Super quick meals…that are also beneficial for weight loss

[Avgee768]

Hi all,

I desperately need to lose weight and need to find some healthy recipes to cook instead of relying on packet foods (UPFs) & takeaways. But every recipe I look at contains either something me/hubby don’t like (salmon, mushrooms, tomatoes are a few examples) or takes hours to cook/prep.

I don’t have ANY spare time during the week - my weeks look like this:

• Up at 5.45 each morning M-F for work (commute in to London). So don’t actually want to get up any earlier than that (see point 3).
• Home at 5ish (depending on if hubby picks me up from the station or not - so eg he can’t leave dinner cooking, it’s about a 30min round trip to pick me up).
• 2 x a week I am then out the house again at 6 until 11pm (non-sport related hobby) - so can’t have dinner after this, and only have an hour from getting home to cook, eat and then get changed and out again.
• 1 x a week I am out from 7.30-9.30 (sport-related hobby) - so have approx 90min to cook and eat to allow dinner to go down before sport.
• I also often have weekends taken up with the above hobbies - games, prep, courses - so the usual batch cooker suggestions won’t work because I really don’t have the time on weekends to prepare stuff either.
• We both generally work out of the house so slow cooker type stuff won’t really work - as above, I don’t want to get up any earlier than I do, and both of us are often out for 10+ hours a day.

Hubby has a very physical job that sees him out of the house for 15 hours some days (seasonal job) - eg between March & November he’s out in all daylight hours and comes home extremely knackered. This means that stuff like salad won’t cut it with him - he can eat 3 x what I can. This also explains why meal prep generally falls to me.

We also both have ADHD (me diagnosed, him I heavily suspect) so we battle constantly against the “oh shite, I forgot to get the chicken/beef/pasta out of the freezer” thoughts or we forget to stop at the supermarket for stuff we forgot to grab at the weekend, which further adds to the chaos.

Genuinely, does anyone have any suggestions?! Luckily we are only feeding ourselves at the minute (no kids) but suggestions that work for families too would really help plan for the future.

What do you eat for breakfast and lunch? I'd actually imagine you need to start there.

If you have 90 minutes at home in the evenings and no kids, you have ample time to cook a healthy dinner. A stir fry or big pan of veg and protein for fajitas takes like 15 minutes to make. I cook from scratch every night with 2 dc, plus farm animals to look after, and homework to do and all the other stuff. You just need to think simply. Not big long recipes. Think basic healthy simple foods - protein you like (beef, chicken, fish, eggs, tofu, whatever) and lots of veg, with a starch (rice, pasta, potatoes, noodles) in limited quantities, put it all together and season.

But as someone who does do a London commute some days, if you are leaving early and working long days, I suspect where you aren't eating well is during the day, not for dinner. It's hard work to plan and pack a days worth of food and when I'm busy, I often just end of grabbing whatever (which isn't as healthy, but is also really expensive, relative to what I could cook myself).

Things for breakfast that I like: porridge or overnight oats, sauteed veg with egg in a wrap, hummus, egg, veg in a wrap, big bowl of miso soup with boiled eggs/tofu and veg. All this can be prepped in advance (while you are cooking dinner). Soups are great for lunch or sandwich with a big salad, or leftovers from the night before - cook once for several meals worth. Nuts, dried and fresh fruit, boiled eggs for snacks.

My go to least effort dinner is a ready prepared salad bowl with ready cooked chicken. Buttered crusty bread can be added on the side if you like.

Yesterday I had half of a Morrisons Sweet and Crunchy Salad (the big 340g one) and tipped a half packet of ready to eat sweet chilli chicken slices on top. That was 2 of my 5 a day plus around 25g of protein.

Edited to add, sorry missed the bit where you said no salad and there's not a delete button.

You could just have beans/fried egg/ sardines on toast? Takes 5.mins, max. Omelette? Tin of soup and cottage cheese and crackers?