The Healthy Writer Blog

Finding the Time to be a Healthy Writer – Part Two

Posted by Anna Sugden Sep 23 2011, 1:05 am in 10 minutes, Anna Sugden, time

We talked on Tuesday about the issue writers face about finding the time to work on the ‘healthy’ part of that healthy writer equation. We discussed ways to snatch time to exercise by finding 10 minute slots. Also about how it can be easier to make those short sessions into your daily routine and guarantee some exercise, burn some calories and trim/tone than trying to fit in a full hour, or more, session.

Today, I thought we could tackle the healthy eating side of the writer’s life.

We’ve talked, in the past, about ways in which we can boost our diets to be healthier. We’ve discussed putting a greater focus on adding fruits and vegetables to get our ’5 a day’, Michelle’s cooking marathons, portion sizes (smaller plates, improving the balance of what’s on our plates) and so on.

Why is it so hard to find the time to make healthier meals?

I think, a large part of this come down to preparation time and cooking time. For those who aren’t confident cooks or who simply don’t like cooking, you can add in the time to find recipes and even the time to motivate yourself!

Again, perhaps we need to change the way we look at how we make our meals. Find ways to snatch time and make the process easier and faster.

Ready chopped vegetables and all-in-one meal packs are more readily available than they used to be and can take some of the time and effort out of cooking.

Even if you can’t do a cooking marathon, making double portions and using the left-overs can save time. One of our favourite, speedy meals is Left-overs Pizza. We always have a pack of tortillas in the fridge. All you need to do is top with left-over spaghetti sauce or chili and some grated cheese, and you have the basic pizza. Add a few chopped vegetables, pop in the oven for 10 mins and you’re done! You can do all kinds of variations on that theme with different sauces and toppings. It’s healthier than a freezer pizza or delivery pizza and very quick too!

We freeze all kinds of things for speedy meals – portions of rice, mashed potatoes, pasta, cooked vegetables. Curries, chilis, stews and pasta sauces are all popular over here and it’s amazing what you can create by tossing left-overs into a pot and letting them cook with some meat and a few herbs and spices.

Left-overs are great for lunch too. Whether it’s pasta or rice salad, a thermal container full of soup/stew/pasta, or even just using left-over cooked meats in a sandwich – taking 10 minutes to make your own lunch is so much healthier … and cheaper too.

Don’t forget healthier snacks too. You can buy 100 calorie snack packs and healthy bars (though watch the calorie counts!), but you can just as easily make your own by weighing out portions of nuts and dried fruit etc and sealing in Ziplocs. Another trick is to split big packs of crisps/potato chips or packs of biscuits/cookies into portions and seal in Ziplocs. Buy treat-size packs of chocolates or sweets. You can find 10 minutes to do that … and it’s 10 minutes well spent!

Make smoothies and pop portions in the freezer to have healthy ice creams.

Do you have any ideas for speeding up food preparation or cooking? Do you have an quick and easy left-overs recipes? How about healthy snack options?

4 Comments

Comments

4 Responses to “Finding the Time to be a Healthy Writer – Part Two”

Michelle Butler says:

September 23, 2011 at 9:29 am

You’re so right that there are ways to speed up healthy food prep if you think about it. A little planning can save a lot of time.

I am interested in people’s suggestions of healthy snacks. I can still struggle with that a bit. I’ll do fruit, sometimes some trail mix (can struggle with portion here), yoghurt (nonfat greek or regular) w/ all bran and fruit and sometimes a small bit of honey, toast and peanut butter (it’s much higher point now in the new WW system though).

Reply
- Anna Sugden says:
  
  September 23, 2011 at 11:55 am
  
  I’ve been enjoying some lovely seed, fruit and nut bars from our local grocers, Michelle. They’re not hugely high in calories, are sweet enough to satisfy that mid-afternoon craving and are very tasty. I’d love to find some recipes for bars like that which have calorie counts attached to them.
  
  For snacks, I like to have something that is texturally satisfying – something to do with having to bite and chew filling you up more than stuff you don’t *g*. So mixing sweet with nuts is ideal.
  
  Reply
Anju Gattani says:

September 23, 2011 at 12:03 pm

Hi Anna,
interesting post! A lot of the ready-to-eat stuff is actually full of preservatives and chemicals which add to weight and bad health. Making extra the night before and running this into the following day’s lunch is something I’ve been doing for years… it covers the kids’ school lunch and occasionally ours’ too.
Will try the tortilla pizza sometime… sounds like a good idea!
Anju

Reply
- Anna Sugden says:
  
  September 23, 2011 at 12:22 pm
  
  Hey Anju! Good to see you.
  
  I agree with you on the ready-to-eat stuff! I was actually talking about ready-to-cook packs that you can get – at least, we can over here – with everything chopped etc and you just add your meat.
  
  Hope you enjoy the tortilla pizzas – they’ve become a firm favourite in our house!
  
  Reply

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