To think it’s really difficult to keep healthy ? ITS NOT OUR FAULT !!

[Jumell]

Ok so … up until recently I worked 9am - 6pm an office job - no flexi time etc .

we had 15 mins break in the morning, 15 mins in the afternoon and half a hour for lunch

I used to arrive home every evening at 7pm it was Monday to Fri. I left home at 8am.

Where I worked was a bit off from the town centre so the latter was not that easily accessible lunchtimes.

The only options for food was small sandwich shops and kiosks selling beige calorific food - crisps /choc bars and shortbreads - filled rolls etc. next to no fresh produce

In an ideal world I’d like to do clean eating and eat eg fresh fish and veg in the evening - but who on earth gets home from a long shift at 7pm and starts peeling carrots and potatoes ?!

You don’t even need the food at that time as you’re winding down !

I think there was a lot to be said about the post war rationing etc - at least people ate more genuinely nutritious natural food then and not UPF - which I admit I eat a lot of and admit I desperately need to cut down on.

AIBU in thinking that our current lifestyles make natural, clean eating and home cooking of fresh foods more difficult - we have to buy calorific processed convenience foods as there’s practically no other option !

I’m the most disorganised person around (and I have papers for that). I start work at 8.30, get up at 6.15 and get DC to school. I collect one DC from school too and alternating with DH drive kids to various sport activities. We still manage to cook meals most days and I take lunch to work with me because I don’t want to eat expensive crap food.

I also work out most days a week, sometimes it’s 30 minutes sometimes a 2-hour run.

For me it’s a matter of priorities. I love my work but I don’t live to work and good food and physical activity are very important for me. I need both to feel healthy, happy and productive.

I live at the end of the world a bit in the middle of nowhere (there’s a 400 km long stretch of forest starting not far from my house) so I have never been to a gym - too far, too expensive, I don’t like the associated emissions from driving around and public transport is limited. I have a barbell and a couple of kettlebells at home plus a cheap yoga mat and a Les Mills subscription.

So true ! Yes I admit I don’t possess an air fryer !

Lame. Food prep and healthy packed lunch.

Probably the wrong audience on here OP but I know exactly what you mean. By the time I get back from work and put kids to bed and pack bags for tomorrow I’m left with a pasta dish and a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. Also eating healthily is generally more expensive and even when you think you’re eating healthy it’s all full of e numbers and upf!

I guess it depends what you like to eat. I am happy to have a variation of the same thing for lunch and dinner, which is a variety of salad veg (or roasted cold veg), some chickpeas/beans, some felafels and veg. In the evenings I will make an omelette / eggs of some description. At the weekend I wash and pre-prep lettuce, grated carrots, drain beans etc. Then every evening I just put it all in a tupperware for the next day....

Yes, I spend a good 6-8 hours every weekend planning, shopping and cooking food and probably another hour twive a week. DH also cooks 2/3 times a week and helps plan so that is maybe 14 hours a week on food preparation. For me that is preferable to eating UPFs

I personally find the best way is not doing anything too fancy. Batch cook fish / meat have with carb of choice and frozen veg. Pasta with home made sauce made and frozen at weekend.
Work lunches are easy to make the night before - soup cooker/ salad/ wrap / dinner left overs prep while watching YouTube or podcast.

In an ideal world I’d like to do clean eating and eat eg fresh fish and veg in the evening - but who on earth gets home from a long shift at 7pm and starts peeling carrots and potatoes ?!

Frozen veg - I also liked fresh stir fry kits when I did similar hours- you can also now get frozen stir fry veg - do eggs or you can but frozen diced meat - and rice/noodles - it's quick.

DH did slow cooker stews and heated up in week - before we moved in together.

i did much longer work day and commute - and while ate fairly healthy with evening meal think lack of exercise time and lack of sleep contributed to weight gain..

Why are you being forced to eat Pret lunches? Ive always taken a packed lunch to work as I prefer homemade sandwiches but why would the only other option be a Pret lunch?

It can be tricky. We are really busy. I work three evenings a week, I volunteer two nights a week, DD1 has extracurricular stuff after school. We do Hello Fresh a few days a week as that takes the thought process out of it, and on other days I have a repertoire of fast meals, stuff in the pressure cooker, or stuff I've chucked in slow cooker in morning, etc. I take shortcuts too: bags of steam veg, ready chopped onions, all that sort of stuff. If it saves time I will pay the extra for it because we are so time poor some days.

We don't really eat UPF now (well husband does sometimes when he's out without us!) after I read the UPF book and terrified the life out of myself but it is tough sometimes to fit in cooking proper food with the busyness of life as it is now for many people.

If you can afford it, the Cook ready meals are not ultra-processed and I always try to have some in freezer for emergencies.

There is no other way than cook dinner at home and then take leftovers or a combination of it to work lunch the next day. No one likes cooking after a hard day but 7pm is not that late to spend half an hour or so making something tasty and healthy such as to put fish in the oven and chop a salad, boil potatoes. Soups and stews can stay in fridge for a few days esp if they sr vegetarian, no need to freeze even.

Exactly this. It’s just an excuse.

Why would you need to peel carrots and potatoes to eat healthily? I just cooked some fish and made a salad for lunch and it literally took less than 10 minutes.

