More often than not, the hardest part of maintaining a strict diet is managing on the go lunches. Lunchtime is often the busiest meal of the day, where you find yourself in the middle of your workday or trying to juggle errands during your lunch hour. Too often, on the go lunches mean trips to the vending machine or running through a fast food drive through.

Maintaining a healthy, kidney safe, diet for chronic kidney disease is important for so many reasons. First and foremost, your overall comfort and health are at stake. What you might not know is that you can actually alter the rate of progression for your chronic kidney disease simply by sticking to a strict healthy diet. While you cannot heal the damage done to your kidneys already, you can slow or even stop the progression of your disease with major dietary changes. So while a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake might not seem like such a bad idea at the time, you really want to make better decisions on a regular basis.

What you need are some quick and easy on the go lunch ideas that can work for every day, no matter how busy you are.

Bento Boxes

A bento box is a new trend in lunch boxes that works for kids and adults alike. You can find bento box lunch boxes in almost any department store or online, or you can put together your own kind of bento style lunch. The idea behind the bento boxes is small servings of many different items. These are great tools to use to help you eat healthy, especially since it is hard to get bored with a bento style lunch. Your bento box lunch can be full of easy and health finger foods, so they are easy to eat at your desk. Baby carrots, apple slices, pinwheel sandwich slices, berries, and other small finger food type items are perfect. And, if you can’t get a bento, you can use cupcake wrappers to help divide food in a steel lunch box to keep things cool, varied, and secure. It’s a really good option if you’re not good at picking just one thing to eat.

Wraps

Wraps are great! They’re an easy and versatile lunch item that is quick to put together, and you can use almost anything to put together a great lunch wrap. Use your leftover turkey or chicken breast, lettuce, onion, bell peppers, and whatever other favorite healthy additions and wrap them up in a flour tortilla. These are so quick and easy, you can make them the night before, the morning of, or just bring your ingredients and build your wrap right there on the spot.

Salads

Salads are not only super healthy, but they are also quite versatile. You can put just about anything in a salad and it will be delicious. Starting with a simple base of healthy vegetables like spinach, kale, and romaine lettuce add in your favorites like onion, carrot, radish, bell peppers, and more. Then top off your basics with your leftovers from last night, such as chicken breast or even turkey meatballs leftover from spaghetti night. Also try your favorite low nitrate deli meats, dried berries, and more.

Putting together on the go lunches that are appropriate for your chronic kidney disease diet is much simpler than you may think. It simply involves putting a little forethought into your midday meal. When you are feeling tempted to skip a healthy lunch in favor of fast food or salty vending machine snacks, remember how important it is that you stick to your healthy diet plan. Your diet, after-all, makes the biggest difference to your chronic kidney disease. For more information on chronic kidney disease diet, click here.