Healthy food options when you are living away from home
Healthy Food and where to get it
No matter what your schedule is, living in a hostel, PG, room or flat, it all comes down to food that you eat. Living away from home for more than 7 years now and having tried variety of food options for my routine, I can very well understand the importance of healthy food routine and befitting that into our routine is a critical factor for your healthy life in the upcoming years.
I’ll start with food options for you if you are living in a flat individually i.e. single stay. There are some very good reasons why you would prefer living in your own company, like the peace of mind, time for self analysis and improvement but it depends on person, what kind of environment do you enjoy the most.
So, here are the eating solutions, you people can opt:
Hire a cook
But before you hire a cook, you would require kitchen utensils, so the cost for this option is split into one time cost of utensils, monthly rashan, weekly veges and gas. You can buy new utensils or you can check reselling options at OLX etc. or try asking college students who are leaving after graduation. Gas cylinder is another check. If you do not want the trouble of black market and registration at the same time, use mini cylinders which is available at stove repair shops.
Once all this is set up, buying vegetables would be the next hurdle, twice a week. It takes time and efforts. You can ask your cook if he/she can buy it for you. He/She might help you without charging extra. Just go, talk. You might have to learn to keep control over cook for timing and leaves since his/her leave would cost you time, efforts or money or all of these. Apart from this, you would need a fridge OR buy fresh vegetables, fruits almost daily in summers.
Be the cook
It would need time and efforts of yours like 2-4 hours a day depending on your efficiency and what you want to eat and washing dishes. If you get back late after office, you would find yourself skipping meals or living on snacks, or low social life. So choose this option as long as you have a balanced life or you have to.
Tiffin services
You can also look for services where they don’t provide door to door service but let you eat at their place. This can be the best option as good quality food served hot in plates. You can persuade the provider to cook a meal as per your requirement if you are looking for a diet. Again, just talk to them.
Few issues with tiffin service are
- Repeating vegetables time & again within a week.
- You can’t eat what you want
- You cant get your gym diet
So, you must check the menu before you pick a service. You can also look for a service where a house wife provides the tiffin. It makes a difference.
Hotels/Dhabas
If you couldn’t find a decent tiffin service in your area, you can always step into one of the hotels/dhabas around. But eating on the dhabas all the time can be unhealthy as well as too costly. Therefore, I would suggest making a routine of eating like
1. Customised daliya for breakfast
If you are worried about cooking utensils, you can manage with a few utensils like I have done it. All you need is an electric kettle, bowl to eat and bar to wash. You can get roasted daliya from the market these days or get it roasted from home and prepare it using kettle. Check healthy and tasty daliya recipe here.
2. Rice for lunch
Rice/Thali whatever suits your diet, in the lunch from Dhaba, will save you time and efforts.
3. Salad for dinner
Salad is a low carb diet and high fiber diet. You can get the ingredients and prepare yourself salad which is good to eat at night. Checkout the recipe here. You can also include soya paneer(Tofu) in your salad for vegetarian options.
Check what option suits you the most or if you found another solution share with the me and the community. Let me know if this was helpful for you.
Cheers!