You're not being unreasonable. The days of women staying home and preparing nutritious meals are gone.

It is ridiculous to get home at 7pm then have to prepare loads of food. It's even harder if you have children. It's all well and good saying prioritise cooking, but lots of people work hard or do long shifts. Life should be more than commuting, going to work, commuting, cooking tea, then only have 30 minutes to relax before going to bed and then repeating again. Weekends should be for relaxing, but instead they're taken up with chores. A 4 day work week would help, as at least then you have slightly more free time. And no one wants to eat rice and beans every night.

There are numerous studies looking at causes of obesity and consumption of processed food (obesity is STRONGLY linked to lower socioeconomic status). It's not true to deny the statistics around this. Things like sausages are popular as they are cheap and calorie dense. You don't need herbs and spices to make them taste good either.

Food nowadays is all built around convenience to maximise work productivity. It's a product of capitalism and it's not wrong to find it a bit of a joke, imo.

I'm personally vegan, which helps massively as I eat mostly whole foods, with maybe 1 or 2 meals a week with fake meat products.

I saw a phrase recently that really resonated with me - "choose your hard" - it means that whilst eating healthily, exercising regularly etc. is....hard, the alternative of developing and ongoing health problems from poor diet, lack of exercise and other poor choices is.....harder. So choose your hard.

Fair enough

I was just thinking of a standard dinner

I’ve always made my own soup at the weekend, frozen if and then taken to work in a flask. When I’m in London I buy something healthy and nice from M&S on the way to the office.
Lunch times I go for a walk.

Why can't you take food with you?
Of course if you buy unhealthy food every day you'll be unhealthy.
You get an hour's break a day. Take a walk in your half hour.
Take fruit, veg sticks etc with you.

We make big vats of soup for work lunches.

Pre prepare your veg, either in the morning or the night before.

This isn't how food works. You don't just stop using calories at 9pm. Yes there are arguments that it's better to eat more earlier in the day and less later on (breakfast like a king, dine like a pauper), but it's still better to eat a healthier meal at 8pm than an unhealthy meal at 6pm. We often eat dinner after 8pm due to shift patterns (and if you think it's hard to eat well working 9-6, try working shifts!). We're both a healthy BMI. Look at the Europeans. A Mediterranean diet is often held up as the gold standard, and it's common to eat late there.

Slow cookers are your friend.
Leftovers / Overnight oats / Salads / Batch Cooking - these are also your friends.

Don’t fall into a lazy narrative of being unable to do anything after a normal working day, unless you’re trying to cook a roast dinner or a 3 course meal from scratch every evening?

Have you read my post? I bring my own lunch in most days.

I was referring to Pret because that the type of food (overpriced pre-packed crap) that's usually been available near the offices I've worked in. I didn't think everyone needed a whole paragraph about the similar offerings at Tesco, Sainsbury's, M&S etc

I think there was a lot to be said about the post war rationing etc - at least people ate more genuinely nutritious natural food then and not UPF

Until a few decades ago, the husband would get home from work, and a hot and healthy meal would be on the table, prepared and cooked by his wife. Life has moved on a lot since then and unfortunately, most people no longer have someone at home to do all the cooking and cleaning etc!

There’s no excuse not to eat healthily. Take a bit of time at the weekend to do a meal
plan and shopping list for the week ahead. You can make a big salad to have as a side for a couple of days. Frozen veg which doesn’t need any prep. Microwave rice or lentils. Baked potato 20 minutes in the air fryer. It doesn’t take long to cook meat or fish, pasta. And as others have said - batch cooking. I buy takeaway style foil containers off Amazon that are very cheap and ideal for freezing individual portions. It doesn’t really take long to cook a curry from scratch - I cook a couple of different ones at once so I’ve got variety in the freezer. When I make a ‘one pot’ style meal during the week i will make enough for dinner plus a couple of portions for lunch the next day and a couple portions to freeze. Just keep rotating what’s in the freezer and there is plenty of choice to take something for lunch and to have for dinners. I always get my lunch ready the night before as don’t have time in the morning. I listen to audible while I’m cooking or getting my lunch ready, that way it still feels like I’m having time to myself to relax a bit. Packing some fruit and yogurts as a snack at work takes seconds. Overnight oats takes a couple of minutes to prepare. You just need to get into the habit of planning ahead. The more you do it, the quicker you will be at doing your plan and list too

It is difficult, I agree.

I think we need to appreciate that part of the reason why eating habits have changed over the decades is because the traditional expectation of home cooked nutritious meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner; as well as a clean, maintained house was conceived when one member of the household didn't work.

I've done something like this - my job started at 7am and it was an hour/hour and a half long commute each way. In the middle of nowhere so very few food options.

The people saying to just prep in advance clearly have no idea how exhausting it is when you get home and just want to collapse. I ate so many takeaways for dinner as well as having crap lunches. I would go to bed at 8pm to be able to get up at 5am. And I didn't get home until 6pm. So trying to do literally everything in my life and house that needed to be done in a 2 hour window was basically impossible. I had to not prep food to avoid going to work in dirty clothes.

The only way I fixed it was switching jobs.