How to Eat Well on the Run

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Kristen Byrd Strother, One of Thousands of Health and Fitness Coaches on Noomii.

Hello shining stars! I hope this beautiful September (at least here in the Pacific NW) is treating you well!

In my last post I wrote about ways to fit in exercise (and got a lot of great comments about how others do the same-if you haven’t checked it out yet, you should!). Today is about how you can fit in nutritious foods when your life gets busy. For me, prior to finding out about my food intolerances, eating healthy was one of the first things to go when I had too many other things going on. It seemed to save me time to grab something at a fast food restaurant or some highly-processed packaged food (which tended to be high-sugar energy bars!-more on that another day). After I got sick my diet had to do a MAJOR 180. Since I didn’t have the option of grabbing fast food anymore I had to figure out some time-saving ideas for how to quickly grab something good for me.

Here are my two favorites:

1. Pre-cut your vegetables. One reason-even to this day!-that I sometimes don’t get as many vegetables in as I need to is due to how time-consuming it can feel to prepare them-primarily due to the chopping and slicing. So one thing I have done to keep this from setting me back is to cut my vegetables for the week all at once. I do this with my food processor (slicing attachment) so it’s super fast! Then I store everything in separate containers in the fridge and grab what I need for my various meals-whether that be a stir fry, salad, or whatever else I’d like to add some veggies to.

2. Homemade energy bars. I LOVE grabbing energy bars for a snack-they’re super portable and usually don’t need refrigeration-which is ideal if you’re planning to be out and about for awhile. But store-bought energy bars can be pretty expensive, highly processed, and (as stated above) very high in sugar. The way to fix this little problem? Make your own! There are plenty of recipes on the internet, but along the way I found my very most favorite! It comes from the blog of Veggie Grettie, who actually got it from the “No Meat Athlete” Matt Frazier (well his sister-in-law apparently came up with the recipe, but now this is getting too complicated…) So without further ado, the link to the energy bars I love so much: http://veggiegrettie.com/2011/09/08/no-meat-athlete-energy-bars/. And the reason they are so wonderful? Besides being delicious, they’re perfect for people with food allergies and intolerances-no need for gluten, dairy, nuts, soy, corn, etc. AND it gives you options so you can make them with the things you already have on hand. Perfect! (As a tip-I find that using “nut” butter-including sunflower seed butter-as a binder makes a creamier bar, whereas using ground flax seed makes it more like a muffin.) Thank you so much to Gretchen “Veggie Grettie” for giving me permission to link to her blog post. (And Matt Frazier’s sister-in-law for coming up with this tasty concoction in the first place!)