Simple + Healthy Lunch Ideas for Busy Moms

This post is sponsored by Great Day Farms but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

Are you a New Years Resolutioner? It may be cliche thing to do, but I really do try to refocus my diet and fitness goals at the start of the new year. While I generally eat clean all year long, it’s inevitable that indulgence happens around the holiday season, so I love starting off the new year with a plan and a fridge filled with healthy food.

How to Make Eating Healthy Simple

I’ve been a stay-at-home working mom for 3 years now, and I’ve learned quite a bit about the value of meal prepping and having a list of healthy lunch ideas ready for busy days. Some of my favorite pieces of advice to make it easy to eat healthy at lunch include:

• When you get home from the grocery store, wash and cut up fruits and veggies and store in resealable containers. There’s nothing worse than wanting to grab a quick snack or lunch, only to spend 15 extra minutes cleaning and prepping it beforehand!
• Keep some quick foods on hand, like protein bars, hardboiled eggs, bananas, and nuts.
• When cooking dinner, prep a little bit extra protein to have leftovers for a day or two. For example, when we cook chicken in the slow cooker, I’ll add an extra piece and I’ll use it to top a salad the next day.
• If you’re not into dinner leftovers (or if your spouse takes them to work), you can prep something like Chicken Salad to use for salads, sandwiches or wraps during the week. I will sometimes make a batch of my favorite chicken salad and it lasts the entire week.
• Stay hydrated with a variety of healthy drinks. I admit that Starbucks was a daily habit when I worked in an office, but as a mom at home with two kids trying to balance work time with play time, I don’t have time for that (and it saves a lot of money, too!). I try to keep the house stocked with sparkling water, green tea, iced tea, lemons (to add to water or tea) and, of course, coffee.

My Favorite Healthy Lunch Ideas

Luckily, I’ve always loved salads, so it’s pretty easy to come up with healthy lunch ideas around here. Of course, if you’re not careful, that salad can really tip the calorie scales with too many toppings! My go-to salad is one that is filled with lots of fresh veggies, a little sweetness, healthy fats and lean protein. One of my favorite ways to add protein is by topping my salad with Great Day Farms Hard-Boiled Eggs – they come in packs of 2 or 6 at Walmart and make my life so much easier by not having to boil my own eggs and struggle to peel them (just me?)! Right now, you can use Ibotta to earn $0.25  off the 2-pack and $0.50 off the 6-pack when you purchase Great Day Farms Hard-Boiled Eggs from Walmart.

Sometimes I’ll also eat my Great Day Farms hard-boiled eggs whole with a little mustard or Everything But the Bagel Seasoning. So good!

Another go-to lunch idea is this healthy version of Chicken Salad that I make sometimes. I cook my chicken in the slow cooker and then cool and shred before adding in chopped hard-boiled eggs, celery, apples and dairy-free yogurt. Easy peasy.

What are your go-to meal tips or healthy lunch ideas?