healthy lunch

healthy lunch ideas

A healthy lunch can lead to this!

It’s 3.30pm.

You hear a faint growl.

You can’t be truly sure, but is that a wild animal prowling in your belly?

And your head! Was there a mid-afternoon storm forecast today? Because there’s a thick fog covering up your mental capacity!

Concentration is waning. Motivation is all but disappeared.

Coffee. Sugar. Carbs. You need them stat! They’re the only antidote that’s going to silence the animals and chase away those clouds and get you through the rest of the day.

There’s a term for this condition.

It’s technically known as – Three-Thirty-Itis!

Here’s how the dictionary of Rumbles defines Three-Thirty-Itis:

The need to consume tonnes of coffee and loads of refined carbs to give you a burst of energy to make it through the day.

Have you ever experienced Three-thirty-itis?

I think we all have! I know I certainly have and I know its repercussions all too well.

But I’ve learnt from my mistakes, and I know a simple solution to curtail the torment of the Three-thirty-Itis Blues.

That solution…

LUNCH!

Now I’m not just talking about any lunch here. I’m talking about a nutritious lunch that’s a balance of all essential macros – carbohydrates, protein and essential fats – that the body and mind need to operate optimally.

You won’t get a good balance of these from burgers, fries, foccacias, hot dogs, and anything else of the likes. In fact these foods will actually contribute to the depressing tune of the Three-Thirty-Itis Blues.

You also won’t get a good balance of these from a meagre “diet” lunch made up of a few lettuce leaves topped with a snowflake sized piece of grilled chicken and nooooooooo dressing.

No way Jose!

Nope, to cure the Three-Thirty-Itis Blues you need a lunch that looks like these:

healthy lunch ideas

These are the ultimate cure, the ultimate solution, to Three-thirty-Itis.

A lunch that looks like an exploding rainbow on a big kick-butt plate! Those rainbow pieces are made up of a kaleidoscope of real whole foods that are jam packed with healthy fats, protein and essential carbs that fill up the body’s fuel tanks, amp up its brain power and drenches its tastebuds in flavour bombs of amazement so that you feel satiated, satisfied and content.

And guess what?

We’d like to teach you how to take less than an hour a week to prepare these lunches so that you can have them stored in your fridge and ready to eat, every day from Monday to Friday. We’ll teach you to do it with The Rumbles Five Day Healthy Lunch Challenge!

The lunches in our challenge, silence prowling beasts in your belly. They’re the sun that banishes the grey clouds in your mind. And they’re the medicine that cures Three-Thirty-Itis!

Why is this?

Well let me tell you the 4 reasons why you need a healthy lunch in your life and why you need to join The Rumbles 5 Day Healthy Lunch Challenge.

A healthy lunch saves you time

For two reasons:

Firstly it stops you from wondering all morning, “Should I eat this for lunch, or that for lunch? Should I eat healthily this lunchtime or should I indulge in pizza!?” You may not know it, but the mental strain of wondering about what you’re going to eat at lunch is draining you of your mental capacity and power, which means it takes your focus away from the jobs you should be doing or the people you should be paying attention to.

Secondly, when we don’t eat a healthy lunch, waning energy and a foggy mind results in the afternoon, once again zapping our power and focus. All those tasks you wanted to get done in the arvo, will either be done half-heartedly (hence having to possibly redo them the next day) or not done at all!
A healthy lunch prevents mid-afternoon cravings

Ever wonder why you crave coffee and sugar around 3.30pm? Speaking from experience, I can tell you it’s often because you didn’t eat a decent lunch. I used to try to “save” calories by eating a small insubstantial lunch. But I was only shooting myself in the foot because come mid-afternoon, I’d be starving and would wolf down any food that crossed my path! Ever done this?

Now on the other end of the scale, eating a big lunch, that’s dominantly high in processed carbs, i.e. white breads, pasta, pastry, etc, can have the same effects. These foods are devoid of essential vitamins, minerals and protein, which the body and brain need to function optimally. So they might fill you up while eating them, but because there’s hardly any nutrition in them, and because they’re fast burning fuel, an hour or two later, your body is going to be screaming out for more food even though it’s consumed quite a lot calories!

Ever experienced this?!
It saves you money

Eating lunch out every day can add up! A take-away sandwich here, a pizza slice there, a jumbo smoothie over there…man that stuff adds up! Let’s say you buy your lunch every day and it costs you $12 per day…that’s $60 a week!!!! That could well be better spent on gifts for your girlfriend (I hope my other half is reading this)! Pre-making your healthy lunches at home will cost less than half of this and that adds up to huge savings!

Plus when you eat a healthy lunch, you’re banishing mid-afternoon cravings remember? So you won’t be heading out to the bakery at 3.30pm to purchase your pick-me-up, a.k.a Sir Doughnut!
Makes it easier to stick to other healthy eating goals

For example, have you ever eaten an unhealthy lunch and then said to yourself, “Damn I’ve stuffed up now, might as well keep eating ‘badly’ for the rest of the day”?

Boy oh boy, I can sure relate to this one!

But when we accumulate wins with one healthy eating habit, it magically snowballs into healthy eating habits at other meals. When we eat a healthy lunch that’s a win! This fills up our motivation tanks and inspires us to continue for the rest of the day. A healthy lunch could also keep us accountable to our exercise plans in the afternoon too! The energy and success we feel from eating healthily during the day boosts self-esteem and has us searching out wins in other areas. Maybe for you it translates into taking the kids to the park, or working on your passion project in the evening? The wonderful repercussions are endless!