What does a Dietitian eat on a weekday?

My days vary a lot depending on how many appointments I have booked in to see. On quieter weeks my meals are a lot more interesting and exciting! This makes up for my busy weeks where I virtually eat the same meal for lunch and dinner every day.

I try to wake up at a similar time every day (around 6am- 7am) and the obligatory coffee is first up. Then, as per my weekend diary, off to the gym for a 45-60 minute workout.

Breakfast

My go-to breakfast is yoghurt (my current choice is either Chobani- passionfruit flavour- or Siggi’s dark cherry) + a serve of fruit (frozen berries or banana or pear) + ¼ cup of untoasted muesli. My other breakfast options I occasionally have are: berry smoothie bowl (pictured below) or eggs on toast with cooked tomato and mixed leaves or plain, old porridge.

Lunch

On weekdays I don’t normally have time to snack in the morning so by lunch time I am hungry!! On busy weeks, I eat whatever meal I have made in bulk and frozen on Sunday. My favourites are lean mince-based dishes loaded with vegetables or chicken and vegetable curries like the one below. Alternatively, if I haven’t been bothered to cook in bulk and I want something convenient, I might buy a salad bowl from Woolies and add some lean chicken breast we’ve done on the BBQ (pictured).

Afternoon

I’m typically hungry again by around 3 or 4pm and have a couple of snack options I choose from.  Two things I often talk to clients about are, 1) the difference between snacks and treats and, 2)snacks aim to tide us over or top us up until our next main meal, not fill us up in the same way a meal would.

Let’s talk about a snack vs a treat:

Day-to-day snacks are nourishing little morsels of food, containing at least one of the following (if not a combination): fruit/vegetable, fibre, protein and vitamins/minerals (e.g. calcium, iron, vitamin C etc.). For example, fruit and yoghurt, vegetable sticks with dip, wholegrain muesli bars, small handful of nuts, cheese and crackers.

Treats on the other hand are those delicious bites of food filled with added sugars, fats and salts. These foods in particular are often seen as snacks when they are in fact treats: snack-sized packets of chips, biscuits or lollies, small chocolate bars, sausage rolls or pies.

Treats are a sometimes food, to be enjoyed less often. Whilst snacks are an everyday food to enjoyed on a daily basis.

My snack choices range from a piece of fruit, vegetables, homemade healthy muffins or banana bread, to a yoghurt, nuts or a muesli/nut bar. On this day I had 2 small carrots and an oat slice bar.

Dinner

Similar to lunch, dinner is either one of the bulk-made meals or something easy I’ve whipped up. Here are two of the more interesting meals I’ve had this week. We bought some beautiful fresh prawns on Sunday so on Monday I made up a Thai-style salad with vermicelli noodles, mixed leaves, capsicum and cucumber. Another favourite is homemade burgers loaded with salad in a wholemeal or grainy bun.

Hot tip: I make 10 burger patties at a time and freeze them in single layers in a container with baking paper. These patties are made with a mix of lean beef and lamb mince, onion, eggs, grated carrot and paprika.