extra food and make a delivery to an elderly neighbor, the nurse down the street, an unemployed friend, or the essential worker around the corner. If you don't have time, or don't know exactly what type of food your neighbor would like, give them a Thistle gift card. It’s a practical and helpful gesture, and since studies show focusing on others improves mental health and helps with emotional regulation, it’s good for you, too. Especially in these times.
Taking a break each day to eat a healthy lunch is an essential part of the self-care we need in order to thrive while working from home. Begin putting these tips into practice today. With a little effort, you’ll have a rejuvenating and delicious daily ritual to look forward to.
