Surprise! This week’s post is about food. I am writing this on a Sunday, my food prep-day for the work week so I beat the urge to cheat at the office. Try to get in the habit of spending a little time on Sunday afternoons to cook up some homemade goodness for the work week. Pour a glass of wine, be inspired.

Eating healthy and exercising were easy when I had my own business and worked from home. However, when I was interviewing for a job with my current law firm 6 years ago, they failed to mention the free-flowing food and subsequent expanding waistline I would enjoy as part of my new position. I was ill-prepared for the barrage of tantalizing foods available at all times of the day and had to work really hard to keep from gaining weight. Initially, I did gain weight and was miserable. Not only was I faced with a steep learning curve having never worked in law firm marketing before, but also suffered from low energy, bad skin and a puffy middle my first couple of months in. For the most part, catering for big companies consists of comfort food – bagels, bread, donuts, pasta, chicken and vegetables swimming in butter and oil, cookies, pastries and more bagels and bread. And I wondered at first why my energy was low, belly was protruding and my skin was breaking out?

It took a while to figure out how to beat the urge to cheat but I eventually got it down. Preparation is key. As my uncle Bobby likes to say, “prior preparation prevents piss poor performance” – the six Ps. Words to live by.

Here are my tricks to beat the urge to cheat:

1. Snacks. Fail to bring super satisfying snacks to last you through the day and you are doomed. Snacks should contain plenty of good fats so you don’t hear the donuts calling your name from the kitchen. One of my favorite quick-to-prepare snacks is celery and peanut butter (choose an organic peanut butter brand that contains nothing but peanuts). If you don’t have time to cut up the celery, bring the stalks and a knife and wash and cut at the office. You can put a week’s worth of peanut butter in left-over mustard or jam jars. Are you allergic to or don’t like peanuts? Whip up a batch of my Tuna-ish spread found here in a prior post and use that as a dip with celery and carrots. It’s fine to use crackers for dipping as well but your focus should be the vegetables. Another great snack is a mix of nuts, dates and seeds. You can buy organic nuts and seeds online or in bulk at the health food store and dates (organic of course) from a bulk-supply store like Costco. I like to have oatmeal around just in case I need something sweet and filling. Just add hot water and sweet relief is moments away. I add a packet or two of brown sugar to my oatmeal – hey it’s better than a donut – and I’m happy. Health it up with chia seeds, ground flax seeds and a banana if available. Finally, if your office doesn’t already have some type of blender like a NutriBullet, ask HR to buy one for the office for quick, satisfying smoothies. You can make a fruit smoothie with water or nut milk, apples and a banana or whip up a 1-Minute Coffee Banana smoothie (click here for a recipe) and safely avert a brownie crisis. There are some days that I feel like grazing and all I eat are snacks. Figure out what works best for you and learn to read your body. Leftovers from dinner the night before also make a good snack the next day. It may not be a big enough portion for your lunch but never let homemade, organic goodness go to waste. Have a pre-dinner snack at work before you head home so you’re not a starving monster as you walk in the door. Sound like too much food? Eat clean and well and you never have to count calories.
2. Water and wait. Are you tired of reading about water yet? I must warn you, it won’t stop and here’s why – water is a panacea for so many things especially hunger pangs or cravings. Let’s say you forgot the six Ps and there’s a plate of desserts left over from a meeting in the kitchen. Game over? Not yet. Drink two glasses of water and wait 15-20 minutes. There is an excellent chance you will have forgotten all about the trans fat-laden cookies and if not, your colleagues will likely have gotten to them by then. If by some miracle, there’s still a morsel or two left on the dessert tray and it still looks good to you, indulge and enjoy. Tomorrow you will be back on the healthy, homemade track.
3. Eat a huge, satisfying lunch.The standard catered lunch saps your energy and requires copious amounts of coffee to bring you back up to get you through the afternoon. One of the best ways to beat the urge to cheat is to prepare a satisfying lunch. If you look though the recipe section of my blog, you will find a number of easy to prepare meal options. Below is a recipe for salad that fills you up, satisfies cravings and gives you plenty of energy to get you through the rest of the day.

Surprisingly Sexy Salad

August 26, 2016

by Susie Belanger

Category Corporate Wellness Recipes

Ingredients

• Organic lettuce
• Thinly sliced cabbage - I used green cabbage for this recipe but I often use purple
• Sprouts
• Sliced mushrooms
• Carrot peelings - purple carrots pictured above
• A handful of cashews
• One whole avocado
• Cubed marinated organic sprouted tofu - switch this out for another protein if you like but once you've tried Wildwood Aloha Sprouted Organic Tofu, I can't imagine you not falling in love with it.
• Salad dressing. Here's a recipe for my favorite - Nutty Salad Dressing

Instructions

1. Put the sliced mushrooms, carrot peelings (wash carrot, and start peeling until you essentially, peel straight through. The days of throwing the outer skin away are over. Use it all!), cabbage, cubed tofu, in the bottom of a large bowl with lid for traveling
2. Fill the rest of the bowl with lettuce
3. Put your pre-made salad dressing in a small jar (I recycle everything so normally mine is in a washed out capers or olives jar) and place that right inside with the salad ingredients
4. Cover for traveling. Bring the whole avocado, sprouts and cashews separately.
5. Once you are ready to eat, pour the salad dressing on top of everything, replace the cover and shake until everything is coated. Slice up the avocado and add to your salad along with the cashews and sprouts

In this salad recipe, the key ingredients are the cabbage, mushrooms, carrots, sprouts and tofu, pictured above. Just those ingredients and a delicious salad dressing are enough for a sexy, satisfying salad. As with all my recipes, feel free to substitute ingredients for foods you like best. The goal is to eat mostly homemade food prepared with love. You won’t be written up for skipping an ingredient. Enjoy.