You can, and you should eat healthy as a busy professional. But having a healthy eating and food routine if you’re busy can be very challenging. You may be running your own business or working a full-time job.
At the same time, you need to take care of your family, pursuing a side hustle or further education, the list goes on!
You’d be lucky if you’re able to make time for yourself! It’s a real struggle. Sometimes a nightmare.
The result? Food gets thrown into the back seat of your life. Having to think about what to eat again after all the struggle? No, you’d rather just grab something on the go.
And that’s where the problem is. You already know the downsides – mood swings, stress, feeling unwell, etc. This situation makes healthy eating for busy professionals very challenging.
I understand you perfectly. Because I also find myself in that same situation. Juggling family, full-time job, side hustle, and online school. It’s a real struggle.
But there’s one thing I couldn’t allow, leaving my food to chance. I found my way around this situation. Why? Because good food is good mood, and good mood is good health. And we all need the good health to continue to do all we want. So leaving it to chance is out of the question.
So, if you’re wondering how to eat healthy on a busy schedule, you’re covered. These 3 steps work if you’re already big on cooking, you do a little bit of cooking or you’re just starting out with cooking. Let’s dive in.
1. Cook in bulk
You: for real? Is this even a thing?
Me: yes, that’s one way I do it.
You: 🤔 can I do it?
Me: YES, if you want to.
It takes me 2-3hrs to pull off 3 to 5 stews and/or soups on Sunday afternoons if I don’t have already prepped ingredients. But if I have premade ingredients, it takes even less time. Saves me lots and lots of frustration within the week! You see the decision fatigue of “what’s for lunch or dinner?”, it goes away!
Whatever frequency works for you – once every three days, once a week, once a month. Or you could just intentionally prepare dishes in larger quantities. So you can use the leftovers. It works like magic every single time.
This sorts out all (or most) or your meals for the period. And cuts out any frustration that comes with thinking about what to eat.
You can pack these dishes in containers. And store them in your freezer until you need them. Since you prepared these dishes yourself, or someone helped you, you know exactly what’s in them. And this supports your health as well.
2. Write down a meal plan
Wait, before you dismiss the idea, here’s what I mean by a meal plan.
A list to guide you on the food options you have. It’s not a strict do-or-die regimen. It’s just to remind you of what you could eat in the day. Or what you could prepare. Even a quirky meal plan on your personal WhatsApp does the magic.
This cuts out your decision fatigue – endlessly thinking about what to eat. Do you agree with me on this?
If the day comes and you don’t feel for what’s on the menu, you can just switch to whatever you want. But if you have nothing to refer to, that frustration and fatigue will build up like a plague. Not a fun situation to deal with.
So, what are you going to do? Write a quirky meal list down or endure the frustration?
3. Prep ingredients in advance
If you want to shrink your cooking time from 90mins to 30mins, this is your best bet. Prepping ingredients during cooking is consumes so much time! It leaves you exhausted. Especially if you’re doing bulk cooking.
But if you prep the ingredients in advance (usually on a separate day, and in bulk), it makes your cooking a fun and sweet breeze at a later date.
Take onions for instance, they’re a thing in 99.99% of my dishes. So by all means, I should have onion paste, onion powder or onion flakes in my pantry. Here’s a mini-guide to ingredient prep I posted on LinkedIn. I recommend you check it out.
With my ingredients already prepped, I could pull off a typical 90mins dish in under 30mins.
If you don’t have the time to prepare your ingredients, you could use external services. There are businesses whose entire job is to prep ingredients. This does come at a cost. But it’s a great option if you’re time constrained.
Also, you’d have to trust that this third party handles the ingredient well.
Another option is to hire someone to do it for you in person at a fee or in exchange for a good will. This is the one I go with if I’m really constrained on time.
There’s one last option. If you have a partner and/children, it’d be great if they can help you.
Whichever one works best for you, go with it.
You can eat healthy as a busy professional once you have the right systems in place
As a busy professional, eating healthy and choosing healthy food can be challenging. But it’s achievable with effective planning and preparation. If you adopt these 3 simple steps, it could be a game-changer for you.Cooking in bulk saves you from the frustration of prepping meals from start to finish every single day. You cut out (or at least reduce) the decision fatigue with quirky meal plans. And you simplify your cooking with ingredient prep. These are simple and yet highly effective.
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Etornam is a food research engineer with a generous passion for healthy food. She’s also a doctoral researcher who studies food practices in consumer homes. She loves walking, gardening and trying new recipes.
