[mattthr]

I really hate to trot out this tired old trope about vegetarians on a board full of enlightened people, but it happens to be true for me, at the moment.

For lunch at work, for the last couple of years I've been eating almost the same thing every day: white rolls topped with a crust of cheese. You can buy them cheaply in the supermarket and they're very convenient, no preparation required. Eat three of those for lunch, add in some bagged snack and a piece of fruit and bingo, you're done.

I've been eating these for so long that I'm heartily sick of them. They're not very healthy, either, so recently I've been trying to vary my diet a bit. I needed something cheap, filling and easy so of a Monday I've popped to the shops to get some soups and a some freshly baked bread and I've been eating that instead.

And as a result I end up hungry all afternoon. It doesn't seem to matter how much I eat or how much protein and carbs there happen to be in the soup - today I had an entire carton of lentil soup and a third of a baguette covered in cream cheese ... and I'm still hungry.

I've always eaten a lot, although I'm not overweight. For my evening meal I quite often eat enough pasta to fill a serving bowl! But this is crazy. Does anyone have any suggestions? It needs to be something I can easy get on a Monday, which will last all week and which is simple to prepare ... and FILLING!

 

[mattthr]

Thanks for the suggestions. Lots of good ideas.

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Are you saying you need something you can buy in a store, rather than make yourself at home?

Not really. I'm quite happy with the idea of buying, say, a loaf of bread, some nice cheese and a bit of salad and making sandwiches every day at work. What I want to be able to do is go shopping on a monday lunch and get enough to last all week, but at a reasonable price. Fresh stuff is often not cheap unless you buy in bulk. So it's got to be cheap and keep - in a fridge if required - for a whole week. There's a microwave here but nothing else to cook with.

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Maybe try eating more fruits and vegetables?

I eat lots of fruit and veg, but normally only in the evening. So it's possible that by lunchtime next day my body is craving vitamins that I'm not giving it. I sometimes have some fruit at lunch, but not always - I'll keep an eye on my fresh fruit consumption and see if there's a pattern.

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Do you eat a good breakfast? If not, that's where to start.

This is a good point. Weirdly my workplace has breakfast food out, so I've stopped eating breakfast at home. The trouble is that new stuff is only bought in once every couple of weeks, and it often runs out. So the quality of my breakfast varies enormously: some mornings I'll have a couple of wholemeal bagels with cream cheese and some fruit, other mornings all that's left is a bag of crisps. So again, I'll have to watch that and see if there's a pattern: perhaps get in some oatmeal to keep in my desk and make into porridge if there's nothing good left to eat. Pre-cooked potatoes also seem a good idea.