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Healthy Lunches
I want to start packing lunch next year (I'm going to highschool) but I don't want to have a plain peanut butter and jelly everyday. I want it to be healthy but not repetitive. But my parents are also on a budget. Plus I don't want my lunch food to get eaten by my family. And I also don't want my mom to have to rush to the store every night before school to get my lunch. So do you have any tips for packing lunch? Or ever lunch recipes?
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Maybe give some free advice about: Nutrition?
Go vegan. I went vegan this year and have lost 40 pounds, with minimal exercise, bringing down my BMI from 30 to 24. I weigh less now than I did throughout high school, as an overweight teenager, even when I exercised for hours while on Junior Varsity and Varsity sports teams.
My goal for next year is to lose 30-40 more pounds, I just need to start exercising on a regular basis. Nothing crazy, just 30-60 minutes of jogging, Ballet Beautiful, bike riding.. things like that.
I think it's amazing what I've accomplished so far, just by changing my diet, though. It's a lot easier to go vegan than it seems. I was never vegetarian, I went from being able to eat an entire box of pizza or entire tub of ice cream in one sitting to a full-fledged vegan. I now spend a lot less money on groceries, have more energy (never need caffeine, and never feel lethargic like I used to on a regular basis), have more concentration, and etc. Try it for a week, that's how I started, and I felt so good that I just kept going, and it's now been 5 months! You can get every nutrient from plant foods, including protein!
Where do you get your protein?! 10 comebacks from a Vegan.
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The only vitamin you need to supplement is B12, and one I personally recommend is Garden of Life's B12 spray (cause I personally hate swallowing pills, and methylcobalamin is better than cyanocobalamin). You can buy it at any health foods store (Whole Foods, Sprouts, Trader Joe's, etc.), or online.
More on vitamin B12
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These two movies turned me into a vegan overnight.
Forks Over Knives
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Processed People
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Cowspiracy
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Here are some good YouTube channels that have helped me, too.
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Good luck!
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salads can be a great filler upper without you feeling like you have a brick in your stomach after you eat it and sluggish.
If your mom every makes baked chicken you can pull the chicken apart, cut it into smaller piece and add it to a salad. does your mom ever offer salad with dinner? or for lunch in one of those large family sized containers?? take some of that, put it in a tupperware like bowl with a lid, grade up some block cheese (pepper jack cheese is my personal favorite), cut up a half of a tomato, and a mushroom throw it all together and BOOM a restaurant style salad to go! if you want to add croutons you can, and if your worried about weight gain, use only oil based salad dressings! (oil based AKA salad dressings you can see through in the bottle) not ranch or one with milk.
green apples are a personal favorite as a snack. if your mom has any caramel sauce you could cut up the apple, put it in a bag and then pour the sauce over it for a little sweet treat.
tuna fish sandwiches are great. Maybe a bagel if your family eats those and bring some cream cheese in a little container. maybe you could ask the people at school in your lunch room if they could toast it for you.
if your mom ever makes mexican food, like spainish rice with vegetables in it and beans for dinner the night before you could save that and find somewhere to heat it up. (again ASK the school if you brought your own lunch if they would be willing to heat it up for you in the cafeteria) then that will open up your options even more as far as what you can bring.
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Being on a budget means mom probably cannot buy lunches specific for you for every school day without busting her food budget. Without knowing what your food likes and dislikes are it is also hard to make suggestions as to what you could pack for lunch. I understand having PB&J every day is more than boring though it is far better than having nothing at all to eat.
With those limitations to work with what I suggest is you sit down with mom and discuss what she can do to pack a lunch for you other than PB&J. What she can buy when she shops that won't break her grocery budget of foods that can be packed for you and possibly other members of the family as well. When something can be shared by other family members it becomes less expensive as it will feed more than one.
Start by making a list, actually write it down, of what you would like to take for lunch. Tuna Fish and Egg Salad sandwiches can be packed along with cold juice cartons. The juice cartons will keep the sandwiches cold enough so they don't spoil before lunch. These two are fairly inexpensive for mom to make for you. Leftovers are also something that most of the time can be made into a sandwich, Hamburgers and meatballs make wonderful sandwiches. Salads are another good lunch to take to school. If mom has any Tub Aware you can put the salad in that along with almost anything left over from dinner sliced over the salad. Salad dressing can go in a small separate container. Add in a roll or slice of bread, a juice carton or milk and you have a great lunch.
What I'm trying to say is you can be very creative without breaking the budget. Just take the time to sit with mom and talk about what is possible to take to school.
If mom is constantly making PB&J it also may be because that is all she has time to make. You're going into high school which would make you 13 or 14 years old. Your old enough to pack your own lunches before going to bed. Doing this ensures you get a lunch you want and not what mom has time to throw together in the morning or before she goes to bed. Think about it.
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I never had a big appetite in HS so I just took an apple every day. Once I graduated and was working my first job, all I took for lunch was a yogurt, I was on a yogurt kick i guess. Both things are healthy and you might add them in along with sandwich. Big giant apples are a meal in themselves, however if Mom buys the smaller lunch sized apples it maybe cheaper and you can add them to a sandwich. tuna can be bought on sale or at dollar stores and are just as good used to make tuna salad sandwiches. Eggs aren't all that expensive and you can make an egg salad, enough for one sandwich the night before and put in fridge for next day. I shop a lot at dollar stores. they often offer clear little fruit cups of applesauce, mango, pineapple, peaches, pears or mandarin oranges and are a healthy addition to a lunch. If you like carrots and celery with ranch dip, there are small ready to go packs but they're expensive. If you are willing to cut up your own, and purchase a tiny container to take along ranch dressing, you have veggies and dip.
Assorted Nuts are a good source of protein to eat instead of peanutbutter on a sandwich and can be found in dollar stores too. Hope this gives you some ideas. If you like hummus, its also good protein used as a dip with corn chips from dollar store instead of a sandwich. You just need to use sandwich bags and fill like two with chips to leave some chips for others, and again take a small container for the hummus that you can toss into backpack or purse to take home and clean for reuse. So there's some planning if you want some inexpensive variety for your lunchs. If mom isn't in the mood to shop at several stores, perhaps she'd let you go purchase a few things at the dollar store with grocery cash from the budget.
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