Healthy meeting snacks!

  • Some of my bigger challenges in eating healthy have to do with the work environment, and business trips.

    For example, today I was in meetings from 8 am until 8 pm. No one had lunch or dinner breaks scheduled. Normally this is a recipe for an unhealthy disaster for me, as we grab 'something quick' which means eating out of the quickie mart downstairs, full of candy and chips, basically.

    So this meeting, I'd flown in the day before and had time to prepare. I brought two frozen meals with me, knowing there would be a microwave and a few breaks in the day. Then I got healthy snacks -- carrots, strawberries, and grapes, plus some yogurt, and had a Luna Bar in reserve. I was set!

    The frozen meals worked well. The biggest coup was the veggie and fruits. See, normally at our meetings, someone drags the candy bowl in (which is distressingly full, usually) and we chow down on that. Or we munch endlessly on a humongous bowl of peanut M&Ms. Or both!

    In the morning session I broke out the carrots during a break. The guys in the meeting turned up their noses, but by the time we broke for a late lunch, the pound bag of carrots was gone! And the guys ate their share. No candy made an appearance.

    After lunch, during the afternoon break, I broke out the strawberries and grapes. Again, it was met with skepticism. Again, however, people mindlessly snacked, as we tend to do in meetings. No one thought to bring in the candy bowls as something was close at hand. That it happened to be something healthy didn't seem to dissuade them too much, after the initial 'cracks' about shocking their bodies with vitamin C.

    So by the end, the fruit was eaten too, and it was the first meeting in I don't know how long that wasn't accompanied by a candy bowl or two sitting on the table the whole time. Yay! I tricked the guys at work into eating healthy snacks, thus saving me the temptation of candy, by appealing to their inherent laziness! Go me!!
  • What an awesome idea!!!

    Next time I am stuck in an all-day meeting, I am totally bringing in a healthy snack platter. Way to take a normally high-trigger food situation and turn it into a healthy situation.
  • Wow, what a fabulous....and simple....idea! Good for you!
  • That was awesome! I usually bring in fruit to work and snack on it during the morning, and have enough to share with whomever enters my cube. I never thought to break it out during boring meetings, though. Great idea!
  • that is awesome!
  • Fantastic! And how nice of you to share!!!
  • Great job!
  • Good job! Way to go on taking control. With my new office it's just me and one other guy. So there is not much in the way of temptation. We have a grocery store right down the street so I stop in once a week and get fruit and healthy eats for the week. Keep up the good work.